With the participation of 24 experts from fifteen countries from the Latin American and the Caribbean region, this second e-Learning regional training course was successfully completed in Lima, Peru, organized by the Latin American Network for Education in Nuclear Technology (LANENT), with the support of the International Atomic Energy Agency through the technical cooperation project RLA/0/057.
The Center for Nuclear Studies of the Peruvian Institute of Nuclear Energy (IPEN) in Lima hosted the Second Regional Training Course on the Development of e-Learning Courses for Teachers.
The course was developed under the "blended-learning" modality, beginning with a pre-training conducted through the Educational Portal of the LANENT Network. This was followed by an in-person training stage, from 13-17 June, with the participation of twenty-four experts from Argentina, Bolivia, Plurinational State of, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
The course focused on promoting e-learning as a useful teaching approach in a range of scenarios related to education and training on peaceful uses of nuclear technology. The course provides pedagogical skills on instructional design and evaluation techniques for this teaching methodology. In addition, practical training opportunities with multimedia tools for the production of teaching materials were offered, as well as training on the Moodle platform, which the IAEA has made available to regional networks for education and training purposes. The theoretical and practical learning achieved through this second course, which exceeded the expectations of participants and teachers, has expanded the existing community of practice (CoP) created by 11 experts that participated in m the first course held in Santiago, Chile in November 2015, to 36 experts. The team that delivered both courses participates also actively in supporting this CoP: Ms. Monica Sbaffoni (IAEA), Ms. Maria Aparecida José (Brazil), and professors Claudio Pérez Matzen and Jaime Tello Gallardo, from the Metropolitan University of Sciences Education (UMCE) in Santiago de Chile.
The continued training of more experts in the region is expected, as well as the sustained application of the knowledge acquired in the creation of e-learning courses in topics defined according to the interests of the participants and the priorities defined in the strategic profile of the region.