04 May 2020 – 26 Jun 2020 / Online
During May/June 2020, EUMETSAT, in collaboration with WMO/VLab Centres of Excellence, ran an eight-week online course for the African meteorological community. For the first time, the course was conducted in both English and French languages simultaneously, using the same Moodle course page. The two language versions had similar content and made use of bilingual ASMET training material. More than 60 learners across Africa participated.
On enrolling, participants opted for their preferred language and were added to the corresponding Moodle group, which presented only material in their chosen language.
The highlights of the course were the live webinars hosted in Zoom – interactive weather briefings on topics such as Convection, Fog and Dust. Some of the sessions were open for a global audience, while others were restricted to course participants. Participants were free to join any live sessions of choice.
Other platforms used were Slack, for informal chatting, and Padlet for sharing of satellite imagery and questions.
Dedicated instructors were assigned to both language groups.
Instructor Vesa Nietosvaara (EUMETSAT) said: “It was great to have all teams running the course in parallel. Weekly instructor meetings helped us support each other. We hope to offer more such multilingual courses in the future.”