We had our first set of OCW and iLabs presentations today for the department of engineering. Clinton and I arrived at UNZA at 8 a.m. to setup for the 9 a.m. presentations. We figured that an hour would give us enough time to set up all of our equipment and take care of any last minute things that might come up. Mr. Zulu led us to the lecture theatre that his secretary had showed us last week and we began setting up. Surprisingly, things went really smoothly. We had our own projector and an extra adapter that we borrowed from one of our guesthouse mates, Satu, and we had our laptops and the projector set up well in advance of the commencement of the presentations. There was no projector screen, but there was a flat white wall between two blackboards in the middle of the lecture theatre that served as a fine substitute.
When 9 a.m. arrived, Clinton and I were still the only ones in the room and I have to say I began to worry a bit. What if the people had forgotten about the presentations? Or worse, what if people weren’t interested in seeing the presentations? By 9:15 a.m., we had a total of 3 faculty in the room, but we had both the head of the electrical engineering department and the mechanical engineering department so we weren’t in such bad shape. We started the presentations a few minutes later and more people began trickling in with time. By about 9:30 a.m. we had around 15 faculty members total in attendance (there didn’t seem to be any students, but that’s not a surprise considering most students are currently on their breaks). Both the presentations lasted a bit under and hour and a half at the end of which we took questions. For OCW, the faculty were interested in what format the course content was in, if people could access the OCW materials outside of UNZA (and a follow up question addressed the concern that if the idea really does catch on in Zambia, will people outside of UNZA drain the university’s bandwidth), and what would happen with OCW if an e-learning initiative became profitable. As for iLabs, the faculty were also interested if people outside of UNZA could use it, if it involved real laboratory equipment, and if there had been a stress test performed to determine how much of a load iLabs could handle.
After our presentations, Clinton and I returned to Kepa. I spent the next few hours going to the internet café, buying food for breakfast and lunch for this week (I couldn’t do it on Sunday because Melissa had already closed by the time I had gone there to buy groceries), and writing postcards for friends and family back in the states. Clinton and I also decided to pay for our entire stay at the Finnish guesthouse in advance, since the dollar has been steadily declining in value (and we made the right choice as the rate was soon 31,000 kwacha to a dollar). Raja stopped by later at night and I went out with him to the Black Night Café next to Melissa for some hot chocolate. We spent the next few hours talking about MIT, Raja’s outsourcing project, and in general catching up.
When I got back to the apartment, Mina and Lia were preparing some mushroom risotto for dinner. We spent some time talking and then all of us (including Clinton, Satu, Yuho, and Kennedy) ate together. We talked about politics, football, and everything in between. I got tired pretty early so I was the first to head off to bed while the rest stayed up talking late into the night.
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