eMWRE Erasmus+ project
Background of the project
The eMWRE (lead by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel - VUB, Belgium) implements an innovative eMaster in water resources to modernise the education using innovative technology and advanced tools to provide more sustainable solutions to the water scarcity problems in the MENA region.
The project also aims at developing an eLearning platform to promote joint research, develop and educate on Open Source Software and Open Access data for Integrated Water Resources Management.
The Challenge
From a project standpoint, the challenge is related to the fact that the education around topics related water resources engineering in the region, needs to be enhanced. Programs and courses that are focusing on this major problem for these countries, can help by equipping the scientists of tomorrow and allowing them to find innovative solutions that will bring about change.
From our standpoint, our challenge was to think of Moodle LMS in a new context. The domain of water engineering presents has its own unique requirements that affected our Moodle deployment, both in terms of content delivery but also in terms of managing the data that need to be appended to the courses for the students to work on.
Eummena's solution
For eMWRE, we deployed a Moodle LMS, which is also actively used as the project website, to disseminate information, material and news about the project.
The platform is open to the public for registration, and it counts more than 2,200 users that are actively participating in the courses and webinars that eMWRE project partners have launched through it.
We are also using the certificate of Moodle LMS to issue certificates for the learners based on their attendance and completion of courses.
As in other similar European projects, in eMWRE we were also in charge of training the project partners on the use of the platform. Of course, some of the project partners were already using Moodle LMS in their institutions, which made it easy for us to migrate their existing courses and reuse them in the new platform. Apart from that, we also conducted focused training sessions to allow the partners to enhance their course creating skills, and we also supported the process of quality assurance reviews for the courses, through a peer-to-peer review process deployed on the platform.
The eMSC program is launched, and it aims to produce graduates with a comprehensive knowledge to successfully plan, design, operate and manage water resources projects; and advice and support authorities in decision-making and the development of policies and regulations that enhance the sustainable use and re-use of water, the equitable distribution and the conservation of the local, regional and global water resources using the latest technologies.
We, at Eummena, are proudly supporting the platform that makes all of the above, feasible, and we will be happy to support it for the coming years.