Interview of Mamadou Lamine Ndiaye, Professor in ESP in Dakar
Mr. Lamine Ndiaye takes up the challenge of "developing MOOCS on geospatial technology services and products to help Senegal and Africa better measure certain indicators related to the SDGs."
Can you introduce yourself and your involvement in MOOCS ?
I studied signal processing and graduated in the école supérieure polytechnique de Dakar, in Electrical Engineering. I pursued my Master and Phd in France, at Rennes 1 university, on treating the epileptic signal : the aim was to contribute to the pre chirurgical evaluation of epileptic patients who are partially drug resistant.
After that I went back to the 'école supérieure polytechnique de Dakar as a research fellow. I tried to supervise research in the same field but had to give up : epilepsy chirurgy is only practiced in rich countries. Now I research in implementing sustainable energies in electrical systems. We have multiple energy sources but we have yet learn to optimize a system with several different sources of energy. We have the network and batteries so it’s about optimizing the management to maximize the production of sustainable energies and reduce the production costs.
I got aware of MOOCS between the end of 2012 and early 2013: We hosted the organisation of RESCIF - Réseau d'Excellence des Sciences de l'Ingénieur de la Francophonie. We are funding members of this network. It includes 16 institutions across the globe : Europa, Africa, America, for example Polytechnique Montréal and EPFL. By taking part of organizing this event I heard about MOOC. We weren’t involved in this dynamic. It was a novelty, even in EPFL, where some people were reluctant about it, they saw it as a way to replace research fellow.
What were your motivations and your involvement in this project of developing MOOCS at ESP Dakar ?
My interest in MOOCs came from their capacity to open the access to knowledge : developing quality courses, accessible for everyone. I wanted to know how to develop them when I was offered a mission in Lausanne, that I completed in 2013. We met the first people involved in producing MOOC at EPFL, they were about programming and physic. We were in touch with the production team, who showed us the studio and trained us on tools to produce short videos. Following that experience, I understood the importance of MOOC and committed myself in carrying this projet within ESP.
After the training in EPFL came the project MOOC for Africa, a very relevant project. I became part of its editorial comity since its inception. They were 5 of us, our role was to study funding proposal for collaborative MOOC across multiple institutions from the network. I was already involved in producing a MOOC with EPFL. We funded support for institution, especially in Dakar by EPFL, to accompany our colleagues wanting to implement digital éducation in their teaching : how to use story telling in their lesson, use available online resources, flipped classroom method, how to grade etc. It was the first step in getting our colleague involved. But to go further, we had to develop our own production tools, that’s how the studio was born.
The studio was inaugurated in 2017 by the minister of education of Senegal.
Since then we recorded and edited a MOOC in Dakar. The studio also walk colleagues in producing pedagogical videos to use in classes.The equipment cost can prevent our departments from offering practicum : the teacher has to record the practice and share it with the students, so they get knowledge about it before they get their hands on it. The studio also allows producing video ressources for events we organize : when the Swiss prime minister came to visit Dakar, he was able to record a short video to explain Switzerland numerical project for the 5 years to come. Recently, a MOOC was made by IRD about how to write a scientific article, it was entirely produced and edited in Dakar.
How can MOOC help to promote excellency ?
We can’t reach excellency without a good use of digital education. Excellency is about always improving yourself, today it means exploiting the opportunities offered by digital education. I remember a MOOC that I really liked, one of the first about mechanics, that used real equipment to do simple experiments. In our physic department, thousands students don’t have access to these resources. They have the theory but never the practice : seeing it virtually will improve their knowledge. Digital education helps with those issues. With today’s social distancing, there is no choice but to exploit those tools if we don’t want the pandemic to have a negative impact on our teaching. If we want to reach a level of excellency, we have to use digital education.
What challenges are you facing in implementing MOOC in Africa ?
The problem for Senegal, if not for all Africa, is massification : our colleges can’t take all the students and there was no policy to increase their capacities. The university of Dakar can only welcome 30 000 students and today we have about 90 0000. When the former Vice President of Switzerland came (news), we hosted an event for the MOOC launch. We had 13 000 students in one big room and he was surprised by the crowd. It’s usual for our students to come very early to get a seat, since there’s not enough for everyone. To resolve this issue, one of our lead is digital education : some classes can be attended both physically and online. The pandemic proved the relevance of RESCIF ’s work on digital education, something not everyone agreed on. Online courses need specials preparation and resources that only trained teacher can used.
Our students aren’t reluctant about digital education : when you show them its possibilities, they do exploit it. They actually use it to get skills and knowledge not provided by our institution, like entrepreneurship or personal development. They will seek those courses because we’re not focusing on them and they know they’re important. Different profils follow MOOC. Some just come to listen and can drop very quickly, some are interested and attend all the way through, even passing the exam to get the certificate. We’re satisfied when we get 5 or 10% to the end, from the initial number of students. Some log in just to get access to the resources. For example I often happen to cross upon a MOOC from EPF I find relevant for my classes, but students can sometime have problems accessing those resources and downloading it. So I just hand them the videos to use.