The Louvain Learning Lab trains universities in the South regarding distance learning.
At the initiative of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU), some twenty teachers from seven African countries, Haiti and Lebanon began an online training course on distance learning this week. The UCLouvain Louvain Learning Lab (LLL) is in charge of organising the training.
The programme will take place over four weeks, with an organisational structure adapted to the wide range of geographical origins of the participants. ‘No fewer than seven time zones are represented by the participants,’ explains Programme Coordinator Françoise Docq. ‘So we had to devise a very flexible type of organisation.’ The programme consists of learning activities on Moodle, supplemented by recorded group sessions so that those who cannot attend can view them offline.
The core of the subject is well known to the LLL, since the themes are among those regularly taken up in the training courses offered to teachers at the university, especially since the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic: distance learning scripting, the effective use of learning platforms, the facilitation of synchronous sessions, digital learning materials, and more.
‘The difficulty isn’t in the subject itself but rather in adapting it to the resources available at the various universities,’ Ms Docq explains. ‘Since not all universities have the same digital tools, we have to ensure that our modules are flexible enough to be used in each environment.’
The LLL was asked by the International Federation of Catholic Universities to provide this training in French. A similar training course had already been organised for the network’s English-speaking partners, then for its Spanish-speaking partners. A second session in French, with a new group of participants, will be organised in the autumn.
More information: https://uclouvain.be/en/study/lll