 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this EdenNAP webinar. My name is Igor Valoban. I'm from the Faculty of Organization Informatics University of Zagreb. I'm an EdenNAP member and today I will be the moderator of this session. As you could have seen from the announcement, the session is entitled How can we transform e-learning practices through capacity buildings? Today we have four panelists that will present you, I would say, very nice examples from two different projects, but from different perspectives to see how can we use the European Union funds, the capacity building projects in order to transfer the knowledge to the ones that need such knowledge. Thank you very much for your messages in the chat window. It's really nice to see that you are from all over the world interested in this topic. Allow me just a minute or two to very briefly present the panelists today. The first panelist we are going to hear today will be Dr. James Brinton, who is from Dublin City University. James will actually present one example of a very interesting book or project. It's a capacity building project. Three other speakers, Dr. Mohammad Sharif, then Dr. Nishan and Shimna Shaqib, who are from Maldives National University, they will present Ahmed's project, which is also another capacity building project, and they will reflect from the institutional point of view, from the point of view of people involved in the project, and then from point of view of the teachers who are directly targeted with the project. However, more details will be said by those presenters. So first, I would like to give the floor to Dr. Brinton. James, I hope you are here with us, that you can hear us well. Of course, you are free to ask questions. We have the question and answer window that can be used for that purpose. I encourage you to put your questions there because it's very easy then to manage the conversation afterwards. So thank you very much. James, the floor is yours. Hello, everyone. I think we have a lot of different time zones, so I'll say good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you are. Let me just share. Are you looking at a slide with Buka on it there? So I'm just going to give you a brief overview of a very interesting capacity building Erasmus Plus funded project, the Buka project. Again, just to do as I was told there to introduce myself a little bit, I'm an assistant professor in Dublin City University or DCU, as we just tend to call it. I'm the chair of an online open education undergraduate psychology program. I've been working on online and open education programs in the university for 12 years. My background is in psychology, but this work over the last 12 years has meant that I'm as much, when I think of my discipline now, I think of open education, online education, as much as I think about my psychology. So I've melded those worlds and also all the research that I do tends to be very applied and tends to all be about my teaching and learning. So I'm one of those teaching and learning, open education, online education people. So I'm here to talk about the Buka project. And this is a project that it very much speaks to what is possible in terms of capacity building, in terms of working with international partners to build capacity in higher education in order to have a societal impact in line with UN sustainability goals on quality education. The aim of this project is to promote equity and access to higher education in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines through the use of things like inclusive learning design, learning analytics in online and blended learning, especially in the context of open and distance learning. And sort of to do that, a lot of the work that's happening is about capacity building or putting the infrastructure in place in order to be able to engage in capacity building of staff. The purpose of the project is to help enable access to higher education for people in rural and remote regions, as well as those with diverse backgrounds, so mature students, working students, first and family students, students with learning difficulties or particular conditions or impairments. So the lead partner in the project is TAMC or the TAMPRA University of Applied Sciences in Finland. And TAMC, along with my own institution, DCU, we are supporting six fantastic teams in six different higher education institutions in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines as they each engage in their own substantial and important institutional projects. So the model that we are taking in this project involves engaging in authentic capacity building of teaching, technical, and sort of instructional design staff in those institutions, although that varies a little bit by project. And we'll kind of look at that. Supporting the strengthening of infrastructure and learning environments in the partner institutions. And I mean, that's where the European funding is going in some instances. It's to actually, you know, monetarily support their very targeted development of their institutional infrastructure around and then insert project here, and we'll see that in a second. And then, you know, one way of saying this is, you know, staff in TAMC and staff in DCU are supporting the progress of the various pilot interventions in the partner institutions. But really, it's not just us coming along and delivering training. We are doing some of that, but it's more about information sharing and networking and creating sort of networks of support between the different institutions that we're all sharing knowledge. We're all sharing expertise. So to look at the projects in the two Malaysian institutions, the Open University of Malaysia and Wasan Open University, they are very strongly targeted as capacity building. These institutions already have some experience in this space, but they are keen to ensure that their staff are sort of as up to date as they need to be. You know, some of these institutions have been around for a while. And like the programs that I've been working on for the last 12 years, maybe have a history in kind of traditional distance education modes. And, you know, at a point, maybe some of the things you're doing still relate back to this kind of traditional distance education mode. And that's just not where things are at right now. You know, there's some things are not going to be working optimally or you might see better practice somewhere else in terms of a more modern form of online learning. And you need to continually build up the capacity of staff in order to be able to keep up with that. So that's what the Malaysian institutions are very focused on. The Indonesian projects are, there's a little bit more of a variety. So in Universitas Turbuka, there's a really interesting project where they're supporting students in disadvantaged and remote regions where regular internet access is just not available. It's just there's no internet connection out there. So what they're doing is they're creating local internet hotspots in rural areas that can then allow people in that area to use that local hotspot to engage in online learning. So it's a different form of online because they're not connected directly to the internet, but they have this local hotspot that like if the information is put in the local hotspot, then people can draw on that in terms of online learning in that area. It's a very interesting way of pushing online learning out into regions where internet connectivity doesn't exist. And then Universitas Nigiri Padang is another interesting example because they are specifically focused on building up their sort of central professional staff capacity, you know, setting up a team that can then engage in the capacity building with academic staff in their institution. So again, it's about setting up that infrastructure, setting up that, creating a wellspring of expertise that then other people in the institution can draw on. I've deleted a slide there somewhere. Sorry, the Philippines, but the two universities in the Philippines then are, I'll just go back to the slide that actually had their names on. Their projects are a combination of staff capacity building and building up infrastructure to deliver open distance learning in remote areas because there is a national push in the Philippines to create zonal centers to sort of try and widen participation in higher education by having different centers all around the country so that they can sort of push and widening access, the widening access agenda into rural and disadvantaged areas in the Philippines as well. But they are also especially in our State University is really in that position where they are really trying to push into, you know, the sort of blended and online learning space. So they are engaging more in the capacity building than maybe the University of the Philippines Open University. They're already in a pretty strong place with capacity, but the University of the Philippines Open University, they're the ones really pushing the development of the zonal centers. So just to finish off the presentation, you know, before yesterday when I gave a presentation in person in a room, the last sort of big in person event that I had been to was the kickoff meeting for this project in Penang in February 2020. And this project had been designed with a lot of travel, a lot of physical meetups in the project so that we could have, you know, so that we could manage the project so that we could engage in training. And, you know, obviously all that went out the window. And it really speaks to how, you know, March 20, they sent us all home again. So the project had to completely change to, you know, an online format and it kind of speaks to how our research development and innovation work has changed during the pandemic, because all of our management of the project went online, our training had to go from being planned to be in person to being synchronous online or sharing resources and communicating asynchronously through an online learning platform. We had to extend the project a little bit and that speaks to how everyone has needed a bit more flexibility and slack during the pandemic to actually get what we need to get done, done. And those partners that were really just starting to build up their capacity in this space were like everyone else who didn't have a ton of experience with online learning, they had to start doing it at the same time as they were learning it, you know, during the project. And that speaks to kind of the chaos and the, you know, people having to suddenly change how they were working very rapidly. And even into the future, organizing future training events, you know, doing them in person will now be very challenging because a lot of organizations have changed the way they work. Their staff is now distributed, they're not all in a central location. So saying let's do training in one place, not only would people have to travel to maybe give the training, but people from that institution might have to figure out how they get all their people into one space, you know, at the same time. So, you know, the way the project has worked over the last two years really shows how the pandemic has changed the way we engage. We're still trying to accomplish the same goals, but we're doing it in very different ways. Thank you. Perfect, James. That was really, really nice. Now, I'm asking audience if you would like to ask James something more and know something more about his experience and the project's experience, please do use question and answers chat box to put your questions. Maybe, James, I think that we have all experience issues caused by COVID, right? Now, in your terms, you've had a lot of organization involved as a key stakeholders, so the ones that actually needed the practice and the experience. You were required to, I would say, completely change the way you did things because of lockdowns. Are there any factors, like the key factors that you could identify that were actually the key ones that help you to bring this project to the end? Yeah, I mean, the project is still ongoing and will be going on for another year or two as the partners sort of roll out their projects. I mean, some of the things were just the unprecedented elements of the pandemic were just the chaos that people were trying to work through. People were trying to work in their homes. They were working in ways that we were never expected to work, but the facilitators were becoming as absolutely targeted as we could. It was about asking the partners, what are the training sessions? What are the workshops? What is the information that you feel like you most need? And then lining up the training or the resource sharing to specifically target that. Whether we would have had it in the project as strongly in the past, we really moved towards a kind of peer support network as well. We kind of did it by country. We had some people from Tampkin DCU and then working with the teams from the different countries and we formed little subgroups to try to continually support each other. So I think it was about trying to be as targeted as possible when things were so chaotic. And the other one was, it was seeking an extension, acknowledging that things were different, things were more difficult, things were going to take more time to accomplish and to sort of formally look for an extension of the project really helped with that rather than sort of just trying to continue pushing through when that might not have been appropriate in terms of the well-being and the productivity of all the project partners involved. Because in such projects, capacity building projects, especially those that are dealing with e-learning, we have experienced the emergency remote teaching, which actually, well, for some institutions to start using the tools and the methods that they have not been using at the beginning, at the phase at which we wrote the proposal. And in the beginning, we said, okay, the institutions do not have this and that and then we will give them this and that. But now during a pandemic and everything, the universities are actually forced to change their current teaching and learning practice much, much faster than they would do in the normal conditions, right? So probably there, as you said, there have been a large number of different factors that have involved in the projects and that have changed actually the current context. Yeah, I mean, the current context is very modeled at the moment because, you know, if someone comes along, like, I'm an editor for a journal and I review papers for journals and I'm seeing a lot of papers at the moment, which are very, you know, it's important for us to capture what happened during the pandemic to capture perceptions and everything. But at the moment, I'm seeing a lot of papers where it's kind of, okay, we're going to talk about online learning and you get into the paper and you're like, I don't know what I'm reading about anymore, because the same terms are being used to describe pre-pandemic, planned online learning, and then online learning, which happened overnight during the pandemic. And it's like, at a point, you don't know if someone's being asked, oh, this is what the students' perceptions were. It's like, I don't know anymore. Was that based on pre-pandemic experience of online learning or was it about the emergency, you know, the emergency stuff that happened during the pandemic? So it's a very, at the moment, we're waiting to untangle. Is this what online learning means now? You know, am I just stuck in my pre-pandemic definition? You know, or will things start to become more planned now? And how if and how things become more planned in terms of online learning will then determine how we go forward with what the impact will be on staff and students and and everything like that. Good. We have one question. And it will it is actually for all speakers. You can see it in the question and answer box. Vlad posted the question actually for all speakers. So the other speakers can prepare up front. What are the biggest challenges in capacity building projects? What solutions did you identify to overcome that? For staff, it's workload. It's time and resources. You know, higher education has a 20-year history of, you know, staff kind of well-being and mental health and things deteriorating. And, you know, institutions need to take a more explicit approach to supporting staff well-being and, you know, that there's just academic culture and academic institutional workload models. They're not they're not how you would design something if you were trying to facilitate people continually improving and things. There's there's too much work in the workload models. And if that if that was addressed in any way, that would allow a lot of what institutions say they want to happen. At the moment, you know, it's like, oh, please develop your digital competencies. But some staff will be interested in that. And some staff will feel like they just do not have the capacity to engage with those those requests at all. And for students, it's the digital divide. It's it's about again, it's about building up their capacity building and things like that. At an institutional level, it's about having a clear strategy and then actually putting the resources and the time into allowing that to happen. And not just saying, right, make it happen, everybody. Good. Thank you, James. I think that this is this actually perfectly in line with what the other speakers will also say because I think that from a perspective from the other speakers, that institutional commitment to make changes is what is crucial actually in this in this capacity building projects. Good. Thank you very much, James, for this very inspiring presentation. Now, we have seen the project that actually targeted a variety of educational institutions as a key stakeholders currently piloting the procedure. Now, the other project that will be presented is Ahmed project. This is a project which aim to build capacity only for one institution, one main beneficiary. This is Maldives National University, but it was focused on complete change. So the change that actually start from the from the beginning from scratch and to transform the complete institution in terms of approaching e-learning. With that sense, or within the Ahmed project, we have three speakers, as I've already announced. Dr. Sharif, Dr. Nishan and my colleague, Shivna Shakib, who will present the project from different perspective, who will showcase how they approach the project and reflect, as I've already mentioned, from different target groups. First, I would like to ask Dr. Sharif to reflect on the Ahmed project from a strategic point of view, from the point of view of MNU management. Dr. Sharif, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Ego. Let me share my screen. Thank you, Ego. Again, my name is Mohamed Sharif. I joined the university in 2015. I was here at the university briefly as deputy vice chancellor research and development and then later I joined as the vice chancellor. So I'm heading the university at the moment. My background, I'm an engineer by training. My specialty is in postal engineering, but today I want to talk about e-learning and the developments of e-learning at the university. I hope you can see my screen and hear me clearly. In this presentation today, I'll begin with an overview of the university and then highlight some of the significant milestones in the multi-side application context, focusing on why e-learning is critical for higher education in the MNU and our future directions in this regard with the focus on where MNU is catered in this regard. First, about the MNU National University. MNU is governed by MNU Act. It was formed in 2011, which establishes and defines the university's functions. MNU is the country's first university and it's a public university, but it was, it has a history. It was established in 1973 as a training institute and then at that in 1998, several colleges which were institutes which were run under ministries were put together as a college of higher education and then later as a university. With this legacy of higher education, MNU is the country's premier institution of higher education, graduating up to now by around 73,000 students. All of MNU's activities are founded on our world view of philosophy and knowledge, reality and existence, which we call IMAN and ILM, those two words are Arabic words. The MNU's national university vision is that the MNU will perform and be recognized as the outstanding academic institution of the nation. Our strategic goals, we have 10 different goals. Out of these five of the goals, we can, I would say that these projects have to get delivered. This is all our operation plan is also focused on these strategic goals and we very much focused on e-learning to get the academic excellence enhancing to get in the quality people and also fostering a conducive working environment. And so while going forward with these goals, we have to also acknowledge the context of the Maldives and its physical and cultural features. The unique geography of the Maldives is quite significant in this context. As you can see, our small population that is dispersed across the archipelago from north to south, we have 200 inhabited islands out of the 1200 islands. Here in the photo on the left, you can see how our country looks like. These are low-lying islands exposed to environmental changes and traveling to and from these islands and access to the resources varies across the islands. In addition, our country has a limited natural resource reflecting on an economy that classified the country as a low to middle income country. But on the positive side, Maldives is the middle income country. In the Maldives, education has always been a significant priority. But higher education was introduced in the country much later. So higher education was of in-sort approach. Like people of my generation went overseas to get higher education. Now with the advent of higher education services in the country, the focus of higher education at national level is to meet the national development needs. For this reason, currently we have the government is giving where the first degree is free of tuition fees for students who are studying and also have introduced loan schemes for students who wants to go abroad or wants to pursue their higher education locally. Such schemes being available in the country despite the economic challenges demonstrate the place we put on higher education in our country and forward-looking approach we have on it. Talking about the changes, trends in the delivery of higher education in the Maldives, let me also go back to where we started giving, starting like on this e-learning pathway there. We started around 97, correct me if I'm wrong, I assume not them who will come back after later. In 97, I think the college of distance learning was established, Center for Open Learning was established. And then 2007 at full day started on e-learning. And later for synchronous delivery, we did get the help of the RABU, the telecom provider to have a holicom system. Later, learning management system established with model was introduced. In the country similar milestones in higher education includes the establishment of training institutes, that is we had called IT hotel school, which was which I said earlier but as different institutes was brought up under one umbrella. Maldives qualification authority also, it was part of the university earlier and then later established as a different authority. These changes that took place in higher education sector in the Maldives, some quite slow, some quite rapidly almost overnight in some cases, is changing the higher education context and frontier in the Maldives. Along these the demographics of our students, their needs and the demands from higher education is changing. Most of them wants to work full time and gain a qualification in the shortest, most accessible, most remote method. So like students who are working at their resorts, they prefer to stay in the resorts and get their education while working. So more flexible modalities such as e-learning is required now. These features of development of higher education have served the country to some extent with our limitations being a small island developing states. However, the common and key challenges as most states face in higher education provision still remains. Like we have very cent, like kept up in the main focus and limited resources in the outer households, which also hinders us achieving the SDGs like SDG4. We had distance learning modality in the past to adjust this, but it was not efficient and was not meeting the demands of the labor market. So an alternative modality in higher education provision becomes very significant. E-learning stands as a good practice which can minimize these issues and challenges we face. However, this change requires investment in human and physical resources such as moving from what we have been doing to a different set of practices and mindsets. From traditional classrooms to virtual classrooms, physical environment to virtual learning environment from traditional pedagogies to e-learning pedagogies, physical infrastructure to online learning systems. These are challenges at cultural, political and technical level and the paradigm shift we have to make needs to address this and brings this change to the higher education frontier in the modalities. This requires support in developing resources, establishing infrastructure, learning from others through networking and the giants in this field is who we look up to and from whom we seek this support and as a partnership, but not in the borrowing their policies or practices as we need something that is suitable and respectful of our culture and traditions. To bring these changes, there are certain preparation and strategic planning that are needed. At this point, there are some positives regarding this aspect and also came about regarding the changes to education during the COVID pandemic. I think the Ahmed project was very useful as I have been telling everybody that the preparation we have to do is minimal because we have set of guidelines already set up and also we had a policy draft at the time so it was easier for us to roll out the e-learning environment to our students who are stuck in the islands. The COVID situation was in the open for the mold is demonstrating how e-learning is critical in higher education and the flexibilities it would bring in the provision of higher education. Yet it's also made it clear how limited our skills infrastructure and higher education curricula are for e-learning modalities. We need to take care and strategic plans to ensure that these limitations are addressed as we move towards e-learning in the higher education. E-learning in the context of mold is again, we need policies, we need skilled people and developing infrastructure. At MNU, we understand that e-learning modalities are quite critical and one of the most significant way to providing a sustainable quality higher education service to the country. Currently, the university's strategic plan 2020 to 2025 have several goals that we want to achieve regarding e-learning pedagogies and academic staff competencies for such pedagogies. It is quite critical to us that we establish a mechanism at MNU that slowly brings in the existing strengths of the university as a traditional higher education provider and complement various e-learning pedagogies so as to have a unique and contextually relevant approach to e-learning at MNU. Such a bespoke approach that provides a roadmap then will bring the best of both worlds where we are ready to face the new world firm in our roots of education while ensuring our teaching and learning at MNU develops graduates who are competent to use technology's tools in their profession and be competent workers in their every evolving job market. This will also further in their later life when they are doing continued professional trainings. I think we have to embrace e-learning and then move forward. Thank you very much. That is my presentation. If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Sharif. Actually, we have two questions in the question and answer session. I thank the audience for bringing those questions. Okay, since we are waiting for the other speaker, Simna, who is experiencing some issues with the electrical with power. She has been switched off and on all over again, but this is what the online webinars do. I would then maybe proceed with the questions for Dr. Sharif. So the first one was are the Maldivian standards available somewhere? You mean the standards for our learning? Brita, can you maybe specify more your question, elaborate more details? And the other, maybe once since we are waiting the elaboration for from Brita, maybe the other question. Did this project help to implement concrete changes in the national legislation and or strategy of the Maldives? Or is this planned for the near future? I think this project helped immensely with e-learning provided guided and structured programs for e-learning implementation at MNU. The support from the project was critical in getting more staffs on board for e-learning. It also developed capacity for a lot of our staff. The training that we were provided and at Karnat, at FOI, and also in work in Barcelona. I think that also helped the project staff and also the visits by the project team from the European and partners also helped our staff. I think when my colleague speaks later, I think she will give some highlight on those the experiences from the lecturers perspective on this one. So I think that I will keep that short there. Good. What are the things? There are more things I can talk about this project that helped us. But I think I will stop there for now. Yeah. And we have, yes, Brita contacted us again. And yes, she said that the Maldivian standards that she was referring to was were in relation to e-learning standards referred into the presentation. We don't have a national standard yet, but we have at the University adopted our own ways of doing it, how things should be. And very shortly, I think the Maldivian Qualification Authority is working on a guideline and also a regulation on how e-learning should be done. So that is coming up, I think very, very shortly and this will be available. The guideline is in English, so it will be available on that soon. That is the national one. Good. Thank you, Dr. Sharif. Since you are the panelists, you can also type in your answers in the question and answer box. And you can also decide whether you want to answer some questions live at the later stage or you just want to type in the answers so everything is allowed. But now I would like to maybe move forward to our next presenter. I'm sorry that Shimna was disconnected. I really hope that she will be back with us again because she will present the project, what the project is actually about. But maybe while waiting for Shimna, I would like to ask Dr. Nishan to reflect on the teacher's perspective because, as I've already mentioned, the AMED project targeted into transferring the teaching and learning practice at Maldives National University, not just by proposing a complete e-learning strategy or e-learning roadmap. One of the main aims of AMED projects was also to develop and implement a pilot study program consisting of two pathways. The first one was for decision makers and the second one was for lecturers in order to boost the skills of decision makers and lecturers at Maldives National University. So the main point was that lecturers and decision makers go through that piloted study program and to get the certificates in the end and then to accredit that study program for future use, for future teachers and future decision makers. So now I hope that Dr. Nishan can reflect what have the teachers learned, what was their perspective on the project and how they faced the challenges, not just by enrolling the study program, but actually having the needs to implement the e-learning in their courses. So Dr. Nishan, please, the floor is yours. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Let me share my screen. See the slides, right? Yes. All right. First of all, I'd like to give a small introduction about myself. I started teaching my teaching profession at Maldives National University, which was a college at first. I started my career at the age of 19, trained as an English language teacher. I have worked in the middle school teaching as an English language teacher as well as later I gained a degree in language teaching and teacher training and work as a leading teacher in one of the leading boys schools at that time. And after that, I received Australia award scholarship, did my master of education in Melbourne at MIT University, did a small, it was basically my purpose was on educational leadership. I also did a minor study on communication of change in organization, especially in a school. And then later I worked in the Ministry of Education in the policy section as an education development officer. Also worked as a deputy principal in an international school in the Maldives. And after completing my PhD, I joined the Maldives National University in 2019. Even though before that, I was a part-time lecturer at MNU as well as some other higher education colleges in the Republic of Maldives. So I have gained different levels of experience in teaching. And what I had to say about the MIT project is when I joined the MIT project, due to my interest in learning about e-learning, I had to understand that we could all as teachers use e-learning quite simply just using the lessons and the subject outlines and the lesson plans we had. But I was very wrong because when I enrolled in this project and when I started with the first module, I got the understanding that e-learning also needs a different kind of plan, what we call a blueprint for our lessons. And then the instruction design needs more structure and more focus and new concepts are coming into it. So one of the things I really enjoyed doing with the other lecturers as well was it was not only on content based, it was not about our trainers telling us these are the resources and read through them and do your activities and the online discussion forum, which I found very useful and very, very knowledgeable. It was further more about practicality. One of the exercises our tutor, the trainer did was we took one of our own subject outlines for one of the modules. And then we actually compared it and we listed out what are the students and whether it is students and whether the student based learning in it and what are the outcomes. So we learned read about learner outcomes and how to structure it in a way, the lesson in a way that it is more engaging and more well prepared for a delivery of e-learning. So another thing I would like to say is the resources that were used during this project as our training were very rich, especially I was able to relate my experiences in also in discussion with the other lecturers because the resources that were shared with us had case studies of e-learning in universities. So this was more interesting for us to see, okay, how has other universities done that, what model did they use or what other structures they have used. So we were able to relate it more to our own experiences so that we could understand this concept of e-learning. As Dr. Sharif has also mentioned that due to our geography, it is a bit of a challenge because students cannot physically come to the campuses and study and we offer our courses as blended learning and distance learning. So this is very useful to us and especially as we started with this, the EMED project, it was also coinciding with the pandemic. So we were already doing online teaching and which was quite new to some lecturers as well, some of the skills we had to learn like I didn't use Zoom before. So we have to learn how to use the Zoom and as well as structure our lessons in a way to engage the students. Also, as James has mentioned, overall in honesty as lecturers, we did find that the content and the engagement of the EMED project to hope along with our teaching load was a bit challenging. So the time constraint was there but however we were motivated by our tutors, our trainers, they used to remind us and contact us and say, how are you doing with this project? Do you have completed up to this? Do you have any challenges? How do you need any support? And they were so supportive and encouraging and it was a motivation to actually complete all the tasks. So what I would like to say is even with the challenge of our workload and time, we enjoyed being part of this project and it was quite interesting because of the practicality of it, how we are creating these tasks that were very, very relevant to us. So basically it gave us the, especially it gave me the concept and understanding of what eLearning is about and how we need to actually structure our lesson in a way to get the maximum out of it. And focusing on the second thing I would like to mention is about the instruction and design. It's like as I said before in our, for example, I took a sample module, a subject that I was teaching, which was research, educational research. So the research was very, very focused on data centered because we were delivering more and then part of it was about students. So when we were starting to understand and read about the context with the resources and doing the task, we learned how to affect the use of technology and gain more flexibility in our lesson to bring out the mixed approaches. And one of the interesting things I learned about was how to get the instructor is in control, but there are so much resources that we use for the learners so that we need to, we are providing them a platform of several resources that they can learn from. And the burden on the lecturer is less. It's more, it becomes more less and more easy once we have a very structured lesson, structured lesson for e-learning. And by doing so, we are tailoring our strategies to differing learner needs of personal control and choice. And this is something I am focusing on because in schools, in the Maldives, we are now training teachers and we are moving towards inclusivity, how to, to address learner needs. And one of the things we need focus in higher education is about inclusive education, how are we addressing to learner needs. And one of the important things is by through this project, I have learned that using these different resources and different activities using giving them the control over their learning and being a facilitator, the lecturer being a facilitator, it actually is addressing their learner needs and increase in student engagement. One of the concerns of lecturers even now, even today is that when we are doing online lessons, some students are not engaging well. So, and I'm also doing a research into public universities as my data collection focus for student engagement in online learning. So, this was very important and very useful for me. And this is something I'm also working on. And I would, I think we would get a very interesting finding promo. So, the role of lecturers also changed as we were also learning co-learners and contributors for the development of students. Another valuable thing I have learned about and we also discovered because we were working together during this discussion forums, which was a very good platform to discuss and compare our ideas and what we have learned and providing a very fruitful discussion about each concept. So, the coming across these different models like competency based model where the assessment is measurable and using the business model and the practical activity. As I said before, I selected one of my modules which was educational research module and then we used the business model and then we created the practical activity using the tools that we have learned, the content we learned and we shared with each other in a collaborative way and we created one lesson, one whole lesson for this. And this was very useful because we were able to apply the knowledge and the skills that was gained through this project. And according to the resources shared in the research, by using this e-learning, there's high retention and there's simplicity and it is very scalable. So, this was an advantage for us lecturers. Before I finish off, as I can see, I'm reaching my time limit. One of the amazing things about this project was the networking and collaboration. Like I was collaborating with another lecturer working with another faculty and we were able to create, generate these diverse discussions about as we were planning the activities. So, getting this opportunity to work together with a colleague and critically analyzing what we have done was one of the high points of this project. The discussion forums, as I said, we were able to clarify our doubts as well, our inputs to the activities as well as the models and the design and the instructions we were using is quite was very enjoyable. I really enjoyed that discussion forums. What did we have to take away from this point? At this point, at this point of the project, all of our lecturers, we had an actual design of an actual lesson to take us, take away with us. So, we were applying our skills and knowledge in collaboration within the network of the lecturers and this was very, very useful for us. Although, as I said, it was a bit challenging with the workload and the time constraints, especially when we were already offering, we were already in teaching online and assessing and creating our own activities due to the pandemic. This became quite interesting for me and we were able to use some of the things we learned in our classes. So, now it is more engaging as I would say in my research lessons, I have used some of the things I have learned that giving them resources and getting them to read at their pace and completing the online task and coming back to class and we will have the physical interaction with it. So, more flexibility has been gained and more knowledge about e-learning has been gained and I think this is going to be very, very useful for all the lecturers in the future. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Nishon. That was really nice to hear such a wonderful experience from the teacher perspective. Now, I see my colleague Shimna is here and I would suggest you move to her presentation. Shimna, maybe in 10 minutes if you can reflect on the project before you and we hope that you won't experience any more power cut-offs today. Dr. Nishon, I would just like to ask you to stop sharing your screen, how good you did. So, Shimna, you can take the floor now. Okay. I'm sorry, I got disconnected because of the power cut. We are experiencing an extra disadvantage of technology. Okay. Good morning and good afternoon from Maldives. It's a very sunny day in the Maldives, as usual. I am delighted and very excited to be a part of this webinar. Thank you so much for the invitation to contribute to today's topic, which is how can we transform e-learning practice through capacity development. I believe capacity building is a required commitment now more than ever because we are all moving online and it should be an important strategic goal at all levels, especially as high education institutions in the Maldives as around the world embrace innovation and new educational technology. So, I am going to focus my talk will be mainly based on EMED project and the capacity building activities and let me share this. Okay. Are the activities and the outcomes and its long-term impact on the Maldives National University? So, this is a snapshot of the project. As you can see, it is called advanced in high education in the Maldives through e-learning development and the budget allocated is 720,592 euros out of which the budget allocated for the Maldives National University is 363,984 euros, which is quite a large number in terms of funding. So, the project is now almost complete. As you can see, we had very relevant five work packages. The first one, which was need analysis and preparation phase, where we actually learned about the Maldives National University as an organization or an institution and where we were at that time at the beginning of the project. And we had developed a study program and also in work package three, we have developed an institutional framework for e-learning. And I think this is the right time to talk about the project because we are almost at the end of it. In terms of capacity building, I would like to focus first on these three areas because mainly we have learned a lot of other things, but I will focus on these three because we don't have that much time. So, I would like to look at how the project have contributed towards developing the knowledge and skills of the relevant stakeholders from different levels of a menu. In fact, the project has helped engage decision makers, IT technicians, and teachers, lecturers who play and I believe who will continue to play major role in e-learning development in the Maldives National University. Before the project, as the Vice Chancellor had highlighted in his presentation, then we had limited facilities and limited number of people who I would describe as e-learning enthusiasts who were engaged and involved in promoting e-learning. However, because of the project now we have many people, we have been able to engage almost 25%, nearly 25% of the relevant stakeholders of a menu in the e-learning dialogue. I would say this is a big achievement. Through the activities such as training, job shadowing at Open University of Catalonia and FOI, Faculty of Organization and Informatics from Croatia, and the pilot study program implementation at MNU, we have been able to engage close to 120 people, including 20 decision makers, more than 20 technical staff, and more than 50 teachers. I would say that job shadowing held in Spain and Croatia was especially helpful. It helped the MNU team to connect with experts in the area of e-learning, observes the systems established to support e-learning, and also to engage in dialogue related to good practice in the area of e-learning. I think I would describe this as one of the most interesting, inspiring learning experience for all of us. This means in the last three years, starting from 2019 up until now, with the help of the project MNU has experienced, I would say an exponential growth in human capacity building in the area of e-learning. I can confidently say that now we have more people like Nishan who are more aware of e-learning practices, and they are more aware of what has to be done, and also what are the challenges that we might come across when we are trying to implement quality e-learning at MNU. Through this project, we are indeed able to enhance people readiness, the readiness of the people for e-learning delivery. The second part I would like to highlight is development in infrastructure. The project fund has helped MNU to establish several e-learning facilities across the campus, the four regional campuses, and in the central campus. Before the project is once again the Vice Chancellor highlighted, we had a multi-purpose polycom room where many programs have been conducted, and it has helped bring different campus students studying in different campus together. It was used as a multi-purpose room and we had all our classes equipped with projectors and computer systems, so that was the status then, and also we had a learning management system. But with the use of the funds and the equipment provided through the project, we have been able to establish these new facilities that will help advance e-learning in the MNU, plus also engage in delivering our service to others who might require it as well. I would like to highlight that with this, we were actually able to help several institutions during the pandemic time. For example, we had during the pandemic, we had the election commission in conducting virtual training for the election commission officials for the local council elections in 2021. We also supported one of the faculties at MNU, Faculty of Arts to conduct a hybrid course online for judicial administration services. So this means that as the oldest and the largest higher education institution in the MNU today, we are more ready than the past to respond to the needs of MNU staff, MNU students, and also other external stakeholders as a result of the infrastructure development funded by the project. You can see some pictures of our studios. At the moment, we have these little spaces that we are using for different purpose, and this is something that we can use for our course design and delivery as well. This is the Polycom Room, which we had been using before, but it has now been changed to the e-training room with the equipment funded by the project. So I think it has been a quite good learning experience not only for the people who are academics, but also the technicians who are some of them who has been trained through the project to facilitate these spaces, e-learning spaces at MNU. So now we have, I think, built the institutional capacity in terms of digital infrastructure as well. And also through the job shadowing, we have had access to a lot of e-learning rooms and studios. So we have gained knowledge about how to structure and how to establish them. So I think that will be quite beneficial for us in the future. This is what you see on my left. Okay, the purple t-shirt is out from the picture, from the workshops we had run for the local council and some of the pictures showing the hybrid course delivery setup at MNU. So I would say, as you can see, we are more developed in terms of where we were in the past because of the project. And the third one I would like to highlight is the policy roadmap. I believe when we are moving forward with e-learning development, it is important to have policies that will guide us or actions that will guide us. So through this project, an e-learning roadmap has been developed, which will be used in the next five years to drive the actions of different faculties of MNU. It is based on the strategic goals of MNU and it was done through a concertative process. So engaging most of the relevant stakeholders in developing this. So I believe even after the project ends, we can use this document to guide and develop our e-learning practice. So it has been a very important document and it is at the moment it has been endorsed by the university. That means it will be the lot of actions, most of the actions specified in the roadmap will be realized within the next five years. I have just very briefly looked at three key areas, but I would say that these three years has been a very important learning experience for all many people including me. And I would like to summarize some of the key learnings we have actually gained or in terms of capacity building, how we have developed ourselves in this three-year journey with them and project. We have at the moment designed and piloted an e-learning training course for decision makers and teachers. It is now available for future use. So that means a course developed by experts, reviewed by experts will be available for MNU and other external people who might need training in this in the area of e-learning. We have more trained people at MNU at the moment than when we started and e-learning is always a challenge. We need to change mindsets. We need to change the philosophy of teaching and learning. So but it's important to have the training and also people who can engage effectively in the e-learning dialogue. So I think that has been a big achievement. And also we have the e-learning roadmap that will guide the university in region where it wants to be in terms of advancing e-learning at MNU. We have improved technology infrastructure as I have highlighted before. And through the three-year trainings, interactions, we have learned how to design courses for effective quality learning, whether it is blended mode or even when we design face-to-face classes, what are the good practices that we should adopt in terms of course design. And it has also mainly helped MNU to realize or to observe or to analyze its current status and identify the structures that needs to be established and it has helped fill those gaps to some extent. And it has also opened opportunities to build very strong partnerships with experts which we will value. That collaboration has been a very valuable collaboration because we have not only learned what has been specified in the project, we have also learned about how to work with a different group of people and especially with experts. And the last one is we have gained a broader understanding of the university and we realize where we are and where we want to be in the future. So this is a just quick summary of what we have learned. As for what I have just discussed in a very summarized way, it is evident that MNU has developed from where it was. And I would like to conclude the presentation by stating that we appreciate the funding, the support and the partnership that was provided through the project. And I believe we need similar opportunities to further enhance the current status of eLearning at MNU. So thank you so much for the opportunity and I hope in a very rushed way I have covered a little bit of what was happening in the project and what the activities were conducted and the impact of it. It's not the end of eLearning at MNU, it's just I would say the beginning. So thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you, Shimna. I apologize to the audience. This presentation should have come earlier, but since the power cut-offs, we were not able actually to tell the story before. But now I think that the audience got the general impression about the project and from the presentation of Dr. Sharif and Dr. Nishan to see also some experience and reflection of the people that were directly involved in the project as well. Good. Since we have exceeded actually the time for the webinar, I would just very shortly switch to the last question we have in the question and answer box. I forwarded the question to Dr. Sharif as the question was pointed out while he was giving his presentation. Dr. Sharif, were you able to read the question? I did. Shimna is going to answer for you. That's a question, sorry. That's in your inbox. Talking about using eLearning. Yeah, talking about using eLearning means as strategy, converting from lectures, traditional, now fast-moving into eLearning segments all over the world. Best practice is now here, but what about the more future idea five years from now? Can you comment on that? We actually are a little bit behind in terms of how eLearning has been developing. So we are in the process of strengthening our learning management system, establishing policies and training people. But in the future, I hope, especially in our faculty of education, we will see opportunities to include gaming, maybe different AI technologies, or most importantly, using data analytics to support our students. That is something I would really like to see happening in the next five years, because we want our students to be in a menu and we want to support them. So I would say in the next five years, it will be strengthening the quality of focus should be mainly on strengthening or enhancing the quality of assessments, plus introducing the relevant technology that will enhance our design and delivery of eLearning at a menu. So I hope to see more use of gaming and data analytics used in the university. Very good. Very good. Maybe with this, we can finish this session. Maybe again, first, I would like to thank to the panelists and for the audience for being so patient for triggering a lively discussion. You've seen two different capacity building projects. As already mentioned in the beginning, the first one that targeted more than one institution and the second one that targeted only one institution. But you have seen the extensiveness of the project, because the other project was not focused on just one point, but was focused on transferring the complete organization, which involved the infrastructure, the strategic documents, courses, training programs, and which was, I would say, quite extensive and very good experience for all interested parties. Once again, thank you all. The webinar recordings will be available at the later stage as well. I wish you all a pleasant day and thank you very much once again for being with us. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Have a nice day. Bye.