Aware of the opportunity offered by ICTs to ensure quality initial and continuing training, the Central Unit for Staff Training of the Ministry of National Education and the project for improving training for the promotion of quality in national education (Itqane) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with Al Akhawayn University and the National Centre for Pedagogical Innovation and Experimentation (CNIPE), have set up the "Itqane" E-learning project.
This project, which aims to promote the quality of education, notably in the Regional Pedagogical Centres (CPR), was at the heart of a National Forum on distance learning "e-learning", organised on April 26-27 at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane. It is a question, according to the organisers, of making known and celebrating the achievements and skills developed during the duration of the programme launched since July 2011 by the participants and allowing a pedagogical and technological exchange between the educators concerned by distance learning. "The participants will have to, within the framework of this project, produce training and teaching modules that can be used in initial and continuing training, develop an online course and structure it in a modular way, design interactive activities to integrate them into the course, identify the ergonomic principles of an online course, integrate the course and its activities on an e-learning platform (LMS), and evaluate the effectiveness of an online course", it is explained.
The best productions realised within the framework of the e-learning programme, among the 15 training projects in the running, were also awarded, including 7 carried by professors from Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane. It was also a question, during this forum, of evaluating the degree of achievement of the expected objectives, notably, by making the new training modalities consistent with existing structures in order to build an experience of online training devices corresponding to the different needs and expectations of the target audiences, which are trainers from the Regional Pedagogical Centres (CPR), AREFs, and professors from Al Akhawayn University.
"The final objective of the training consists of transferring skills in e-learning engineering, so as to allow the different participants to set up, in their respective training establishments (CPR/AUI), pedagogical and organisational devices based on a multimedia learning environment", specify the organisers. This being said, the organisers as well as the participants recognise, at the closing of the forum, that it is not easy to introduce and integrate technological tools into training institutions, because it is an innovation that assumes changes that are both organisational (linked to the structure and management procedures), and informational (linked to the form and content of representations). But given the very positive record of the Itqane e-learning training, provided at Al Akhawayn University, the different participants estimate that the challenge of developing distance learning devices by taking – fully and wisely – advantage of existing technologies, deserves to be met.
The "e-learning" programme was launched in July 2011 within the framework of a collaboration between the Ministry of National Education, Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI), the National Centre for Pedagogical Innovation and Experimentation (CNIPE), and the USAID Itqane Project. The goal of the programme is to contribute to the strengthening of the skills of target teams in terms of distance training and teaching. It is also to strengthen the implementation of the E3 P1 project of the Emergency Programme aimed at improving teacher training with a view to improving the quality of learning.
-* The target audience consists of 33 beneficiaries, selected on the basis of their file and after an interview.
-* The beneficiaries are distributed as follows: 16 trainers from the Regional Pedagogical Centres (CPR), 10 resource persons from the AREFs, and 7 professors from Al Akhawayn University.
-* The content of the courses is developed and put online by the different beneficiaries according to their field of expertise.
