The COTE (Certificate in Online Teaching for Educators) is a short, fully online course recently designed and offered at the University of Eswatini. It seeks to empower educators with skills and knowledge on the design and development of online programes, courses and lessons. It examines the creation of digital learning materials, online facilitation and authentic online assessment. In this session, we will discuss its creation, design and implementation process, the wins and gains, as well as the challenges and solutions identified throughout this process.
Prof. Karen Ferreira-Meyers: is the Coordinator Modern Languages/Linguistics of the Institute of Distance Education at the University of Eswatini. She obtained various qualifications: MA Romance Philology (French-Spanish), Honours Portuguese, Post-Graduate Diploma Translation (French-English-French), MA Linguistics, LLM Degree (Legal aspects of new technologies), PhD in French (feminine Francophone autofiction). She has published a monograph on Francophone autofiction, several articles (autofictional feminine writing, crime fiction, 20th and 21st Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone African authors, distance and e-learning), participates regularly in international conferences and is a keen translator and interpreter.
In designing meetings, learning activities and workshops our most generative and productive experiences are found in the zone between the extremes of total control (which silences participants) and a complete absence of structure (thus no focus for shared engagement). Liberating structures are meeting processes designed to provide just enough structure to unleash the brilliance and creativity of a group of people. Liberating Structures were originally designed for face to face interaction and have been extensively applied to online engagement during the pandemic.
The e/merge Africa team will introduce the concept of Liberating Structures and facilitate a highly experiential workshop which features five structures, namely: Waterfall, Impromptu Networking, Spiral Journal, 1-2-4-All and Conversation Cafe’. The Liberating Structures website features 33 of the over 50 structures that have been developed.
The e/merge Africa Team
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.
Dr Alice Barlow-Zambodla ise/Merge Africa Network Regional Coordinator for Southern and East Africa
Jakob Pedersen is Project Manager for e/merge Africa, Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT), University of Cape Town
Irene Maweu is an Online Facilitator for e/merge Africa Facilitating Online Course
Description of the session: Have you ever thought about your own positionality and what it means for you as an educational technology researcher? Our positionalities shape our particular research interests, what we regard as worthy of studying, our relationships with our research participants, conceptual and theoretical lenses and the research approaches we are drawn to, and more. This interactive session will engage participants in a reflexive process where we unpack different kinds of positionalities together (social, intellectual, decolonial), the relationship between these and doing educational technology research.
Overview and context In a context where Sub-Saharan African education systems, economic systems, governmental systems, academia, and the region itself continue to experience the legacies of colonisation, this workshop series seeks to create and support a sustainable and critical community of emerging researchers, research-practitioners and academics in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), with a focus on the field of Education Technology (Edtech) in order to: address the colonial issues embedded in the field of Edtech and academic publishing systems and processes whereby epistemic orthodoxy systematically excludes non-Western epistemological, ontological, and methodological practices, and; produce ground-breaking work that will catalyse distinctively African educational scholarship, voices, thoughts, experiences and agendas. This will be a series of 3 workshops over a 3 months period from March to May 2023, covering critical educational technology conceptual frameworks, decolonising research methods, research tools, techniques, ethics and governance, and supporting SSA researchers towards publication.
Objectives of the writing workshops series
Goals involve: To create and support a sustainable and critical community of emerging academics in Sub-Saharan Africa concerned with the topic of Decolonising Educational Technology. Enable participants to submit high-quality papers to journals on educational technology such as – but not limited to – the UNESCO Chair Special Edition on Decolonising Education Technology.
Audience The call for applications is open to emerging researchers or research practitioners from Sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on education, education technologies, critical pedagogies, decolonising education, decolonising edtech, education and social justice, digital inclusion and digital rights in education, edtech and power. Participants from diverse backgrounds and minority groups are encouraged to apply. Attendance the two previous workshops not required
Nompilo is a Lecturer in the Department of Curriculum Studies and the Centre for Higher and Adult Education at Stellenbosch University. She has been working with educational technology since 2005 in both student and staff development, and as a researcher. Nompilo holds a PhD (Rhodes University) which focused on understanding the agency of academics as they integrate educational technology and quietly resist a range of constraining structural forces. Developing from this, her current research interests focus on reflexivity and critique by seeking a nuanced understanding of educational technology practices in higher education through a better understanding of context and the use of social theories.
Nicola is an Educational Technology Specialist at senior lecturer level in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) at Rhodes University. She provides learning design support and designs professional development opportunities for academics to use technologies effectively in their roles as educators. Nicola supervises postgraduate students and co-teaches formal courses in Higher Education. She received her PhD from the University of Cape Town. She values contextual and culturally responsive approaches to learning design and educational technology usage. She seeks to expand critical perspectives on educational technologies in Higher Education and regularly contributes to collaborative research.
Resources: Tshuma, N. (2021). The vulnerable insider: Navigating power, positionality and being in educational technology research. Learning, Media & Technology, 46:2, 218- 229, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2021.1867572 (pre-print available here)
What is critical in EdTech research? Daniela Gachago in conversation with Nicola Pallitt, Najma Agherdien, Laura Czerniewicz, Tutaleni Asino & Paul Prinsloo. Special Issue: Critique and Criticality in CriSTaL. Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CriSTaL), 11(SI): 119-126. DOI: 10.14426/cristal.v11iSI.651
About the partners/organisers EdTech Hub is a global research partnership. Our goal is to empower people by giving them the evidence they need to make decisions about technology in education. We use an integrated approach that marries research, technical assistance and innovation to address the educational challenges faced by low- and middle-income countries around the world. We do this by collaborating with partners to provide governments with the resources to effectively integrate EdTech into their education systems. We work globally, and also on the ground in 7 focus countries: Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. We are supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, World Bank, and UNICEF. Learn more at www.edtechhub.org.
Emerge Africa e/merge Africa is an educational technology network which is mostly for educational technology researchers and practitioners in African higher education. Since 2014 e/merge Africa has offered regular professional development activities in the form of online seminars and workshops and short courses.
