Since the global health pandemic and the inability to travel continue to hinder the implementation of the trainings in person, ISTC and Software Company have taken on the task of performing the training sessions online via the Zoom platform, under Project MC 5.01 15B, Support to Southern African States in Nuclear Safety and Safeguards, thus ensuring more learning time to counteract the lack of face-to-face communication.
The sessions for each country – Madagascar, Mozambique, DR Congo and Zimbabwe, were divided into two sections – a two-day preliminary and a five-day regular training course.
We have conducted the preliminary trainings with participants from Mozambique (on March 8th and 9th), DR Congo (with two interpreters in French on March 11th and 12th), Zimbabwe (on March 17th and 18th), and Madagascar (on April 21st and 22nd). All of the four events had 2 participants each, mostly IT personnel, and we followed the following agenda:
- Theoretical part, where we explained the different components and their corresponding functionalities;
- Practical work, where the participants set up and operated the equipment themselves with our guidance.
- Online exam, in the form of a multiple-choice test taken online on our training platform.
During the course of the preliminary training sessions all of the equipment have been tested and set up so that the agencies are in every respect ready for the regular trainings. The trackers were all located and registered in the ITS; the mobile phones had the ITS Track application installed; as a result all the components of the ITS were connected and ready to work. During the trainings we use our training servers, which are identical to the main working server, located on the premises of TAEC in Arusha, Tanzania. The participants should first master their skills in the training platform and after the trainings are completed they will receive credentials for the real-time functional ITS system.
All participants have shown excellent results in the tests and were awarded Certificates of completion.
During our work, we have received great feedback and identified ways to make the ITS system even more user-friendly and easy to use.