Author

Nduduzo Phuthi

Title

Initiation Into Quality Course Creation And Co-creation Competency: The Effects Of Small-group Localised Peer Training

News

The motivation to participate in an international project such as the North-South capacity-building EU-ZW Energy project by individual academics selected on the basis of their individual skills and competences tends to yield mixed results from the members in terms of levels of delivery. While a few may be proactive and endeavour to keep pace with the demands of the project, others may feel hesitant to forge ahead if not extensively initiated or morphed in. This may be due to both personal capabilities and the level of responsibilities that compete with the expected project engagement efforts.

The deliverance of the WP02 work package targets in the EU-ZW project has so far experience more delays and rescheduling than prompt deliverance with the five Zimbabwe participating university members being at different levels of progress. Realising this weakness in the project delivery system, the leader for Work Package 2 (WP02) on the Quality Improvement Process (QIP), Engineer Edson Manyumbu, convened a meeting of university representatives responsible for WP02 on 14 August 2025. The object of the meeting was to assist university members to work on the course creation tasks that were now due as indicated on the project time line. Following this meeting of university representatives, the National University of Science Technology (NUST) held its response meeting on 21 August 2025 to assess progress of all its members with regard to the following sequential tasks:

· Training on QIP

· Review of QIP modules on Learnify

· Creation and sharing of own modules

· Loading modules on the EEDA Monitor

· Self-assessment on module

· Inviting peer reviewers

· Finalising module(s) post-peer feedback

· Earning Badges

 

The meeting was a follow-up physical encounter which brought together a total of 11 out of the 22 members. The Project Coordinator, Professor Samson Mhlanga chaired the meeting and outlined the basic guidelines for participation and inclusion in the project, i.e. relevance and delivering targets. He emphasised the importance of members dedicating scheduled slots in their daily duties for the project, emphasising that every member was expected to create or edit at least one course on the Learnify platform as allocated based on their responsibility and their teaching contribution. He brought to the attention of members present, the urgent tasks for the end of August 2025. Prof Mhlanga announced and commended one member of the NUST Team, Dr Peter Baricholo, who had reached the level of receiving badges for his courses.

Fig 1: Prof Samson Mhlanga (left) addressing NUST members. Next to him and listening on, Dr Peter Baricholo

From the mood and contributions in the meeting, it was evident that members in attendance were happy with the occasional face-to-face encounter to complement the largely virtual meetings of the EUZW project. These localised small-group meetings were important to clarify issues and to smoothen the levels of disparity in understanding among members on the tasks at hand. It was hinted that those absent in the meeting would most likely need further training on the concept of the QIP and the entire process of navigating the PMT, the Learnify and the EEDA Monitor platforms. Members were encouraged to update their individual progress of created modules and publish in the Learnify platform followed by Quality Improvement Process and winning of badges. It was further resolved to hold more physical localised small-group meetings whenever necessary with those members in need of assistance.

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