The Themes of eLearning Africa 2007
eLA 2007 addressed twenty themes, covering all aspects of technology enhanced education and training.
1. Improving Quality and Outreach of Technical and Vocational Education (TVET) in Africa
TVET programmes are seen as central to the effort to foster
sustainable development and attain “Millennium Development
Goal” number one: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger
in Africa. TVET is therefore a high priority area for investment
in all African countries. What are the benefits of eLearning
for TVET and which subjects and branches benefit most from it?
How does eLearning help to bridge theory and practice in TVET?
What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
in relation to the use of eLearning in TVET? What are the success
factors and reasons for failure when integrating eLearning into
TVET? What is the status with regard to eLearning in African
TVET? How can a strategy for “TVET for All” and
“TVET for Communities” become further elaborated
and implemented? What are the lessons learnt in industrialized
countries, and how can they be applied to Africa? What specific
recommendations targeted at the African, national, and institutional
levels can be provided? ^top
2. Unleashing the Capabilities of Universities through Information
and Communication Technologies (ICT)
The emerging ICT infrastructure in Africa and the networking
of educational institutions has the potential to empower academic
institutions and their faculties significantly, comparable only
to the invention of printed books. A number of preconditions,
though, need to be fulfilled in order to unleash this potential.
Because the networks require the materialisation of knowledge
in media and courseware, faculty need to become engaged in course
production and course delivery, applying instructional design
and following electronic publishing processes. This in turn
requires the establishment of enabling service frameworks that
support the necessary capacity development of faculty and maintain
the technical platform for service delivery. What kind of physical
and virtual service infrastructure do universities establish,
and how do they implement it? How is the “informatisation”
process within the university negotiated among all stakeholders?
How is faculty supported to acquire the new competencies, and
what are the results? What kinds of services are provided on
and off campus? How can inter-university collaboration and industry
collaboration support the development of the new ICT enhanced
services? What is the impact of the new services on the university;
what are the implications for budgets, integration, and management?
^top
3. Empowering Women through ICT - with ICT-Based Capacity Building
ICT can sustain or deepen the power imbalance between men and
women. Women unfamiliar with ICT do not reap its rewards and
are unable to compete successfully. How is access to ICT being
provided to women? How are their ICT skills improved and their
capacities of content development built? How does eLearning
become a tool to develop those capacities? How can eLearning
become an efficient capacity-building tool for women’s
initiatives, for strengthening their networks and partnerships
in Africa and beyond? How does it help to nurture the effectiveness
of women’s organizations and to connect them with resources?
Who are the stakeholders and their organisations, and what are
their achievements and the lessons learnt? ^top
4. Setting up and Implementing a Sustainable eLearning Project
Initiating an eLearning project requires careful planning
and “more” always needs to be considered: more scope,
more duration, more costs, more risks, and more and different
professionals to be engaged and more pressure. Because resources
are scarce, the capacity to look for, find, and apply for funding
and/or to justify the budget requested from the institution
itself is fundamental. What have been the successful inroads
into acquiring funding and support? Which agencies, associations
and donors are relevant? What are their policies, and how do
they fund?
Whoever provides the budget, a comprehensive project and business
development plan needs to be elaborated and presented. Is the
eReadiness of both the delivering organisation as well as the
targeted market sufficiently developed? How are the issues of
technical feasibility, the choice of a learning platform, and
the constraints in ICT infrastructure to be tackled? Will content
be bought, developed, or both? What is the approach in pedagogy
and course methodology? How is the organisation being developed
and change management being initiated so that eLearning services
become finally embedded as a successful part of the organisations’
portfolios? ^top
5. Designing and Delivering Online Learning
Successful online learning requires a combination of appropriate
and high-quality design coupled with comprehensive online service
provision including online tutoring and moderation. This theme
addresses content design and development issues, including costing
and staff training. Presentations are welcome that highlight
successful online courseware experiences from initial launch
through to student evaluation and support. How are costs of
content development calculated? How is a business plan for course
development set up to become part of the institution’s
planning activities? How is content structured and its relevance,
quality, and contextualisation for real-world competencies ensured?
How are evaluation and assessment embedded? How are interactivity,
motivation and aesthetics integrated into the course design?
How is online tutoring and moderation incorporated? How is staff
development and teacher training organised? Which media applications
and development tools need to be selected in a given context?
What are the effective content management strategies and instructional
design models? Which delivery technologies should be selected?
How can appropriate Learning Content Management systems be defined
and implemented? How are reuse, quality assessment, digital
rights, privacy, and standards ensured? How is game-oriented
learning included in the learning programme? ^top
6. Localisation, Customisation and Content Development
In order for eLearning to have a real impact in Africa, indigenous
and sustainable educational content has to be created that takes
into account materials and services based on Africa's rich cultural
and linguistic diversity. With over 2,000 languages, Africa
cannot afford to ignore the issue of language and culture in
the development of Information Societies. Appropriate instructional
design practices, including open source approaches and open
access content management strategies, will be demonstrated and
discussed, as will good practice in appropriate localisation
and customisation of imported content. ^top
7. Introducing eLearning into the School System
The introduction of PCs into school systems and the building
of school networks are happening all over Africa. Access and
technology-driven policies and practices seem to dominate the
landscape, but how is the significant investment being matched
with the necessary accompanying measures for capacity building
of teachers, students, and parents? What services are provided
or initiated, be it for technical maintenance or for capacity
building with regard to the integration of ICTs into the instructional
processes, content development, and delivery? What kinds of environments
are created in which the technical infrastructures can become
embedded? A reality check with cases and documented lessons
learnt will be provided in this conference strand. ^top
8. Building ICT Infrastructures to Provide Access and Connectivity
in Africa
Despite the fact that many African governments have made significant
effort to provide basic connectivity services throughout the
African continent, the connectivity and bandwidth required for
many online applications is simply not yet available in most
areas. In this conference strand, the focus is on building the
infrastructure, from mobilising rural communities to the actual
laying of fibre in the ground, on to setting up university networks;
from building policy consensus for regional cooperation to linking
African institutions with R&D networks in Europe and India.
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, which have a particular resonance in the development context.
^top
9. Cutting-Edge Technology Developments for Africa
From virtual and augmented reality to the Semantic Web, Web2
concepts, and community-based services such as wikis, blogs
and blikis - how can the latest technologies can have an impact
on making learning available for all and on finding ways to
overcome the digital divide in the development context? What
experiences have been had with innovative enabling devices,
systems, and services based on mobile and wireless technologies,
streaming, collaborative and conferencing technologies, virtual
environments, and systems supporting ambient or contextual learning?
^top
10. eLearning in African Corporations
Today the success of a corporation depends on how quickly employees
are able to learn and transmit skills. Most companies in industrialized
countries have, therefore, adopted eLearning for flexibility
in scheduling, uniformity of training, economic advantages,
and requirements to brief large numbers of people about new
products and processes. While face-to-face training is dropping
continuously, training delivered through learning technologies
is increasing, often in double-digit figures. Large companies
are estimated to have at least 30% of their training online.
What is the status of the up-take of eLearning in and for African
corporations? What kinds of business services are available?
Who are the providers; what is their view of the market; which
business models have proved successful; and what are their perspectives?
Under this theme, corporations and their eLearning service providers
will present their cases and lessons learnt. ^top
11. Policy Issues and Large Scale Take-up of eLearning
Implementing eLearning strategies for educational systems is
a relatively new field. Gaps between policy and planning on
one hand and implementation on the other hand often occur. Processes
are not established or not as elaborated as in other sectors,
and competencies are often not yet well developed. Ministries
and agencies face the same challenges: How are strategies are
being put into practice, and what is the reality on the ground?
How can bridges between planning and implementation be gapped?
How can success indicators be established and quality management
implemented? How do government policies and initiatives need
to be constructed in order to stimulate a sustainable take-up?
How can public-private partnerships, brokerage services, social-partner
activities - including trade unions - become efficient catalysts?
Who are the successful stakeholders on both sides, and what
are the lessons that have been learnt? ^top
12. eLearning for Governments and the Public Sector
Training of government employees and politicians contributes
to building their capacities to create and implement local sustainable
policies and management practices and to facilitate the democratisation
process. The reality in Africa, however, is that targeted training
provision meeting the civil servants’ prime needs is still
rather the exception than the rule. eLearning is seen as a contribution
to fill the gap in the current provision of training. How is
eLearning being applied to support government administration
and service delivery, community access, sector programme development,
private initiatives, the overall development of a knowledge
society, and the regulatory frameworks and development of standards?
How does it contribute to the improvement of management skills,
including financial, time, and project management? How can it
improve the flow of information at all levels of the economy
and the society? What is the status of eLearning for the public
sector in Africa, and who are the stakeholders in both up-take
and in service provision, and what are the lessons learnt so
far? ^top
13. Libraries as Access Providers to Digital Resources and Distributed
Expertise
Access to information is essential in education and research,
and in many cases, libraries are in the forefront of providing
this service. How do libraries manage to play this crucial role
in allowing students and faculty to access digital resources
and capacities? What kind of infrastructure and organisational
framework are needed? How do they achieve affordable access
to electronic scholarly resources? How do libraries lead, negotiate,
support, and advocate for a wider availability of electronic
resources? How is combined purchasing organised so that it leads
to affordable and sustainable access to electronic information
in developing countries? Who are the stakeholders and their
organisations, and what are their achievements and the lessons
learnt? ^top
14. Open Source, Open Content and eLearning
Open source means distributed, shared applications; open software
development is high on the agenda in both the North and the
South. Many African countries tend to opt for the use of open
source as a key component of their national ICT strategy. But
does open source keep its promises against commercial offerings?
Open content as a new model of 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 regard to the potential
to reduce costs, to secure independence, and 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? ^top
15. eLearning in Development Cooperation
Technology-enhanced education and training in Africa is significantly
supported by international development cooperation. Organisations
such as the World Bank, UNDP, UNESCO, and many development agencies
view eLearning as a key element for achieving the Millennium
Development Goals. Governments from industrialised countries,
such as Australia and Japan, have been launching large-scale
ICT-based educational programmes. India has recently become
a major player in providing ICT infrastructures and services
for Africa. Coordination and harmonization of multilateral programmes
are becoming crucial. What are the lessons learnt and best practices?
What are the eLearning strategies guiding the numerous eLearning
projects? What are the obstacles, and to what degree have they
been overcome in the effort toward integrating projects into
sustainable local services? ^top
16. The New Africa – Europe Partnership Framework
The European Commission has formulated a new strategy framework
for Africa that relates to the “Millennium Development
Goals” and intends to accelerate Africa’s development.
In this framework, the digital divide is being 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 euros will be provided by
the European Commission, and African institutions and corporations
will be eligible 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 insight into the significant
opportunities available for African universities, health systems,
public services, and corporations. Representatives from the
European Commission will inform participants and discuss how
to become engaged successfully in the forthcoming European programmes.
^top
17. Research in eLearning
A significant international eLearning research community that
can be of great help for the emerging national and regional
eLearning programmes in Africa already exists. Cooperation between
African researchers and ICT- related research programmes in
Europe, the USA, and India has already been initiated. In this
conference strand, researchers from Africa and abroad will look
into how research on eLearning has been organised in the last
decade and discuss achievements, perspectives, and lessons learnt.
Furthermore, the latest findings in various eLearning research
fields will be presented and ways eLearning practitioners in
Africa can benefit from this work will be discussed. ^top
18. Quality Development and Quality Assurance
Quality development and quality assurance have become key issues
in virtually all aspects of education, both traditional and
ICT assisted. eLearning Africa invites contributions focussing
on quality in the field of eLearning, i.e., education provided
via all modes of blended learning and distance education through
a range of technologies. Suggested focuses are the theoretical
background of quality development of e-learning and the practical
use of successful tools in the field. Many concepts fall within
these categories, such as online testing and measuring effectiveness,
quality frameworks and measurements of quality, meeting the
needs of the learning community, and methods of defining, measuring,
and evaluating success. ^top
19. eLearning in Medical Education and the Fight against HIV
and AIDS
eLearning can improve the teaching of clinical skills, better
prepare students for their first patient encounter, and provide
a learning environment that is accessible independent of time
and place for all medical staff. In the fight against HIV and
AIDS, eLearning can accelerate the distribution of information
and the building of capacities for nurses, doctors, and teachers,
including those located in remote areas that have access to
communications. How do specific eLearning initiatives bring
high quality and well researched HIV, AIDS, TB, malaria, nutrition,
and anti-retroviral information to all levels of community in
Africa? How do institutions and already-established medical
networks from abroad support African medical systems via electronic
means? How are cultural influences that limit the dissemination
of information and the efficient building of capacities overcome
by technology-enhanced medical education and training? Who are
the stakeholders in both up-take and in service provision, and
what are the lessons learnt so far? ^top
20. Promoting Inclusivity: eInclusion
Further development of emerging Information Societies in Africa requires bringing the benefits of ICTs to all population segments, including people who are disadvantaged due to disabilities and age. This group often lacks access to both established and new, ICT-based services. Whereas, some barriers can actually be inadvertently created by the technology itself, ICT can greatly help overcome some of them by offering affordable access and services through appropriate tools and a "Design for All". eLearning, for example, has the potential to tackle the shortcomings in teacher education for "special needs". At the same time, it can be used by disadvantaged and handicapped people to access information and become engaged in collaboration and education. eLearning thus becomes a platform for achieving accessability by providing an environment and applications that allow and enhance teaching and learning for the disabled. This conference strand will include experts from the eInclusion sector, presenting and discussing their services, projects, achievements, strategies, and lessons learnt. ^top
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