INMES - Benin National Institute for Nursing and Midwifery
Benin’s Institut national médico-sanitaire (INMeS) is part of the University of Abomey-Calavi, based in Cotonou. It offers Bachelor and Master degrees for state nurses and midwives and employs around fifty people, including some thirty teachers.
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Its has over 600 students, both on campus and online, and offers a variety of courses on several specialist subjects (anaesthesia and intensive care, gynaecology, paediatrics and mental health at a master’s level).
Problems faced
The university had long been looking for a solution that could be used to expand its online learning programme and also help integrate innovative teaching methods. But its biggest obstacle was how to create high-quality online courses on a large scale? To do so, they would need a system that would enable them to make content creation for online courses accessible to all.
This is how the Rapidmooc video studio arrived on the Cotonou campus in 2018, as part of NUFFIC’s Orange Knowledge Programme project and deployed by CINOP. It was soon followed by two other studios at the universities of Parakou and Lokossa thanks to the Africa Digital Campus project (launched in October 2022), which supports the digital transformation of universities in Benin and Burkina Faso.
Rapidmooc solution
The Rapidmooc studio was made available to the university’s teachers, who received in-house training and presentations on how to use the new equipment. Once they had grasped the basics, the enthusiasm was universal. Professor Lisette Odoulami, the institute’s director, described it as “a marvellous tool […] that makes the new teaching method enjoyable”.
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The studio has become extremely popular thanks to its ease of use and creative possibilities, both as a stand-alone machine and in combination with other innovative tools such as AI (e.g. Chat GPT). It has allowed teachers to create courses that are not only captivating and inventive, but also structured, sequenced and enriched.
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As a result, everyone is happy. From a user perspective, Rapidmooc makes the entire process of creating training videos, all the from filming to editing, extremely easy.  And as for students, they benefit from high-quality, easily accessible online course content that allows them to receive a comprehensive education.
“We hope this enthusiasm continues and as many people as possible learn to use the studio!”
Pr. Lisette Odoulami – Director of INMeS Cotonou
“The avantage for our institution is really to be able to produce our own content that is truly adapted to our needs.”
Wilfried Agbelete – Head of IT, Audiovisual and Documentation at INMeS Cotonou
Benefits
Freedom: With the video studios being so easy to use, teachers were able to pick it up and start producing their own content in no time. One popular type of video was medical acts to be performed on patients (simulated by students or with mannequins).
Volume: In line with the government’s ambitions to improve access to education through online courses, the studio has enabled videos to be produced nationwide. Content production on a large scale but with a local touch, since each teacher is free to record as many variations of each training video as they like.
Accessibility: Not only does the studio give the teaching staff access to a powerful and high-quality filming tool, it also gives students access to content, regardless of time or distance.
Looking forward
The video studio has a bright future ahead! In fact, the the institute is planning to open it up to other institutions likely to be interested in creating online training courses (such as for teacher training in Congo). By allowing teachers to work together, share ideas and produce a wide range of content, it will surely foster new creative opportunities and help create a vibrant educational network driven by new pedagogical methods.
Acknowledgements
Pr. Lisette Odoulami – Director of INMeS Cotonou
Wilfried Agbelete – Head of IT, Audiovisual and Documentation at INMeS Cotonou
