E-Learning in Sierra Leone: Using Moodle

The covid-19 pandemic has led to an increased interest in e-learning in Sierra Leone and a raft of providers and commentators have appeared promising “new platforms” and “wonder solutions”. This quick note is a summary of two potential systems that schools, colleges and private providers could use to provide online content and resources for students and other learners in Sierra Leone.

Online Video Content

This may be the quickest solution and does not require too much expertise or complexity. The school/college or institiution could record some lectures and upload them to a free youtube account. Schools/Colleges could use their mobile phones to record the lectures or even use high quality cameras to record lectures. These can be uploaded to Facebook or Youtube. An example of three groups doing this at the moment is:

1. Heal Sierra Leone — excellent NPSE, BECE and WASSCE live classes.
2. The Sierra Leone Grammar School Virtual Classroom — all subjects
3. The African Virtual School — specialists in WASSCE maths and English revision for SS2 students.

Online Learning System: Moodle

Moodle is a Learning Management System that allows schools, colleges, universities and private training providers to provide an online classroom. Moodle has the following advantages:

1. It is opensource — no one owns the code, so you can download and install on your web server for free.
2. It has quizzes to test learning, allows the teacher to embed videos, create lessons, and other resources.
3. It has a gradebook to track progress.
4. Attendance module to track attendance and several other useful modules.

How to get Moodle

1. Download and install for free on your own web server (https://moodle.org/) . Some hosting providers offer a one-click install.
2. Use Moodle Cloud — a hosting solution provided by the people behind moodle . You can start for free.
3. Get a commercial company to install, configure and maintain it for you. Moodle has a few African Partners amongst them is AOSIS in South Africa, who have been doing this for a very long time.

What should colleges, universities and schools in Sierra Leone do next?

1. Get your IT Team to read as much about Moodle as possible. Moodle is used by schools, colleges and universities in Africa, so no need to reinvent the wheel.
2. Get your IT team to install a copy and start training staff on it.
3. Train your teachers to start learning how to use it. The image below is a screenshot from the African Virtual School’s moodle platform. We started using Moodle several years ago but we tend to be a tad “understated” when it comes to marketing our achievements.