SLS-7b1 Setting up a Community Learning Center in Gicaca, Rwanda

The two teams from PolyU and UMaryland met for the first time when each found their own way separately to Rwanda towards the end of May 2016.  Yet they have gotten to know each other online through the joint virtual classes, exercises, discussions and technical and other preparations for the project throughout the Spring of 2016.  The PolyU students and the UMD students worked side by side in the final assembly at the guest house where they stayed.  They installed the micro-computers at the community centre.  They installed the solar panels on the roof of the community centre to power the computer network.  And finally, they ran together the workshops teaching the local youths how to use the computer network and the resources.  

At one point, the PolyU students got a little upset with the more direct and forceful style of the UMD students.  They didn’t quite know how to respond and seek advice from their teachers.  The teachers discussed with them the possible differences in the cultural background and individual personalities that might have led to the different approaches to working together.  The PolyU students were encouraged to politely and honestly explain to the UMD students how they felt and try to arrive at a mutually agreeable method to work out different opinions on how the work should be carried out.  Eventually, they two groups seemed to be able to work it out and continued to enjoy the partnership.  Such are some of the practical manifestations of some of the issues that we had been discussing.  

The global virtual classroom and the setting up of the community learning centre in Rwanda were both experiments undertook by us for the first time.  PolyU took the initiative but both sides have to respect the other as equal partners and adapt to the working style of the other side.  There were quite a number of challenges to overcome.  The technical challenges of getting acceptable video and audio quality, the set up of the classroom for both face to face and online interactions for a large number of participants, etc., are non-trivial.  The meshing of complementary strengths - SL/technical on the PolyU side and leadership education on UMD side - is one of the strengths as well as challenges in this project.  In the end we pulled it off successfully, learned a lot from it, decided it is a direction that we wanted to continue to develop, and wrote a number of articles on the experience.  

UMD was able to bring only a small team of 2 teaches and 3 students for this experimental collaboration, while PolyU brought 20.   Hence UMD only participated in the setting up of the community learning centre.  The PolyU team, however, sent out 2 other teams.  The larger team installed solar panels and indoor wirings to provide electricity for lighting and phone charging for 120 households.  Another team went to a local primary school at Gashora, about 50 kilometres south of Kigali, to set up another compute network for the school.