African Rural University

Karen panzarella

Learning is not merely the result of transferring information. This 10-day course,designed for educators of all levels, aims to enhance student engagement for meaningful learning both in-person and online (via Zoom and Moodle). Using Steven Covey’s concept of “Beginning with the End in Mind,” the course focuses on transforming passive learners into active participants through active learning techniques. Methods such as anticipatory sets, jigsaw, think-pair-share, and toolslike YouTube and Kahoot will be demonstrated to increase participation, deepen retention, and encourage application. Participants will explore how learning begins with a question, fostering curiosity and personalising the classroom experience. Dr. Panzarella will model various engaging techniques, challenging educators

System Administrator

This interdisciplinary course is intended to enable students understand the nature of systems in society, nature and science, and to develop the interdisciplinary foundations that are applicable in a variety of areas, such as health, agriculture, appropriate technologies, leadership, and environment and education. The students are introduced to the inter-relationships of different elements in a system and how they work together holistically to form a structure. The course also introduces learners to archetypes and models for situation analysis in order to develop high leverage intervention. They learn systems dynamics, feedback loops and the language of institutional development because they are destined to work within systems under multidisciplinary conditions.

System Administrator

The course seeks to enable students acquire a theoretical understanding of the nature, purpose and philosophy of development. It focuses on the different theories, concepts and perspectives of development as well as a review of major trends in development thinking and their relationship to policy. The tropics covered include modernization theory, dependency theory, basic needs theory and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-reliance theory and contemporary development theories.        Other topics include globalization theory and recent trends in development thinking, a others

System Administrator

The course is designed to enable students have a deeper understanding of the concept of ‘community’ as well as community environment. It provides a framework in which application of community-based development can be assessed. It reviews the foundation of community development; key theories, practice perspectives and other forms of knowledge on which community-based development as a helping discipline is based.  It considers the application of relevant methodologies to community development and implementation of community development programs, with specific reference to third world countries.  The goal of the course is to create a human resource that can effectively contribute to the development process at the grassroots, community level.

System Administrator

The course introduces learners to the Visionary Approach which uses the principles of the creative process. Students are equipped with the tools of creating the desired future, by creating a clear vision of what they want, assessing current reality, resolving structural tension, and laying strategies for attaining their vision. The course applies principles in natural sciences, especially Physics, in understanding structural conflicts that cause oscillations in behavior, and it equips learners with alternative options for creating lasting change. It applies scientific methods, principles and tools to create consciousness and motivation for action among learners

System Administrator

COURSE DESCRIPTION The course focuses on the inter- and intra-relationships between development concerns. The course covers integrated rural development, including the paradigm shift in development studies and practice, rural development concepts, characteristics, theories and models, theories of sustainable development, foreign aid, and gender in development. The course also examines the indigenous and endogenous opportunities to development paradigms and provides a critical analysis of alternative views or courses of action. Other topics covered include Operation Wealth Creation in Uganda, the Sustainable Development Goals, population and labor economics, international trade and its relevance to communities, petroleum and gas in Uganda, and theories of wages. The aim of the course is to equip students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to stimulate integrated rural development for self-generating and sustainable change.

System Administrator

The course recognizes the fact that effective communication (whether verbal, audio, telecommunication, dialogue, e-mail, Fax, print or electronic etc.) is a key ingredient to social, political and economic development of any rural society. The course prepares the learner as a future rural transformation specialist, capable of articulating issues of rural development using effective communication skills to cause positive impact among rural societies. This highly applied course covers a wide range of topics, including communication skills in both English and Swahili, fundamentals of Swahili, public speaking and comprehension skills for rural development, spicing communication in English and local languages and dialects, speeches for rural development, and radio and TV communication skills

System Administrator

The course equips learners with digital literacy skills, including office packages, networks and the Internet, file sharing, software installation and blue tooth technology. Digital literacy in respect to the e-library and learning (ARU), Research4Life, Google scholar and Mendeley reference manager are also covered. The course unit is anchored on the three masteries of systems thinking, sustainable development and the principles of creating. Systems thinking will be showcased through the pattern of interaction of the different elements of the course for example the relationship between installation and usage of computer applications. Sustainable development and the principles of creating shall be based on the room for innovation and fostering all other spheres of life; social, political and economic. The course shall generally be a product of conventional and traditional wisdom. STEM shall be addressed in respect to technologies that support learning, teaching, assessment and information-sharing, including the computer, Internet, blue tooth, camera, recorder, satellite, radio, TV, video-conferencing and traditional technologies. Basic mathematical principles will also be introduced to the learners in respect to the binary system and basic statistics.  Therefore, the art of communication and information-sharing will be dealt with in respect to scientific principles related to encoding/decoding, sending/ receiving and sharing/retrieving information.  Learners shall also get exposed to dismantling and reassembling the different parts of machinery and equipment such as the computer system, cameras and telephones for learning purposes. The exposure of students to the software and hardware will ensure applicability and mastery of all aspects in this area for the benefit of other fields of study required for the program. Hence students shall gain knowledge and the ability to use strategically a range of technologies to find and evaluate knowledge, connect and collaborate with others, produce and share information so as to achieve academic, professional, and personal goals. They shall also gain the ability to teach others to access technologies for learning.