Title of Event:

Intercultural Collaborative eLearning in Africa: Reflections on Practical Experiences and the Perspectives

Event Leaders:

• Berhanu Beyene, ASELEH e.V., University of Hamburg, Germany
• Prof Rolf Granow, oncampus GmbH, Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, Germany
• Prince M. Obiri-Mainoo, National Africa Foundation, Ghana 
• Prof Cecil Bruce-Boye, cbb GmbH, Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, Germany

Content:

Beside its other benefits, online-learning enables new challenges of international and intercultural collaboration among teachers and students. Objective of the workshop is to discuss and define viable ways for cross-cultural exchange of know-how and content for eLearning and fostering students to build their skills in cross-cultural virtual groups. The vision behind this is to integrate African partners at equal footing and at the earliest possible time with the global community, so that they may not remain marginalised from the world of eLearning. The workshop is based on the results from a number of Afro-European online courses during the last two years and will reflect on their evaluation.

The workshop leaders are engaged in establishing and maintaining an African-European network of higher learning institutions and intercultural life-long learners, particularly using online learning. Therefore, we planned to bring the following themes to discussion and, indeed, based on the discussion, we expect to establish teams to materialise the results from this workshop.

1. Education Technology and Teachers' Education: A Case Study of Ghana (Prince M. Obiri-Mainoo)
2. Ethiopian-German and Global Collaboration in eLearning: Two Years Experiences in Life-Long Learning (Prof Rolf Granow)
3. Evaluation results of the Ethiopian-German and Global Online Courses (Berhanu Beyene)
4. ePortfolio-based Feedback System to Enhance Intercultural Collaborative eLearning: A Case Study in Developing Countries (Berhanu Beyene)
5. Afro-European Collaboration in Realising eLearning in Ghana in Cooperation with Kofi Annan Technology Centre (Prof Cecil Bruce-Boye)

Target Audience:

This workshop is intended for management groups and professionals in education and educational technology institutions, corporate organisations as well as those who are interested in building the capacity of intercultural (international) collaborative eLearning, most particularly in line with Afro-European cooperation. The workshop gives brief insight into our experience in this area and tries addressing the possible collaboration areas.

Hence we plan to invite participants from decision-making and management officials in education and eLearning service providers (including potential investors), teachers, tutors, mentors and experts from assessment and evaluation centers.

Prerequisite Knowledge:

There are no prerequisites set for participating in the workshop, but we strongly recommend participants have basic knowledge on education and educational technology, change management in higher learning, etc., mainly because the workshop will be interactive, requiring active participation in the discussion and group work later on.

Outcomes:

The workshop will present practical experiences in intercontinental (mainly Africa and Europe) collaborative eLearning and discuss its strategic dimension. Its objective is to initiate an open community to share know-how, infrastructure and content across continents.

The workshop has been developed to serve as an entry point into high-performance collaborative eLearning for participants. After the workshop ends, participants will be able to apply their experiences in practice by engaging in post-workshop activities with other workshop participants through the support of online tools.

The workshop is sponsored by oncampus (www.oncampus.de) and

cbb (www.cbb-software.com).