In 1998 the first Tick Identification Course was prepared and presented by Professor Ivan Horak, emeritus professor in the Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases (DVTD) in the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Pretoria. This course was meant to train people from all over the world on tick identification based on classical taxonomy. Initially the course covered mainly ticks of livestock and was later expanded to also include selected ticks of wildlife.

The CoVID-19 pandemic inspired us to think differently on how to deliver training and educational content to different audiences, making use of new educational resources and platforms. And so, during 2023, a five-member team from DVTD, began the planning and organisation to convert the face-to-face practical training of the tick identification course to an online format. This exercise resulted in the pilot edition of an online tick identification course, a modification of the course that started in 1998, rebranded as the Ivan Horak – Online tick identification course. An important technological development for this pilot version of the course was the high resolution images of important tick species infesting domestic animals in South Africa, provided by Prof Melvyn Quan.

The course was presented from the 13th until the 17th of November 2023 in sessions of 2 hours per day. It was presented by Prof Luis Neves, Dr Hein Stoltsz, Prof Darshana Morar-Leather, Ms Andeliza Smit and Ms Zandile Mkhize. Sixteen participants registered for the course. The participants were from Namibia, Italy, Uganda and South Africa. The South African participants in the course were postgraduate students registered at UP, and staff from SANBI, based at the National Zoological Gardens. The programme included a brief introduction to ticks, their life cycles and basic morphology. This was followed by the identification of selected soft ticks, and hard ticks found in southern Africa. Each day, except for the first, started with a quiz on the previous day’s sessions. Feedback from the participants was obtained on a daily basis. The participants were required to comment on the quality of the images, the content and on the presentation tempo of each presenter. On the final day an online written assessment was performed, after which a feedback session was conducted with the participants. The feedback that we received from the participants indicated that the course was excellent and they also provided very useful feedback in terms of improving the pedagogical quality of the course. During the sessions there were discussions on whether the participants were competent to identify real ticks by themselves after the online training. We acknowledged that this might be a deficiency in the course as the participants were not trained with actual ticks and thus were not examined with actual ticks either. To investigate this possible shortcoming, the plan is to expose participants to an identification exercise, where the real ticks are projected from the presenter’s microscope to the participants’ screens.  

The success of this course has encouraged us to consider expanding the pilot version to a full course, incorporating a larger number of tick species, and to present it to the region using the Enhancing Research for Africa Network platform (ERFAN). Also, we would like to transform our tick database into a user friendly platform to contribute to and improve the teaching and learning experience of both the presenters and course participants, respectively.

Acknowledgements:

Funding: FA5 programme (ITM), WOAH, ERFAN

Logo and presentation template design Ms Estelle Mayhew

Tick images taken by Prof Melvyn Quan and Ms Zandile Mkhize

Management of Zoom platform during the course – Ms Chiara Sensoli (ERFAN)

Participants for their participation and feedback