The Themes of eLearning Africa 2006

Capacity Development supported by eLearning

ICT supported learning initiatives offer considerable potential with regard to capacity development in Africa. This includes not only traditional upskilling of individuals, but also the building of institutional capacity across all sectors of society. New delivery methods at all levels can play a key role in enabling the continent achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals and for building competent knowledge societies. Opportunities exist across the education and training sectors but this calls for appropriate and realistic strategies in order for eLearning to have maximum impact.

Access and Connectivity Issues in Africa

Despite significant developments in recent years to provide basic connectivity services throughout the African continent, the connectivity and bandwidth required for typical online educational applications is simply not yet available in much of Africa. Low-cost solutions based on innovative technologies, including advances made possible due to recent developments in the satellite and wireless industries, will be featured as well as advances in technologies like WiMax, Internet2 and Broadband Over Power Line that have a particular resonance in the development context.

Localisation, Customisation and Content Development

In order that eLearning has real impact in Africa, support is required to build an indigenous and sustainable educational content industry which takes into account the need for materials and services which respect Africa's rich cultural and linguistic history. With over 2,000 languages, which represents a third of all the languages worldwide, Africa cannot afford to ignore the issue of language and culture in the development and building of an Information Society. Appropriate instructional design practices, including open source approaches and open access content management strategies, will be demonstrated and discussed as well as good practice in appropriate localisation and customisation of imported content.

eLearning in the Fight against HIV and AIDS

Not only does the HIV and AIDS pandemic in Africa have a devastating effect on many local economies, but it also robs communities of many skilled and vital workers, in South Africa alone HIV and AIDS killed 4000 educators in 2004. In addition health workers are often ill-equipped to deal with the scale of the problem. For example in Kenya, more than 85 percent of nurses are certified below a qualified level and have not been trained in the management of diseases such as HIV and AIDS which are compounding the poverty situation in Africa. Specific eLearning initiatives focussed on the treatment of HIV and AIDS will be highlighted, as well as ways in which eLearning is being used to alleviate skills shortages in key professions brought about by this pandemic. Furthermore, it is common knowledge that cultural influences on sharing sensitive sexual content often limit the dissemination of life saving information. We will learn of specific eLearning initiatives to bring high quality and well researched HIV, AIDS, TB, Malaria, Nutrition and Antiretrovial information to all levels of community of Africa.

Empowering Traditional Universities with ICT

How traditional universities use technology to serve on- and off-campus students as well as the wider community. Effective physical as well as virtual learning environments. Examples of large-scale take-up in traditional and non-traditional universities as well as Inter-University collaboration, virtual campus initiatives and industry collaboration. Student support systems, the process of change in Higher Education and faculty take-up and support. Cost, integration and management issues. How has technology actually changed the University?

eLearning in Development Cooperation

eLearning in Africa is significantly supported by international Development Cooperation. Organisations such as the World Bank, UNDP, UNESCO, GTZ, InWEnt, SIDA, DFID, USAID, the governments of Japan and Australia and many others. eLearning has become not only a key element in educational systems, but also a sector crossing tool for maximizing impact - be it in a Health Reform Programme in Nigeria or a Decentralization and Good Governance Programme in Ethiopia. Coordination and harmonization of multilateral programmes becomes crucial. What are the lessons learnt and best practices? What are the eLearning strategies guiding the numerous eLearning projects? How far have they succeeded in integrating projects into sustainable local services?

Introducing eLearning to the School System

Introducing PCs into school systems and building school networks is happening all over Africa. Access and technology driven policies and practices seem to dominate the landscape. But how is this significant investment matched with the necessary accompanying measures for capacity building of teachers, students and parents? Are services provided or initiated, be it for technical maintenance or for capacity building with regards to content development and delivery? What kind of environments are created in which the technical infrastructures can become embedded? A reality check is needed in order to address these issues. African stakeholders need to avoid the costly stumbling blocks experienced already 10 years ago, when the first national and cross-border schoolnets in Europe were initiated.

The new Africa – Europe Partnership Framework: How to Apply for ICT projects

In 2005 the European Commision has formulated a new strategy framework for Africa, that relates to the “Millenium Development Goals” and intends to accelerate Africa’s development. In this framework the digital divide is addressed through an „EU-Africa Partnership for Infrastructure“ and a number of „Access to knowledge and Transfer of know-how“ initiatives. More than one billion Euro will be provided by the European Commission and African institutions and corporations will be eligble for funding. This significant new ICT programme will include support for Policy Definition and Regulation, Capacity Building, and Demonstration Projects. Topics such as eLearning, eWork, eGovernance and eHealth will be addressed. In this session presentations of already established EU-Africa „ICT for Development“ projects will provide an insight into the significant opportunities soon available for African universities, health systems, public services and corporations. Representatives from the European Commission will inform and discuss how to apply successfully in the forthcoming calls for proposals.

Open Source, Open Content and eLearning

Open Source as distributed, shared, open software development is high on the agenda both in the North and the South. African countries are opting for the use of Open Source as a key part of their ICT strategy. Open Content as a new model for copyright aims to open up access to content so it can be shared and developed further. What are the lessons learnt and best practices with regards to the potential to reduce costs, to secure independence, to build national capacities, security and autonomy as well as to foster local and contextual knowledge bases and to solve the issues of intellectual property rights enforcement?

eLearning in Government, Private and Public Sectors

eLearning on a large scale with cases and real-life examples from all over Africa and beyond aimed at target sectors including the banking and finance, mining, architectural and engineering sectors. eLearning applications within the health, social welfare and other public sector domains. Business and industry applications ranging from large multinational companies to SMEs. Outsourcing and measuring educational gain and return-on-investment, realising the benefits of eLearning, procedures and practice in implementing online learning, performance enhancement and support measures. eLearning, knowledge and content management integration, embedded learning and the role of informal learning.

eLearning: Design, Development and Delivery

Developing and designing virtual and face-to-face learning environments and materials, instructional design for eLearning, blending digital and non-digital, effective content management strategies, instructional design models taking into account shelf-life and relevancy. Issues to do with reuse, digital rights and privacy, standards and embedding learning objects. The use of games and gaming strategies, online resources, portals and content repositories, design for specific context, e.g. language learning. 'Just-in-time' learning: an effective way to integrate learning opportunities into our daily lives or an excuse to offer segmented and fragmentary snippets that do little to further real understanding of a topic.

Online Collaboration, Moderation, Teaching and Learning

The experience of teaching and learning online, staff development and teacher training. Scaling up from projects to process through personal and group development, successful strategies and approaches to online collaboration and moderation. eLearning pedagogy and teaching style, motivation and learning online.

Policy Issues and Large Scale Take-up of eLearning

Supporting learners, changing the learning culture by increasing availability of informal and on-demand learning. Government policies and initiatives aimed at stimulating sustainable take-up. Public-private partnerships, brokerage services, social-partner activities including trade unions. International partnerships between national organisations. Regional, sectoral, national and international e-portfolio initiatives. Accreditation and security, localisation issues and demands. Case examples of large-scale take-up successes and failures.

Quality Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation of eLearning

Online testing and measuring effectiveness, quality frameworks and measurements of quality. Meeting the needs of the learning community. Success and how it can be evaluated and measured. Using embedded assessment in the workplace to empower the learner and better align the entire learning life cycle to organisational and business objectives. Educational effectiveness of courses/programmes and relevant metrics.