Report from Rwanda

Overview:
KIST (Kigali Institute of Science & Technology) is a small (about 3,000 students)
university located in the heart of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Students who enter
KIST score among the highest in the country on the standardized tests that determine
who gets to study at the university level. Dr. Perdue joined the faculty in January 2010
as a Fulbright Scholar and has been appointed Director of E-Learning.

Summary of Strengths:
• 15 computer labs on campus, partially staffed, with basic software and Internet
access.
• Moodle site already set up and some preliminary training has been conducted.
• Massive support from the administration for the E-learning Project.
• There is support in place in the form of the Director of ICT and her team.
• There is an initial interest group consisting of a representative from each of the 14
departments.

Summary of Challenges:
• Staffing the labs – lack of staff and lack of funds to pay for additional staff
• Maintenance of the labs – lack of qualified staff and trouble keeping trained staff
long-term (high turn-over rate)
• Internet access – reliability and bandwidth / speed are problems throughout
campus
• Student access to Moodle courses – lack of student accounts & procedures to
enroll students into proper courses
• Utilization of labs – time table seems to only account for classes that need to
meet in the lab during class time, not for the labs to be open during other times
for student access to do assignments, research, etc. Currently, labs are only
utilized 37% of the time; the rest of the time the rooms are locked.
• Availability of books and other printed materials for class use – generally,
students do not have books and faculty may only have one copy of a text per
department. Printers are not readily available nor are paper, toner, or other
needed items for sustained use.

Needs Assessment:
• Funding is needed to hire and keep qualified personnel.
• Assistance is needed in creating policy and procedure to maximize use of the
facilities (e.g. labs).
• Training is needed for the faculty in best practices for blended courses.
• Tremendous need for educational materials (books, printed resources, etc.) as no
students have books and few faculty have books to teach their classes. Often only
one copy of a text (and sometimes that is not even a “real” copy but a printed
duplicate) is available for an entire department.
Opportunities:
• With an initial investment of funding, the potential for tremendous impact and
dynamic change is great.
• With proper training, information, and technical support, the potential for open-
source educational materials being available throughout campus (in the labs, on
the faculty’s laptops, etc.) would have amazing and wide-reaching consequences.