Human Resource Development Using ICT and e-learning in Organizations - The case study of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)

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1 Human Resource Development Using ICT and e-learning in Organizations - The case study of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Sungkur Roopesh Kevin Computer Science Department, University of Mauritius, Mauritius Abstract The paper provides an overview of how the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has effectively adopted an e-learning strategy to increase accessibility to training and staff development. This regional organization seeks to achieve economic and social progress by increased co-operation and integration in all fields of development amongst its member states. One of the major concerns of the COMESA was that for the carrying out of a training session, representatives of each member states, very often had to travel to a particular member state for the training. With the adoption of e- learning strategy, flexible and online learning is now possible. Reduced travel costs coupled with an increased number of representatives being able to follow training sessions at their own pace seems to be the ideal solution that COMESA has been seeking for so long. This paper provides some insights about the benefits, sustainability and appropriate ICT infrastructure of the e-learning strategy. Stream: Human Resource Development Using e-learning in Organizations Introduction: The University of Mauritius was approached by the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) in 2008 to develop an e-learning strategy for them. This task was carried out more specifically by the Virtual Centre for Innovative Learning Technologies (VCILT). The VCILT is one of the centres of the University of Mauritius and it is responsible for providing and developing on-line webbased education at the University of Mauritius and throughout the country. After one year, this has effectively been implemented and the COMESA is now using this newly adopted strategy to encourage training, sharing of ideas and discussions. The COMESA regroups 19 member states, including Mauritius and has a total population of around 400 million and a total GDP of over US$ 360 billion. It indeed seeks to become a competitive regional economic community with high standards of living for all its inhabitants of its member states. In the recent years, VCILT has been able to position itself as a reference in the region in terms of e-learning and its competence in the field is widely acknowledged. This paper will highlight how e-learning has been beneficial in the training of the staff personnel of countries of the COMESA whilst identifying how the process can be sustained and what ICT infrastructure required.

2 Traditional Approach to training and proposed solution In the past, when training sessions had to be done by the COMESA countries, delegates had to fly from various countries to attend the training session in a particular country. This involved being able to coordinate everything and on top of that, the financial implications were enormous. This involved the air-tickets and hotel accommodation of all delegates. Furthermore the number of staff from one country who was able to travel to another country was limited. Very often what was done was that every country would send one representative so that when he is back in his country, he would then train his fellow colleagues. The COMESA Secretariat realized that this situation was becoming difficult to bear and that an alternative solution has to be found. As mentioned by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), technology has already transformed life. It is now time to apply it fully to learning (John Daniel; Krishna Alluri, 2006) The proposed solution was to make use of E-learning platform and to develop the e- learning strategies of the COMESA so that it fully benefits from the use of ICT for staff development. In 2008, after a request for proposal, the COMESA engaged the University of Mauritius to develop its e- learning strategies, together with the ICT infrastructure that would support e-learning. Research into the needs of the COMESA Investigation was done to identify the needs of the organization. One of the requirements of the COMESA was that this e-learning platform should easily be used by anyone and an individual without any advanced knowledge of ICT should be able to update information they are responsible for. The generalized use of ICT in ODL enables communities that span conventional boundaries of learning and doing, as well as space and time (Senteni, 2006).It has been shown that simple internet technologies is successful in education because they answer basic needs for information exchange, communication and collaboration, needed for constructivist scenarios ( Schneider; Synteta, 2003). The project was carried out phased-wise and regular visits were scheduled over a period of a year until it was completed. To carry out this project, two broad teams were formed, the technical team and another team responsible for training. However the technical team was also involved in training sessions that were carried out. Activity-Theoretical Approach The Activity Theory is not a "theory" in the strict interpretation of the term. It consists of a set of basic principles which constitute a general conceptual system which can be used as a foundation for more specific theories. These basic principles of Activity Theory include object-orientedness, the dual concepts of internalization/externalization, tool mediation, hierarchical structure of activity, and continuous development (Bannon, 1995). The activity theory is a general framework for studying different forms of human activity as development processes (Kuutti, 1996)

3 Fig 1: Human Activity by Engestrom The Activity Theory has been applied to this process and the following the output for the elements defined above. Outcome: Human Resource Development at the COMESA Subject: COMESA Staff Community: University of Mauritius consultants, COMESA Staff, Senior Management Division of Labor: Subtasks of a collective activity Phase1: Implementation of the proposed e-learning platform The project first started by trying to identify an e-learning platform that would be best suited for the needs of the COMESA. Currently there are three existing e-learning platforms that are being used at the University of Mauritius: 1. I-learn is an in-house built e- learning platform that provide a very simple interface for online course support. This is platform that has been developed from scratch at the University of Mauritius and provides a number of pedagogical tools as well.

4 Fig 2: I-learn e-learning platform 2. Moodle is an Open-Source e- learning system. It can be termed as a Course Management System (CMS), Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a free web application, very often used by educators to create effective online learning (

5 Fig 3 Moodle e-learning platform 3. The Manhattan Virtual Classroom is a web-based virtual classroom system. Developed at Western New England College, Manhattan is free, and is released under the GNU General Public License.(

6 Fig4 Manhattan e-learning platform A comparison of the three proposed platforms were made and the results are tabulated as shown below Development University of Mauritius International Western New England College Hardware/Software requirements Web server Database Web server Database Web server Lecturer Rights Course level Administrative level Course level Security access Login required Enrolment key Login required Administrator competencies Java, JSP, SQL Minimum technical level Linux

7 Table 1: Technological comparison of the proposed platforms Communication *** ***** ***** Document sharing ** ***** *** Student learning path tracking N/a ***** *** Group creation ***** *** *** Interoperability (using SCORM and Hotpotatoes eg) Human computer interactions N/a **** *** *** ***** **** Table 2: Further comparison of the proposed platforms After comparing the three platforms, Moodle was chosen as the platform to be implemented at the COMESA Secretariat. Moodle was designed by an educator and computer scientist with social constructionist principles in mind where everything revolves around activities. An initial investigation was done to identify the already existing ICT infrastructure at the COMESA Secretariat and recommendations were made about hardware and software that had to be procured. Then technical persons were sent to the COMESA Secretariat to install the Moodle E-learning platform and to customize it to the needs of the COMESA. Here the technical persons at the COMESA Secretariat have been trained so as to be able to manage the e-learning platform by themselves as soon as the platform is operational. This is in line with the idea of empowering the COMESA Secretariat so that they can operate by themselves. The following ICT infrastructure / resources proved to be critical to be able to install the Moodle e-learning platform: 1) Hardware a. Web Server b. Mail Server c. Database Server

8 d. PCs for training purposes 2) Network Facilities An appropriate network infrastructure as well. 3) Software 4) People a. Local Area Network (LAN) b. Domain Name Server (DNS) c. Router, Switch, hub and other network equipment d. Antivirus, firewall and other security features e. Internet connectivity to an ISP a. Operating system of existing web, mail, database server (Windows, Linux, etc) b. Existing web server (Apache, Tomcat, IIS) c. Existing Database server (MySQL, SQL Server) d. Existing Mail Server The following shows some technical persons that will be required to administer and manage the e-learning platform. a. Person with knowledge of System Administration (web, database server, backup, restore, troubleshoot in case of database corrupt) b. Person with knowledge of System Engineer - Network Troubleshooting (firewall, gateway, DNS) c. Monitoring load on server so as to optimize performance. d. Monitoring network traffic so as to optimize performance Phase 2: Training of trainers After the e-learning platform is operational a training of the trainers session was carried out. People were trained so that they can train other fellow colleagues about how to effectively use the e-learning platform. The training sessions were a combination of face-to-face and online interactions and activities. Emphasis was made on the following inherent facilities of the e-learning platform and how these can be useful. These can briefly be broken down into 3 categories (i) Static Contents which can include web pages, images, audio and video in different file formats (ii) Interactive content which can include items such as quizzes and animations (iii) Social Interaction such as discussion board, exchanges, discussion forums and chat sessions. Response from staff of COMESA There was a very positive response from participants having followed the training. They were impressed by the functionalities present in the e-learning platform and they were keen to start developing their own online course. Below are some of the comments of the participants.

9 It was a good experience and am looking forward to more interesting sessions on elearning The course was good and I think it will help a lot in COMESA member states participating online via Internet with COMESA activities and easy in Communication. The advantages to be derived from this new e-learning strategy are numerous. The learning process is now a self-paced, flexible one and is able to target a larger audience. Phase 3: Workshop to senior management of the COMESA A workshop was delivered to senior management of the COMESA on how the implemented e-learning platform will help for the training and development of its staff. An overview of Intellectual Property (IP) issues was also given. This top to bottom approach is very important. Having understood the purpose and the significance of the implemented e-learning strategy, senior management would be in a better position to encourage COMESA staff to effectively use the e-learning platform. Further Discussions Moodle and the open-source community It is also to be pointed out that Moodle is open-source software with a modular approach and it is this very modular approach that is preferred by many education specialists. Modules and plug-ins are easily available and can be downloaded and used. Furthermore updates and upgrades are readily available and is not a very difficult task. Possible difficulties that can be encountered. One of the major possible difficulties that can be encountered with this new approach to learning and staff development is with the bandwidth. Indeed in this region of the world, the bandwidth is quite a scarce resource. Depending upon the demand, at times, the internet connection can be very slow and as the e-learning platform depends on the internet, this is an important issue to consider. Ensuring the sustainability of the process. A major concern for every project is to ensure its sustainability. Here again, ensuring the sustainability of the e-learning platform is essential. Having a good internet connection and ensuring that the platform is operational is very important. It has been shown that once people start to get problems accessing any e-learning platform, they tend to get discouraged and their interest will decrease. Ensuring that COMESA staffs are readily able to access the e-learning platform without any major difficulties, in a way ensures the sustainability of the e-learning strategy. Regular training should be given so as to familiarize everyone with the inherent functionalities. Training sessions can be face-to-face or online and staff should be encouraged to participate and share their experiences online through discussion forums. Indeed online training sessions were done by staff from Mauritius and activities were given for COMESA staff to work. Ensuring that there is activity on the platform is crucial. Just like when a person navigates to a web site and find stale information there, he starts having doubts about the seriousness of this particular website, similarly, if participants find that information are not regularly updated, and they will start to question the seriousness of the e-learning platform. The use of Open Education Resources (OER) should also be greatly encouraged.

10 These would serve as building blocks for this new approach of training and staff development. Conclusion The implementation of this new e-learning strategy at the COMESA Secretariat has greatly changed the way training is being delivered. Education has long been recognized as a critical mechanism for achieving development goals (Senteni, 2006) and the COMESA is well aware that without proper training and staff development, it will not be able to render its activities and operations more productive and efficient. Very often, it is being said that Africa is not being able to participate in this great repository of human knowledge (Samara, 2001) and benefit completely from the advances of technology. Similarly, very much recently, we have seen that the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which is an inter-governmental organization, regrouping 15 southern African states has shown its interest to be able to implement a Knowledge Management System (KMS) at its headquarters. This is very much in line with the process described throughout this paper, which focuses on the notion of how ICT can effectively be used to disseminate knowledge and eventually benefit the whole organization. Here this paper has outlined how ICT has ensured and helped in the Human Resource Development of the COMESA staff and to a larger extent, the people of this part of Africa.

11 References 1) Bannon, L itc_data/act_dff.html platform for COMESA Initial Investigation report 2) Collins, P., Shukla, S. AND Redmiles, D Activity Theory and System Design: A view of the trenches. Computer-supported Cooperative Work, Special Issue on Activity Theory and the Practice of Design, Vol. 11,No. 1-2, 2002, ) Daniel J, Alluri K Millennium Development Goals, Using Technology to expand learning. 4) Gunness S, Cooshna Naik D, Sungkur K Development of an E-learning platform; status report: Training of Trainers. 5) Kuutti, K Activity Theory as a Potential Framework for Human- Computer Interaction Research. In B.A. Nardi (Ed.), Context and Consciousness (pp 17-44), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 6) Schneider, D Conception and implementation of rich pedagogical scenarios through collaborative portal sites: clear focus and fuzzy edges. Proceedings of the International Conference on Open & Online Learning, ICOOL 2003: Mauritius. 7) Senteni A Building up diasporas from scratch: the conditions of emergence of process and collaboration in global knowledge communities. 8) Sungkur K, Hurbungs V Development of an E-learning