Speaker
Description
Educational institutions - schools and universities in Somalia are based only on traditional learn-ing; they follow the conventional face-to-face classroom lectures. The sudden outbreak of a pan-demic called COVID-19 caused by a Corona Virus shook the entire world. To help contain the pandemic, the ministry of Education, Culture, and Higher Education(MOECHE) of Somalia or-dered the closure of schools and universities to help control the virus as social distancing is the best way to prevent COVID-19 and overcrowded classrooms pose a challenge for distancing.
SomaliRENs' member institutions, most of which are privately run, faced an economic crisis fol-lowing the country's suspension of teaching and learning. They rely on students' tuition to sustain their institutions. To ensure continuity of operations and avoid a significant disruption, Somali-REN provided relief to its member institutions by offering its customized video conferencing plat-form, which universities are now using for remote teaching and learning. This is a free open-source-based research and education communication-system using BigBlueButton, specially de-signed for academic institutions with comparable features and quality to commercial ones such as Zoom and Cisco Webex.
Keywords: VideoConferencing Platform, BigBluBotton, R&E Community.
