The Computer Science Department's ICT/IT component of the Partnership will focus on developing the Computer Science Department's capacity to serve Rwandan ICT needs. Foremost, this means working with the Department of Computer Science at the NUR to implement a curriculum consistent with the needs of the NUR and Rwanda and available resources.  Interventions targeted at the Computer Science department are intended to increase the core capabilities needed to achieve this result.

The first step was to provide key technical support for systems administration.  This included a US Department of State Global Tech Corp supported site and systems assessment and three day JAVA training by Kim Holley in May 2000 as well as technical support from the UMD's Office of Academic Computing Services (OACS) at the Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS) College.

The next step has been UMD support for UNIX and C++ courses.

The UNIX courses was developed as a course with an intense two-week  face-to-face session  followed by a ten week distance session.  The face-to-face session was delivered by UMD staff as an Instructor and NUR staff as a Teaching Assistant.  The Teaching Assistant will offer the same course in the future with backstopping from UMD staff.  This strategy of "jump-starting" the course with a face-to-face sessions, utilizing a NUR Teaching Assistant who can increase his/her responsibility, and distance education has proved to be very successful.

In July 2001 we will launch the C++ course.  This course will follow a modified strategy, using primarily face-to-face instruction.  Rather than using the distance methods of the UNIX course, the face-to-face sessions will serve as both a bonafide course as well as in-depth sessions for two NUR Teaching Assistants.  The course will be recorded, and material supplied so that the two NUR Teaching Assistants can them selves teach the course with minimal backstopping from the UMD.

In the coming months UMD and NUR computer science colleagues will work together to complete identification of additional course that the UMD will support directly as well as Web based courses that NUR students can choose to take individually.
 

NEW! Download the Introduction to Microsoft Office computer literacy training.

See the UNIX Modules and course syllabus.  Additional computer science modules are located here.

See C++ Modules and course syllabus (forthcoming)