THE MAK'ED TEAM introduced the Moodle learning management system at the peacekeeping school Ecole de Maintien de la Paix and delivered a train the trainer qualification for teaching online. That created an important basis for successful online learning.
THE MAK'ED TEAM has worked with a pronounced international focus since it was founded and is certified by iMOVE, an initiative of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for the internationalisation of German training and further education services.
One core competence of THE MAK'ED TEAM lies in building, developing and steering training and education academies to develop skilled workers locally. That is why we were selected for the project at the West African educational institution Ecole de Maintien de la Paix (EMP-ABB), which ran from November 2020 to September 2021 including the planning and start up phase.
An educational institution for peace
The academy is located in the Malian capital Bamako and pursues a clear goal: it wants to promote peace across the entire continent. To that end it strengthens the country's human capacity in order to support African peace operations and to strengthen the culture of peace. The institution is an international centre of competence of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS. More than 32,000 participants have already been trained here, among them peace actors, students, journalists and representatives of associations, NGOs, the police and the military.
Enabling distance learning: integrating online teaching into everyday practice
With the coronavirus crisis, the institution's focus shifted increasingly towards distance learning. Until then, however, there was not enough capacity or competence on site for that. The project therefore had two goals: first, supporting the administrators and the webmaster in establishing the Moodle learning management system effectively in combination with Zoom for online video sessions. And second, supporting the permanent teaching staff in designing modules and courses for distance learning, in order to generate attractive courses. The project was carried out in French.
Teaching staff should support the change from the start
An old existing learning platform was first replaced by the new system. Alongside setting up the technical conditions, however, the instructors were at the centre from the outset. The task was to introduce them to virtual teaching and learning, both in terms of the technical possibilities and approaches and in terms of motivating and supporting learners. They were to develop a basic understanding of the differences between classroom and online courses, because only on that basis can they fill the new digital learning offer with life effectively for their students, develop webinars or classroom seminars with virtual components from their own practice, and support the changes from the beginning.
Technical conditions and expectations of content
THE MAK'ED TEAM has a great deal of experience in developing and implementing qualification programmes. As in almost every international project, there were very particular challenges here too. Ann-Katrin Hardenberg, Managing Partner at THE MAK'ED TEAM and responsible for the project, notes: on the technical side there are problems locally with the network infrastructure and access to the internet is not guaranteed throughout. There is very little you can do about that. And it is not easy when such a project has to be delivered entirely from Germany, as was the case here. But in other respects we were able to improve the technical conditions considerably: during the project we trained an administrator who can look after the Moodle system competently on site and develop it further. With him and further colleagues, the teaching staff have a team at their side for technical support.
The institution's management supported and drove the project with great commitment. In the end the project set in motion a kind of change in the culture of teaching and in organisational development, one that can be used in future for an ever growing number of courses with a mature, practical learning management system. An important basis for future ready, successful education and training at the institution.
The detailed report by iMOVE: train the trainer programme for Mali
You can also find the project example for our project in Mali here.
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