To respond to the University of Liberia’s priority of offering online courses to students both within and outside of Monrovia, Digital Liberia conducted a training for 14 faculty and staff to develop online courses. Digital Liberia’s online learning advisor guided participants to develop 18 blended Moodle courses to constitute a pilot online learning platform from March 2020. SNAPSHOT EXPANSION OF ONLINE LEARNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LIBERIA Blended learning for more connected studies. Online learning workshop participants “[The training] strengthened my desire to keep close contact with my professional colleagues and opened up my mind to the potential of technology in making education more interactive and interesting.”.” Workshop participant Low-quality ICT infrastructure is pervasive throughout Liberia and on its university campuses. Weak or nonexistent campus networks means that the University of Liberia has historically offered few online learning options. Students therefore lack flexibility in learning styles and access to learning and education materials. Digital Liberia helped the University of Liberia expand online learning opportunities for students by engaging online learning expert Philip Uys to launch a new online platform, ULOnline. This included identifying and prioritizing creation of online learning content and training faculty and administrators in the management of the online learning system. In December 2019, Mr. Uys facilitated two workshops — “Moodle Systems Administration” and “Design and Develop a Blended Course in Moodle” — with 15 and 27 attendees from the University’s Office of Information Technology, faculty and administrators. Moodle is a free and open-source learning management system. At the workshops, university staff learned how to develop, upload, and configure courses on ULOnline to ensure the system could be independently and locally maintained. Additionally, university faculty identified 10 priority subject areas for online learning and created 18 Moodle courses in subjects such as statistics, sociology, chemistry, research methodology, and digital literacy. Faculty were assigned to their respective courses in the online learning system and received e-learning guides on how to use the system as a follow-up to the workshops provided. Blended learning options give students more opportunities for uninterrupted studies and the flexibility to learn from anywhere in the world. Online learning also fosters connections among the academic community at other Liberian institutions and worldwide. Expected Result 9: Progress made toward Liberia Internet Exchange Point (LIXP) implementation In Year 1, Digital Liberia’s project advisory council determined that connection to the Local Internet Exchange Point (LIXP) was a base requirement for any ISP providing services to the Government of Liberia. The LIXP enables local Internet traffic to be transmitted locally, at a faster speed and without incurring international connectivity rates. The fully operational LIXP will benefit ongoing work in the education and health sectors by linking research and education networks as well as local cloud-based public services at significantly reduced rates. Although Liberia had established an LIXP in 2015 at Cable Consortium of Liberia, maintaining and operating the LIXP had been a challenge due to lack structured funding and administrative mechanisms for day to day running of the LIXP, with the members unwilling to meet to discuss issues. Digital Liberia facilitated a LIXP stakeholders discussion to address these shortcomings. The team’s intervention enabled the MNOs, the LIXP operator, and the sector ministry to agree on a one time plus DIGITAL LIBERIA FINAL REPORT | 24