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Interactive training and online sessions in Kenyan capacity building project

28-09-2020

The project “Strengthening skills and training capacity in horticulture in Kenya”, which started in 2019, has now entered the second year. A report on the project achievements is available at AKVO. As for all international project COVID-19 has highly impacted the planned activities. Many of those activities were related field trips and exchanging project members of both countries. Due to COVID safety restrictions, Kenyan schools were closed and also in The Netherlands students and staff had to stay and work from home. In good communication and cooperation the project coordinators of Kenya and The Netherlands revised the workplan and have started with activities which could be done digitally.

One of these activities that was implemented digitally is a post-harvest training conducted by Christina Popma, expert of Inholland. She has not only discussed with teachers of Bukura Agricultural College, Egerton University and Latia Resource Center on the content of post-harvest management, but also on didactics and activating lessons for students. The focus for the teachers was a transition from knowledge-based schooling to competency-based learning. Christina gave mini lectures on post-harvest management for diverse products and additionally she practiced with the lecturers on new ways of working for example ‘flipping the classroom’.

The Kenyan lecturers had to prepare their own post-harvest courses and share it with other participants. This strengthened the cooperation between the three Kenyan institutions. All participants appreciated the training and requested a follow up training specific on post-harvest for tomatoes, which will be planned in the coming months. In addition to this the lecturers also requested a training on Integrated Pest Management on tomatoes. Both trainings will be developed in combination with the same Training of Trainers (ToT) training for the OKP Uganda horticulture project.

The interactive training sessions where given via MS Teams and Zoom. Before the training, content material was sent beforehand to the participants. This content consisted of a video with PPT slides and a voice over explaining the slides. In weekly sessions of 2 hours each, participants could ask questions to the expert and shared their homework for example the preparation of a Kenyan post-harvest lesson. All participants evaluated this as an interactive practical training.

In light of digital trainings, an assessment on the status of e-learning at BAC, EGU and LRC was conducted by Sandra Adriaansens, e-learning expert of MSM. This will be used to support the Kenyan institutions in further development of online courses in combination with the way of working as done in the post-harvest training.

For more information about this project, visit AKVO

Orange Knowledge Programme
This project is part of the Nuffic Orange Knowledge Programme (OKP). For more information click here.

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