As part of the Africa Digital Campus project, 69 teachers will see their capacities strengthened in scripting and designing educational content and in learning assessment. This series of training courses, which will extend throughout 2022, will enrich the e-learning platform of the Virtual University of Burkina with 121 courses, selected from seven training courses. The launching ceremony of the first training session, which will last two weeks, took place on July 25, 2022, in the presence of the president of the Virtual University of Burkina and the West Africa regional director of the University Agency of the Francophonie.
How to script a course, how to implement a course, how to do distance learning, here are as many modules that will be given to teachers from public and private universities in the country and who take part in this first training session. The president of the Virtual University of Burkina (UV-BF), Pr Jean Marie Dipama, invited them to take full advantage of this opportunity, which will facilitate the practice of distance education. “The digitization of knowledge in the education component is our responsibility for changing paradigms. We need to review the pedagogical approaches and this not in the form of constraint but in the form of ease”. He also urged them to be relays with other teachers who are still reluctant to use information and communication technologies in education.
Pr Jean Marie Dipama, President of the Virtual University of Burkina Faso
This training is held as part of the Africa Digital Campus project, implemented in Burkina Faso and Benin. According to the West Africa regional director of the Agence universitaire de la francophonie (AUF), Pr Ouidad Tebbaa, the project aims to strengthen the offer of e-learning (distance education). It will make it possible to provide universities with adequate infrastructure and to strengthen the capacities of teachers in the field of e-learning. "The objective of the AUF is to train trainers, who will constitute a pool of expertise at the service of the universities of Burkina and Benin", she explained. The two countries should, according to him, constitute models on which other countries such as Mali, Niger, Togo, etc. will rely.
Pr Ouidad Tebbaa, West Africa Regional Director of the Francophonie University Agency
The project is funded by the European Union to approximately 2.8 million euros for a period of two years. This support aims to promote the resilience of education systems, through digitalization and distance learning in the face of the health crisis. Africa digital campus is supported by the Institute for Research and Development (IRD) and the WACREN network. According to the president of the UV-BF, Pr Jean Marie Dipama, it constitutes a boon for the virtual university to have quality courses at international standards. The project will also, according to him, strengthen the technological infrastructure, so that all the educational content that will be put in place can be hosted and accessible to all learners.
The UV-BF aims to promote the integration of information and communication technologies in education with a view to improving access and quality. This is how it intends to set up a data center dedicated to education, with the promotion of virtual classes, especially with the security context which has led to the closure of institutes (Dori university center) and schools. This should allow these pupils and students to continue to benefit from quality training. Already since April 2020, the UV has made platforms available to the various universities on which teachers can submit courses and interact with students. And more than 25,000 users have used these platforms.
