A 2021 Online Workshop for the Review of Two Modules on Methodology for Using English as a Medium of Instruction in Rwanda: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in China and its rapid spread around the globe, people’s life and work styles have changed. Governments have installed and implemented lockdowns, social distancing, and stay home preventive measures that have forced most people to work from their homes. Research units and higher learning institutions were not spared as well. International conferences that were to take place in 2020 were turned into virtual presentations and until recently nothing has changed. To handle the crisis, the University of Rwanda also thought of transforming its work ethos. In this regard a two-phase online workshop was held in January and February 2021 to review two modules produced during a face-to face workshop in October 2021. These were modules on methodologies to help pre-primary, primary and lower secondary school teachers to effectively deliver their subject content through English, the medium of instruction, and promote learners’ proficiency in this language. As this online review was the first virtual workshop experience of the kind for most participants, the researchers decided to investigate the opportunities it offered them and the challenges faced. Theories on online work and of quantitative and qualitative research paradigms were used. The research tools were a questionnaire and observations. Graphs were utilised and emerging themes grouped into typologies for data presentation and analysis. The research findings revealed a number of opportunities and challenges. The findings also showed the respondents’ potential solutions to these challenges. The proposed resolutions were supplemented by the researchers’ recommendations.