Employing the Moodle platform as a VRE tool while teaching eResearch skills to Masters and PhD students

Abstract

Virtual research environments (VREs) are no longer an issue of serious debate in the developed world - they provide the infrastructure for researchers to easily collaborate across a variety of borders and a variety of disciplines. Transparent, collaborative online partnerships are not yet that common in Africa. Very often this is due to the fact that available technology is not enabling and skills are lacking. The authors attempted to resolve the technology problem by massaging existing tools and technologies to establishing a collaborative environment (VRE) to be used for the teaching of eResearch skills to Masters and PhD-level students doing natural product research at seven African institutions, spread across four different countries.