Equip Palestine with E-Learning (E-Pal) is a 6-year Norwegian funded project. E-Pal is in partnership with the Palestine Polytechnic University (PPU)/Hebron-Palestine, University College of Applied Sciences (UCAS)/Gaza-Palestine, University of Oslo-Norway, and Oslo Metropolitan University-Norway, in addition to 11 Palestinian universities in both West Bank and Gaza.
The training and building the capacity of the Palestinian faculty in teachers’ professional and pedagogical competencies, as well as learners’ competences, is a core component of the project. The project adopted Moodle as the main LMS and decided to utilize the Moodle Educators Certification Program (MEC) working with Eummena the Moodle Premium Partner in the EMEA Region.
Luckily, 68 participants from the 13 universities succeeded to enroll in the MEC program. Due to the war on Gaza, many universities moved to online teaching in the West Bank. The participants who received training were able to successfully transform their courses online using Moodle. They have also managed to assist other teachers in developing their courses addressing teaching and learning, using resources and digital tools, and engaging and empowering their learners.
Along with this success came many challenges. Our colleagues in Gaza were not able to benefit from this opportunity as all Gazan universities were destroyed. Sadly, two of our certified participants were killed in attacks on Gaza. This has made it very challenging to transform such skills to other colleagues in Gaza. Another challenge was commitment to complete the training as self-regulated with a huge teaching load.
Finally, MEC training and switching to using Moodle was a paradigm shift in our teaching and learning and in the integration of technology in our classes.
Talk presented by Jad Najjar (Eummena) in collaboration with Prof. Mohammed Tamimi, Assistant Professor of English and Instructional Technology (Palestine Polytechnic University-Hebron, Palestine) and Assil Habib (Eummena).