Supporting continuous professional development of teachers and school leaders in Rwanda with Moodle

Gerald Henzinger • 13 September 2021
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The belgian Organization VVOB-education for development uses the think modular Moodle Application service to deploy their digital learning interventions for continuous professional development (CPD) for teachers and school leaders in Rwanda. 


Leading, Teaching and Learning Together

Through its five-year programme Leading, Teaching and Learning Together-LTLT (2017-2021), VVOB provides CPD services to district directors of education, sector education inspectors, headteachers, deputy headteachers, school-based mentors, and STEM school subject leaders. The CPD programmes were offered face-to-face and partly in blended modality before the COVID-19 outbreak. In response to the Covid-19 devastating impacts on education, VVOB partnered with the Mastercard Foundation through the Mastercard Foundation’s COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience Program. The purpose is to build the resilience of key education actors at central, district, sector and school level to manage the current COVID-19 crisis as well as future (health) crises that disrupt education. 
To enable the delivery of these training programmes online and make them accessible to all participants that are able to enrol, VVOB was looking for a competent partner for the digital component of the project, including the Moodle Application Service and consulting in the implementation of digital learning and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E).

Requirements

Together with VVOB we analyzed the typical user of the LTLT programme, which resulted in the following requirements:

  • Good usability: The platform should be easy to use and manageable by the local team.
  • Mobile usable: Most users access the platform via mobile phone, so we implemented and adapted the Moodle Theme Moove, which provides responsive design.
  • Monitoring and Evaluation: VVOB needed a flexible reporting, informing them about the current status of the courses as well as the course completions. We added aggregated report functionality for delivering enhanced course and activity completion data.
  • High flexibility - Needed content types and interactivities: Based on the available digital content and the course design, the following content type and interactivities should be available: Assignments, Moodle Book, BigBlueButton Video conferencing, Chat, Choice, Feedback, Folder, Forum, Glossary, H5P content package, Lesson, page, Quiz, File, Workshop
  • Including an open source video conferencing platform BigBlueButton: VVOB also uses our video conferencing platform BigBlueButton for their live video sessions directly in Moodle.
  • Reliability and Security: The platform needs to be reliable and secure under an SLA, providing a solid stability and short response times in case of support.
cpd4lit

Efficient training and high activity numbers

The platform is an integral component of the project and has high user access rates. Over 2 900 participants (Head Teachers/HTs and Deputy Head Teachers/DHTs), School based Mentors (SBMs), School Subject Leaders (SSLs), Sector Education Inspectors (SEIs), District Director of Education (DDEs) and District Education Offers (DEOs)) are registered on the platform and they completed already 680 000 interactivities and over 1 100 courses throughout one year (October 2020 - October 2021) including video sessions, quizzes, forum entries, interactive learning packages and others.

Good performance and scalability

We assured, that the platform is well accessible, even with very high concurrent user numbers. Even with up to 350 concurrent users online, the platform was well accessible and useable. In case of need, we are able to upscale the platforms easily.


the partner: VVOB vzw; vvob.org 

vvob logo

Our task: Moodle Application Service and consulting for a platform for continuous professional development for school leaders in Rwanda.

Implementation period: since 2019

More about the Leading, Teaching and Learning Together programme: https://rwanda.vvob.org/LTLT