E-Learning is part of learning, and schools should be at the forefront of adopting education technologies in order to improve learning outcomes, improve efficiency in learning, and give students digital skills of the future. Participatory E-Learning for Student Outcomes (PESO) is a flagship project that will provide a learning platform (using moodle) for students in different schools in Lira district, Uganda the opportunity to learn together. This project has been submitted for ITU Innovation Challenges, under the Digital Change Maker category. You are invited to vote for it, in order for it so that it can progress to the next stage of this global competition. This project will be implemented in Lira, starting in September 2020.  

UNICEF estimates that over 1.5 billion students worldwide have been pushed out of school due to the covid-19 global pandemic. In Uganda, even universities have been unable to cope, in part due to failure to fully adopt e-learning into their educational mix. In northern Uganda, secondary schools have been competing in purchasing school vans and buses, but have largely stayed away from embracing learning technologies.

Our position is that headteachers can lead these efforts and slowly introduce e-learning to their schools. Schools can ably deploy Learning Management Systems (LMS), and position their ICT departments to maintain it, just as they have been doing with UNEB e-Registration. In simple terms, Learning Management Systems (LMS) are digital blackboards which allow teachers to post classroom materials, interactive activities, assignments, feedback, and grades, and are used for classroom support. If headteachers can purchase multi-million buses and maintain them for years, it is only logical that an investment is set aside to deploy and run e-learning systems in schools. Moodle, Kolibri, Canvas (for universities), Microsoft Teams, ILIAS, Encarta are some of the tools schools can start with.