Calls for Proposals and Nominations for e/merge Africa events

This post follows up on the survey report and an executive summary from the e/merge Africa Needs and Priorities Survey which are available for reading , download and comment in Google Drive.  The report concludes with a list of priority topics for e/merge Africa 2014 events which appears at the end of this message.

There are so many forms of deep expertise and rich professional experience across diverse contexts within e/merge Africa and our events should reflect this depth, richness and diversity. Please consider yourself as a potential online presenter or workshop leader and let us know what you would like to offer.  

Call for Proposals: You are invited to propose an online event for e/merge Africa in 2014 which shares your expertise, insight and practices with colleagues across Africa and the world using our online proposal form or feel encouraged to address more preliminary or speculative ideas to us at [email protected]. We will give preference to events addressing one or more of the priority topics for 2014 activities but will certainly consider other areas as well. Please submit proposals by 24 January if you want to be considered  for events from February to April.

Call for Nominations: You are invited to nominate a potential presenter from Africa or another continent for an e/merge 2014 event using our online nomination form.

Priorities for e/merge Africa Activities in 2014

The Needs and Priorities survey ends with a list of 21 topics in clusters focused on pedagogy, African context, technology, and evaluation and research practices. Calls for event proposals and nominations of presenters will be issued in early January 2014. 

  • The Pedagogy cluster  includes Designing online and blended courses;  ICT Integration; Use of Open Educational Resources; Teaching and facilitating online; Using Social Media for teaching and learning; Application of new learning theories for blended learning ; Using mobile technologies for teaching and learning; Innovative new ways to teach and learn;Gamification (Horizon Report 2013); and Digital Literacies (Glister, Davidson and Goldberg)
  • The African Context cluster includes Design for our African contexts; and MOOCs in Africa
  • The Technology cluster includes Creating course content; Capturing and editing images and audio; Communication tools; and Practices from Low Tech
  • The Evaluation and Research Practices cluster includes Using social media for research;  Using ‘open tools’ for research; Innovative practices in educational technology research; andLearning Analytics (Horizon Report 2013)

topics for 2014
Graphic by Rondine Carstens

e/merge Africa Needs and Priorities Survey Report

I have worked with Jakob Pedersen to analyse the results of the survey of 148 colleagues and after lots of feedback and editing we can now share the survey report and an executive summary with you. Both documents are available for reading , download and comment in Google Drive.

The report considers: 1) The e/merge Africa membership profile; 2) Institutional factors for e-learning skills development; 3) Social media practices of respondents; 4) Self-assessed skills and professional development priorities by respondents; 5) Preferred modes of involvement in e/merge Africa; 6) Topics suggested for practice based and research activities; and 7) Topics for e/merge Africa events in 2014. If you’re pressed for time then I’d suggest that you start with the Executive Summary.

Thanks to the 148 respondents to the survey. Special thanks to Jakob Pedersen for all his precise work on the data analysis and report writing, Tutaleni Asino, Alice Barlow-Zambodla, Cheryl Brown, Mohamed Ahmed El-bahay and Kate Whittaker for the time and effort devoted to providing detailed comments on the content, language and presentation of the report. We would like to acknowledge the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for their support of the e/merge Africa network.