Building National Capacity

It is fascinating for me to continue to discover the various ministry opportunities that MAF LT has stepped into around the globe. Several of our staff serve in remote parts of the world quietly building capacity for local situations. The following entry tells of one such situation.

MAF LT is transitioning out of assisting a medical college in North Central Asia because the workers there have successfully applied the LT instruction and tools given to them.  Back in 2003, MAF began working with an organization working on retraining doctors and nurses with modern evidence-based medicine.  This USAID-sponsored humanitarian project in the region had been providing training to doctors and nurses primarily through seminars but then saw the need to transition to a distance-education model.  MAF LT worked with this organization to develop their capacity to create and deliver DE courses that allow doctors and nurses to acquire new medical skills and knowledge while continuing their practices in the small villages that dot this region. Doctor with Patient

MAF partnered with a government-sponsored medical college and quickly started instructing several doctors and nurses in Course Designer Training (adult teaching principles), Course Construction (instruction in Moodle, Flash, basic HTML, and DEViewer) and Course Facilitation (how to mentor a course).  Over the years, we helped them construct, test and deliver a total of eight courses.  Over time, the need for MAF’s involvement has decreased as their skills have now grown to the point where they have mastered most of the tasks themselves.

MAF still is around helping them, however our role now deals almost exclusively with the more technically challenging items such as: creating a version of Moodle that runs off a flash memory stick (”Moodle on a Stick”), creating material software patches for the courses, and assisting them with setting up local area networks for courses. As a result of MAF’s instruction and consulting, this medical college has largely developed the capacity to independently initiate, design, construct, and implement their own courses. A Course in Moodle