CGDE commissioned Mr Donie Kelly and Mr Kieran Pearse, IT engineers from Mary Immaculate College (MIC), to travel to the Lesotho College of Education (LCE), Lesotho and Kyambogo University, Kampala, Uganda in an attempt to facilitate in resolving some IT difficulties experienced in communicating between colleagues in LCE, KYU and CGDE.

The technical visit and needs assessment exercise, supported by the Centre for Global Development through Education (CGDE) which is funded by Irish Aid and the Higher Education Authority (HEA) in Ireland, proved to be a very successful one resolving many problems and highlighting other issues which need to be addressed.

Initially, the purpose of the Lesotho visit was to improve communication and collaboration between CGDE and LCE. This included installing and configuring a Windows 2008 server, to be used primarily by partner researchers in the College. The two engineers put measures in place to allow for the continued support and maintenance of the server and software in LCE after the visit.

Mr Kelly and Mr Pearse also provided Dropbox training for the Basotho researchers involved in the CGDE-LCE projects.

Further plans were made to optimise LCE’s internet connection and to set up technology to allow for easier communication. Meeting were held with the technical personnel in LCE to discuss the technological advancement of the college, and antivirus software was secured to resolve current virus issues in LCE. Although much progress was made, future development and proofing of IT infrastructure within LCE is necessary. Long term solutions such as securing a high bandwidth network connection and implementing an Active Directory solution to centrally manage the user accounts in LCE are essential, all of which will require increased financial and human resources.

Mr Kelly and Mr Pearse then visited Kyambogo University in Kampala, Uganda. The main purpose of this visit was to ascertain the internet connectivity available to the CGDE research partners in the University. Prof. Teresa O’Doherty, Dean of Education in MIC, was of great assistance to the IT team in Uganda. After extensive meetings with members of the University and Uganda Telecom, it was decided that an upgraded solution would be provided at a reduced cost, greatly enhancing the internet connectivity available for the research partners. It was also decided that a more suitable research room would be provided by the University to enable research activities to be more concentrated and to enable better collaboration.

Prof. Teresa O'Doherty with IT engineers

With this in mind, Mr Kelly and Mr Pearse trained the research partners in the use of communication tools such as Dropbox, Skype, and GoToMeeting, to allow for ease of access of communication between CGDE in Ireland and research partners in Uganda. They also looked at existing spyware and virus issues, and a number of solutions were suggested and implemented, as well as training being provided in relation to patching. A number of free anti-malware and antivirus packages were suggested to the researchers to help resolve these ongoing problems. Overall, CGDE benefitted greatly from the input of the IT engineers, and progress has been made in overcoming one of the main obstacles to progressing the Centre’s work i.e. telecommunications enabling ongoing collaboration and communication.

Contributions by R. Griffin, D. Kelly, F. Marshall and K. Pearce (13th May, 2010)