First Africa Forum on Open Educational Resources (OER),
May 28th, 2008

The Event

The MERLOT Africa Network (MAN) Council will organise the First Africa Forum on Open Educational Resources (OER) in conjunction with eLearning Africa 2008 on May 28th.

MAN is a network of African higher education institutions affiliated with the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT). The organisation works collaboratively with partner institutions to conduct educational research that leads to best practices in the scholarship of teaching and learning using electronic resources. MAN also strives to enhance the usability and quality of the MERLOT e-learning repository for global access.

Themes

The forum themes focus on

• Global awareness of OER,
• Universal access for all to high quality teaching and learning resources,
• Equal access through internationalisation of resources with multi-language capabilities and
• Research, as well as OER Global Communities of Practices.

The event is organised by MAN in collaboration with eLearning Africa and the African Virtual University.

Who Should Attend

The forum targets education professionals from all disciplines, including educational researchers, educational trainers, faculty members and teachers from the secondary and higher education sectors.

More information on the First Africa Forum can be found at http://man.merlot.org/research/MAN%20at%20eLA.html.

Awards

Call-for-Nominations: The MANeLA Awards for Exemplary OER Practices

To reward excellence in the OER movement, the MERLOT Africa Network (MAN) and eLearning Africa announce the opening of nominations for the first MAN-eLA Awards for Exemplary OER Practices. MAN is a network of African higher education institutions affiliated with the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT).

Award Categories:

(1) The Leadership Award to the individual or group that has made the most significant advances in fostering understanding of the issues and innovations in OER and the OER movement;
(2) The Virtual Laboratory Award for exemplary teaching and learning resources that promote inquiry-based or discovery learning, internationalisation (such as multi-lingual accessibility), and usability; and
(3) The Software for OER Content Authoring Award.

Who Can Apply

The judging panel, made up of MERLOT Africa Network members, encourages the nominations of individuals or groups working in any of the following areas:

• Individuals, Community of Practices (CP) or Common Interest Groups that have made significant advances in fostering the understanding of the issues or innovations related to OER.
• High-quality Interactive Virtual Laboratory Resources that promote inquiry and discovery learning
• Free Software for OER Content Authoring

Nominations may come from any part of the world. Preference will be given to OER activities within the past two years.

Deadline

Nominations (with URL / website), along with an outline of the nominee’s work (approximately 100 words), should be sent before April 24th, 2008 to manela_awards@subr.edu.

Award Ceremony

The Awards will be presented during the closing ceremony of the third edition of the eLearning Africa Conference on May 30, 2008.