First steps towards the Virtual University of Cameroon
Cameroon’s leading university – Yaoundé I – and the UOC Campus for Peace have joined forces to start up a virtual university. With this aim in mind, a course entitled Virtual Teaching is to start on 25 October. This programme in French is to offer training for trainers to 80 Cameroonian lecturers.
School for Cooperation Coordinator Carme Anguera explained that the course aimed to ensure that faculty from the University of Yaoundé’s different departments could gain “sufficient knowledge” so as to be able to start up the virtual university in the future. “The idea is for them to familiarise themselves with virtual learning environments and learn about online pedagogy,” said Anguera. “This is the first contact they will have had with e-learning and we hope that they will soon be able to set up their own virtual unit at Yaoundé I.”
The eighty faculty (sixty-eight men and twelve women) taking the course work in the Art, Literature and Social Sciences; Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; Education, and Engineering departments.
Campus for Peace Director Eduard Vinyamata showed his enthusiasm for the project, which looks to establish links and solidarity with the African continent, saying: “We want to bring knowledge to everyone in order to increase people’s autonomy. The course in Yaoundé is the first step towards achieving this.”
The UOC model in Africa
The project in this central African country began in 2009 during a meeting held in Barcelona between the Associació Catalana d’Universitats Públiques (Catalan Public Universities Association, ACUP) and five African universities. At this meeting, those in charge at the University of Yaoundé showed their interest in the UOC model and conversations began into how to set the foundations for a new virtual university.
The Campus for Peace and the School for Cooperation have worked in collaboration with Oumarou Bouba, President of the University of Yaoundé and a government minister; Guy Tsala Ndzomo, Vice President for Research, Cooperation and Business Relations, and Mamadou Foupouagnigni, the lecturer in Mathematics who will be in charge of the initiative’s start-up.
Yaoundé I currently has five campuses, including the National Polytechnic School, and 50,000 students of art, letters, human sciences, medicine and biomedical sciences. Half of Yaoundé I’s students are women.
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