Didy
Elodie
Rusera

I. Integrative Narrative

Artifact Overview

This artifact is a scholarly analysis and personal reflection on Kaptein's (2019) concept of the moral entrepreneur, studied in EHHS-75502-010: Ethical Leadership in Education (Summer 2024). The assignment asked doctoral students to engage critically with the moral entrepreneurship framework and situate it within their own leadership practice and professional context. In response, I examined the tripartite model of ethical leadership — the moral person, the moral manager, and the moral entrepreneur — and analyzed how moral identity and moral awareness operate as the foundation of norm-creating leadership. The artifact draws on Kaptein (2019), McGrady (2011, 2022), and Pfajfar et al. (2022) to construct an argument about ethical leadership as both a personal commitment and a community obligation.

CPED Principle 1: Equity, Ethics, and Social Justice

CPED Principle 1 holds that the Professional Doctorate in Education is framed around questions of equity, ethics, and social justice to bring about solutions to complex problems of practice. This artifact directly demonstrates that principle through its central argument: that ethical leadership — and specifically moral entrepreneurship — is a response to moral voids, which are inequities and structural failures in the norms that govern how communities are served.

In my artifact, I engage Kaptein's (2019) concept of the moral entrepreneur as a leader who does not merely enforce existing norms but identifies where those norms are insufficient and works to establish new ones — what Kaptein describes as the leader focused specifically on "what norms to establish" rather than who to be or how to influence others (p. 1141). I apply this framework to the specific problem of inequitable access to quality higher education in East Africa — a complex, structural problem rooted in historical patterns of under-investment and geographic exclusion. The artifact argues that immersive educational technologies, deployed within an ethically designed cross-institutional partnership model, represent a norm-creating response to that void.

CPED Principle 2: Constructing and Applying Knowledge

This artifact demonstrates Principle 2 by tracing how my engagement with Kaptein's (2019) tripartite framework has shifted my leadership identity and sharpened the focus of my work as an educational consultant and entrepreneur in immersive learning. During my tenure as Chief Skills Officer at the Rwanda Development Board, I designed and executed a National Skills Development and Employment Promotion Strategy that required forging cross-sector partnerships to expand educational access and economic opportunity for Rwandan communities. The artifact uses that experience as evidence of CPED Principle 2 in action, and positions my current doctoral work as its scholarly deepening.

CPED Principle 6: Generation and Use of Professional Knowledge

The artifact documents a concrete shift in professional knowledge: the move from understanding ethical leadership as individual integrity to understanding it as norm-creating practice at the systemic level. By analyzing the moral entrepreneur as a distinct leadership identity, Kaptein (2019) specifies that this identity requires not only values and managerial influence but also what he identifies as "the drive toward transition" and the capability to build and apply power in service of change (p. 1143).

II. Reflection

I came into EHHS-75502 confident in my values but not yet fully fluent in the language of ethical leadership as a scholarly discipline. What this course gave me was something different: a conceptual framework precise enough to name what I had been doing, and demanding enough to show me how much further I had yet to go.

The concept of the moral entrepreneur was the most significant turning point. McGrady (2011) draws an important distinction between moral entrepreneurs who function as rule-creators — those who identify a moral void and work to establish a new standard — and those who operate as rule-enforcers, implementing norms that already exist (p. 79). Kaptein (2019) builds on this by arguing that moral entrepreneurship requires not just values and managerial influence, but the drive toward transition and the willingness to build power in service of new norms.

That realization sits at the heart of my growth in this program. I grew up in a household where the principles of ethical leadership were not theoretical. My late father built a business from nothing through discipline and integrity, modeling what it means to identify a gap and build something of lasting value in service of others. My mother devoted her career to law and justice, serving for many years as a Supreme Court judge. That formation is, I now understand through Kaptein's (2019) lens, the origin of my moral identity.

Stepping into the role of educational consultant and entrepreneur in immersive learning has been the most direct application of what this course named. It is a choice to operate outside the safety of established institutional roles in order to pursue a norm — that holographic and immersive technologies can and should be used to create equitable, co-present learning environments across borders. What comes next is the transformation — and the use.

I. Integrative Narrative

Artifact Overview

This artifact is the final project paper from RMS-85530-002: Practitioner Inquiry (Fall 2023), titled Shaping Global Partnerships Between Reputable Universities Across the Globe and Universities in Rwanda. The paper constitutes the foundational work of my emerging Dissertation in Practice: it establishes the problem of practice, articulates the purpose and significance of the study, develops initial research questions, and positions my own positionality as a researcher. The inquiry draws on Knight (2003, 2004), de Wit et al. (2015), and Moshtari and Safarpour (2023) to position the problem within a rigorous theoretical and policy context.

CPED Principle 4: Field-Based Problem Analysis Using Multiple Frames

This artifact applies multiple analytical frames simultaneously: a policy frame examining what national and institutional frameworks must be in place for Rwanda to enter and sustain credible global higher education partnerships; a technological frame interrogating how online blended learning and emerging digital modalities can bridge the ICT infrastructure gap; an economic frame drawing on de Wit and Altbach (2021) to analyze internationalization as a driver of national development; and a sociocultural frame engaging Knight's (2004) foundational definition of internationalization as an intentional process of integrating intercultural and global dimensions into higher education (p. 11).

My positionality as both an insider and an outsider further exemplifies Principle 4. As former Chief Skills Officer at the Rwanda Development Board, I operated at the intersection of national education policy, international partnership development, and skills strategy — directly shaping agreements between Rwandan universities and global institutions across North America, Europe, and Australia. That field experience is not background context; it is the analytical lens.

CPED Principle 5: Theory Linked to Systematic Inquiry

This artifact brings two distinct knowledge sources into conversation. The first is practical knowledge — what I observed, navigated, and learned through years of field-based leadership. The second is research knowledge — the peer-reviewed literature produced by internationalization researchers such as Knight, de Wit, and Moshtari and Safarpour. Principle 5 requires that a doctoral practitioner not rely on either source alone: practitioner experience without scholarly grounding risks being anecdotal, while academic literature without field context risks being disconnected from the actual problem.

De Wit and Altbach (2021) argue that the future of internationalization depends on institutional willingness to move beyond mobility-focused models toward deeper structural collaboration (p. 30). Moshtari and Safarpour (2023) specifically identify inadequate digital infrastructure and limited cross-institutional coordination as the two most persistent structural barriers to internationalization in low-income East African countries (p. 4) — findings that validate the problem of practice this artifact identifies.

II. Reflection

The Practitioner Inquiry course was the moment my doctoral journey became concrete. What the course demanded was that I translate conviction into a researchable problem — one with defined questions, a theoretical framework, a scholarly literature base, and a clear sense of my own position within the inquiry. That translation was harder, and more rewarding, than I anticipated.

This artifact marked a significant transition: the shift from practitioner to practitioner-scholar. During my years at the Rwanda Development Board, I designed strategy and brokered partnerships from a position of institutional authority and field expertise. What the Practitioner Inquiry course gave me was a different kind of authority — the discipline to interrogate that experience through a scholarly lens.

Honesty is the word that anchors my reflection on this artifact. It helped me be honest about the complexity of the problem, about the limits of practitioner knowledge without scholarly grounding, and about the distance between identifying a moral void — which I had been doing for years — and developing the systematic inquiry necessary to address it in a way that is credible and genuinely useful to the communities it aims to serve.

I. Integrative Narrative

Artifact Overview

This artifact is an Instructional Systems Design (ISD) Process Model developed for RIVANY Inc. as the final project in ETEC-67445-001: Designing Instructional and Performance Solutions (Fall 2024). The artifact proposes a customized ISD framework built on an enhanced ADDIE model — which Branch and Dousay (2015) describe as the most widely adopted meta-model for instructional design precisely because of its flexibility across diverse delivery contexts (p. 6). The ADDIE framework is adapted to address the specific challenges of holographic cross-cultural instructional design, incorporating scholarship from Edmundson (2007), Clark and Mayer (2016), and Caffarella and Daffron (2013).

CPED Principle 3: Collaboration and Partnership

RIVANY Inc. is itself a partnership — and the ISD model it required had to be designed to function across profound differences in geography, culture, institutional structure, and technological capacity. The artifact demonstrates Principle 3 in three concrete ways.

First, partnership coordination is embedded as a structural layer throughout every phase of the design process. Second, Edmundson (2007) argues that failing to systematically analyze cultural variables results in materials that, while technically sound, create barriers to learning for non-Western audiences (p. 37) — the proposed model includes a systematic cultural analysis phase as a design requirement, not an afterthought. Third, Caffarella and Daffron (2013) emphasize that effective cross-institutional program design requires deliberate attention to the development of instructors as culturally responsive practitioners, not merely as content deliverers (p. 148).

CPED Principle 6: Generation and Use of Professional Knowledge

The artifact generates original professional knowledge — a customized ISD model that does not exist in the existing literature. Rothwell and Kazanas (2008) caution that ad hoc instructional development consistently produces costly performance gaps (p. 24); the proposed model addresses this through four substantive innovations: an expanded cultural analysis phase, an integrated faculty development process, holographic platform adaptation checkpoints, and a partnership coordination layer.

Clark and Mayer's (2016) multimedia learning principles were developed for screen-based environments; applying their guidance on spatial contiguity and modality effects to three-dimensional holographic presence requires meaningful interpretive work that goes beyond direct application (p. 95). RIVANY is not a hypothetical case study — it is the startup I am building. This model is its operational framework.

II. Reflection

ETEC-67445 was the course where theory became infrastructure. In Artifact 1, I found the language for my moral identity as a leader. In Artifact 2, I learned to translate a field-based conviction into a scholarly problem of practice. In this course, I had to go further — I had to build something. Not describe a problem, not analyze a framework, but actually design a system that could function in the real world I am creating.

The most important thing I learned through this artifact is that design is itself a form of leadership. Designing an ISD model for RIVANY required me to make decisions about what cultural adaptation really means in practice, what quality looks like when your classroom is a holographic projection in Kigali and your instructor is physically present in Toronto, and how you build a system that respects the intelligence and dignity of African learners without reducing them to a set of cultural variables to be managed.

Designing RIVANY's ISD model taught me that you cannot build equitable learning experiences from a distance. Cultural, relational, institutional proximity is a design requirement.

I. Integrative Narrative

Artifact Overview

This artifact is a literature review produced in ETEC-87450-001: Learning with Educational Technologies (Fall 2023), titled Virtualization and Internationalization of Higher Learning Institutions in Rwanda. The review investigates how internationalization can be promoted and expanded in Rwanda and the broader East African region, with a particular focus on the role of educational technology as both an enabler and a subject of inquiry. Grounded in over two decades of internationalization scholarship — from Knight's (2003, 2004) foundational definitional work to Moshtari and Safarpour's (2023) contemporary analysis — the review examines whether transnational university networks, branch campuses, and online learning models can create the organizational conditions necessary for successful internationalization.

CPED Principle 2: Constructing and Applying Knowledge

The artifact's central argument is built on Knight's (2004) foundational definition of internationalization as "the intentional process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions and delivery of post-secondary education, in order to enhance the quality of education and research for all students and staff, and to make a meaningful contribution to society" (p. 11). This definition frames internationalization as a vehicle for positive social contribution — and the artifact applies it to the specific problem of educational inequity in East Africa.

Moshtari and Safarpour (2023) provide critical empirical grounding: their analysis identifies inadequate digital infrastructure and limited cross-institutional coordination as the two most persistent barriers to internationalization in low-income East African countries (p. 4), while identifying online and blended learning models as the most promising structural remedies. The knowledge this artifact constructs is directly applied in two dimensions: it informs the research architecture of my Dissertation in Practice, and it informs my professional practice as the founder of RIVANY Inc.

CPED Principle 5: Theory Linked to Systematic Inquiry

This artifact is perhaps the most direct embodiment of Principle 5 across the portfolio, because a literature review is the instrument through which systematic scholarly inquiry is conducted. Its purpose is to map what is known, identify what is not, and position a new inquiry within an existing field. The review examines internationalization across four levels — global, continental, national, and institutional — and traces the specific strategies, frameworks, and obstacles at each level within the Rwandan context.

De Wit and Altbach (2021) argue that the future of internationalization depends on moving beyond student mobility models toward deeper structural collaboration, including virtual delivery modalities and joint curriculum development (p. 30). Lanford (2014) argues that global partnerships carry normative obligations — they "should marshal their significant intellectual and financial resources to enlarge public discourse, promote the public good, and support marginalized individuals" (p. 207). This equity-oriented commitment gives the review its moral and scholarly coherence.

II. Reflection

ETEC-87450-001 was the course in which I learned to read scholarship differently. Before this course, I engaged with academic literature the way most practitioners do — selectively, instrumentally, looking for findings that confirmed or complicated what I already believed. The literature review assignment forced a systematic engagement with the full breadth of what scholars had said about my topic, including the parts that challenged my assumptions.

The most significant intellectual shift came through grappling with the two categories of internationalization: internationalization abroad — cross-border mobility and student exchange — and internationalization at home — curriculum-oriented, intercultural competence-building, virtually delivered. Internationalization abroad is the model that systematically excludes the majority of East African learners who cannot access it. Internationalization at home is where the real equity opportunity lies. The literature review gave me the scholarly architecture to argue this rigorously, with evidence, theory, and a clear line of reasoning that others could interrogate.

The literature review is, in a direct sense, the intellectual origin story of RIVANY Inc. Before this course, the argument that virtual delivery models represent a structural solution to East African educational barriers was a conviction. After it, it was a documented, sourced, theoretically grounded claim. That distinction matters enormously when you are trying to persuade a university administrator to take a risk on something they have never seen before.

Problem of Practice

Higher education institutions in East Africa continue to face deep structural barriers that limit their participation in the global academic ecosystem. Two stand out: limited digital infrastructure and weak cross-institutional coordination (Moshtari & Safarpour, 2023). The result is an access gap — Rwandan, Kenyan, and Ugandan learners rarely encounter the depth, range, and quality of educational experience available to their peers in the Global North.

Holographic immersive learning technology offers a meaningful response. It projects instructors as live, three-dimensional presences across borders, creating a sense of shared classroom space that approaches in-person instruction without the cost or exclusion of travel. Yet no study has examined how this technology can be strategically deployed in East African higher education, or what kinds of partnership models make its use sustainable.

Purpose

This study examines how holographic immersive learning can be designed and deployed to advance equitable cross-institutional partnerships between North American universities and higher education institutions in Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda.

Research Questions

Central Question. How can holographic immersive learning technologies advance equitable partnerships between North American and East African universities?

Sub-question 1. What policy and institutional conditions enable these partnerships to take root and last?

Sub-question 2. How do administrators, policymakers, and learners across Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda perceive the value and limits of this technology?

Sub-question 3. Which partnership models prove most effective in designing and sustaining holographic learning programs?

Theoretical Framework

The study draws on three bodies of thought. Knight's (2004) framework defines what equitable internationalization should accomplish. Kaptein's (2019) moral entrepreneurship model frames leadership as the work of identifying gaps and creating new norms. Perry, Zambo, and Crow's (2020) improvement science approach grounds the inquiry in the practitioner-scholar tradition of the Dissertation in Practice.

Methodology

A mixed-methods design combining qualitative interviews and surveys with university administrators, policymakers, and professional learners across the three countries. Findings will inform both institutional partnership practice and the operational design of RIVANY Inc., where this work is being applied in real time.

Significance

This research generates new knowledge at the intersection of educational technology, international higher education, and East African development — three fields that rarely meet. More importantly, it contributes a practical, evidence-based framework for partnerships that have until now been built largely on goodwill and improvisation. The dissertation is dedicated to my late father, and offered in service of the learners whose horizons it is meant to widen.