Are you an educational technology user working in African higher education? Educational technology usage in African higher education has been changing for a while now, and even more so since the pandemic. Completing the e/merge Africa-IRCEES survey is a powerful act of participation in growing e-learning capacity across our continent. We need your help with this. The results will help us to design online opportunities aligned with your needs and suited to our African contexts. This survey should take between 15-30 minutes to complete. Please complete the survey HERE.
Facilitating Online provides a solid foundation for facilitating online events and courses. It is registered as a short course at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Facilitating Online was developed by the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at UCT and is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York as part of its support for the e/merge Africa network. It is convened by Tony Carr and co-facilitated by facilitators from across Africa.
We consider applications in the order in which they arrive so earlier applications stand a higher chance of being accepted
Recommendations by participants
“I learned many facilitation skills that I am now able to apply with my own students. I would recommend the course highly to anyone embarking on the online teaching and learning journey.” Dr Judith McKenzie, Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Cape Town.
“This course doesn’t just teach you ABOUT online Facilitation, it actually gets you to facilitate … It’s a real opportunity to learn and develop. And what’s more? It has an African taste…” Daniel Adeboye, Online Maths Tutor, Tutor for the Future
Leading the Session:.Prof. J.A.K. Olivier,Professor at North-West University, South Africa
Date and Time: Tuesday, 24 May 2022: 14:00 – 15:00 SAST
Session format: Webinar
Description of the Session:
In this session we will look at ways that open educational resources (OER) can contribute to the decolonisation of education within the African context. The session will specifically look at how localisation of OER through content adaptation and translation can play a role in this context. Furthermore, the potential for student agency will be explored in terms of student-driven open translanguaging practices towards OER as renewable assessments.
Presenter’s Bio:
Jako Olivier is a professor in Multimodal Learning at the North-West University (NWU) and he holds the UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources. He obtained his PhD in 2011 in which he researched the accommodation and promotion of multilingualism in schools through blended learning. Before he joined the NWU as lecturer in 2010, he was involved in teaching information technology and languages in schools in the United Kingdom and in South Africa. From 2010 to 2015 he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Arts of the NWU after being appointed as associate professor in the Faculty of Education in 2015. During 2012 he was a guest lecturer at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. In 2018 he was promoted to full professor at the NWU. In 2018 he received the Emerging Researcher Medal from the Education Association of South Africa and he is an NRF-rated researcher. His research, located within the NWU’s Research Unit for Self-directed Learning, is focused on self-directed learning, multimodal learning, open educational resources, multiliteracies, individualized and contextualized blended learning, e-learning in language classrooms and online multilingualism. As an activist for openness in education he is an active member of the Creative Commons Chapter of South Africa and leads the Network of OER and Multimodal Self-Directed Learning in Southern Africa (NOMSA)
Olivier, J. 2020. Self-directed open educational practices for a decolonized South African curriculum: a process of localization for learning. Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 16(4):20-28. https://doi.org/10.20368/1971-8829/1135330
Olivier, J. 2021. The affordances of open educational resources and student-centred open pedagogy for the decolonisation of teacher education in South Africa. In Maringe, F. ed. Higher Education in the melting pot: Emerging discourses of the 4IR and Decolonisation. Cape Town: AOSIS. pp. 145-162.
Date and Time: Tuesday, May 31 13:00pm – 14:00pm SAST
Panellists:.
Dr. Wanjira Kinuthia, Consultant. Formerly Associate Professor at Georgia State University
Dr Tutaleni I. Asino Associate Professor at Oklahoma State University
Description of the session:
Culture is the container in which all learning takes place. Even when using the same tools, the cultural context can have an impact on the learning outcomes. In this session, we will look at the cultural aspect of eLearning in Africa, the transitioning to a context where teaching with technologies varies; being in two contexts at the same time and faculty/professional development experiences.
Description of the session:
Panellists’ Bios:
Dr. Wanjira Kinuthiaworks on learning design projects in the US, Africa, the Caribbean, and UAE. Activities include consulting in higher education and NGOs on eLearning and curriculum development and mentoring graduate students. Service activities include Editorial Board membership on the International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication (IJEDICT) and the e/Merge Africa mentorship program. Research projects include OER and mLearning where she has edited several books and published many articles. Wanjira received her Ph.D. in Instructional Design and Technology and served as an Associate Professor for many years at Georgia State University.
Dr. Tutaleni I. Asino is Associate Professor in Learning, Design, and Technology and Director of the Emerging Technologies and Creativity Research Lab at Oklahoma State University and the founder of the Namibia House club in Clubhouse. He spends most of his time with one foot on the Afrikan continent in Namibia, the other on the North American continent in the USA and his arms stretched out to the world beyond. His research focuses on emerging technologies in education; diffusion of mobile devices in teaching and learning; Mobile Learning; Design for Mobile Devices; Indigenous knowledge; Openness (access, education, resources, pedagogy); Comparative International Education; and the role of culture in the development and evaluation of learning technologies.
Date and Time: Tuesday, 21 April: 15:00 – 17:00 SAST
Description of the session:
This workshop is designed to provoke colleagues to dream, scheme and plan together for the post pandemic future. We will use a range of facilitation processes to unleash the best thinking and creativity in the room about issues such as
the metaphors for our journeys through the pandemic,
our learning that transfers to the post-pandemic future,
structural changes needed in our institutions,
how to ensure that our institutions carry forward lessons from the pandemic, and
how to construct better blended lives.
Much of the workshop will take place in parallel breakouts on specific questions where participants can choose which room to join.
Session Facilitator:
Tony Carr is an Educational Technologist in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at University of Cape Town and convenor of e/merge Africa.