Please notice we have decided to run this event again as Dr. Kellen Kiambati was unable to attend in February. Please do join us! 

Peer Assistee: Dr. Kellen Kiambati, senior lecturer, University Human Resource Development Department, Karatina University, Kenya

Peer Assist lead: Dr. Alice Barlow-Zambodla, e/merge Africa

Time and Date: Tuesday 13 March 2018 at 1 pm SAST

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Our first request for a peer assist this year comes from Dr. Kellen Kiambati, senior lecturer  at Human Resource Development Department, Karatina University in Kenya. Her challenge is about how to re-engineer pedagogy to improve the instructional abilities of teaching faculty.

As part of the peer assist process and through discussion around this the challenge presenter will gain greater insight into the challenge and how to address it. Attendees are encouraged to be active participants and to share questions of clarification, assumptions and later, possible solutions. Let us share in Kellen’s challenge and assist her towards some solutions.

Join us for this session and give Dr. Kellen Kiambati your input

About the peer assist process The peer assist process offers simple yet effective steps to a group of peers address a challenge brought by a colleague. We identify and question assumptions, then share knowledge and insights which can facilitate the development of innovative and context sensitive solutions.

This event has finished. To submit your own professional challenge please contact us

Dr. Kellen Kiambati holds a PhD in Business Administration with a focus in Strategic Management from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and MBA in Strategic Management from the Kenya Methodist University. She is a Strategic Management Consultant with very wide experience spanning over ten years. Currently she is a senior lecturer at Karatina University, Kenya

Dr Alice Barlow-Zambodla e/Merge Africa Network Regional Coordinator for Southern and East Africa
I have a multi-disciplinary background in Agriculture, Botany and ICTs for education resulting in lecturing and research experience totalling more than 25 years at the Universities of Transkei and Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa. My more recent experiences involve working as a Programme Specialist for 7.5 years at SAIDE, an educational research and development NGO. This work involved working with various tertiary institutions on the continent focussing mainly on open and distance learning programmes,  the development and use of open education resources, ICTs for Education and development, as well as the monitoring and evaluation of educational interventions. In my capacity as a Vodacom Change the World volunteer 2014-2016  I have been working with the Buffelshoek Trust  to set up and capacitate 11 ICT Centres situated at 9 rural schools in Bushbuckridge Municipality, Mpumalanga, South Africa.

Presenter: Calkin Suero Montero (Ph.D.), University of Eastern Finland

Time and Date: Tuesday 6 March 2018, 1 pm SAST

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Most uses of technologies in education and training today do not support 21st-century learning skills. In many cases, new technologies are simply reinforcing old ways of training and learning in current school settings and very often they are introduced according to a narrow perception as being suitable only for talented youth or only for Science-, Maths- or Engineering-oriented majors. Current developments call for a move from this elitism to the recognition that fluency with making technologies represents knowledge and skills valuable for every citizen.

The maker movement is a trend in which individuals or groups of individuals create (and market) products that are recreated and assembled using recycled materials including  electronic, plastic, silicon and virtually any raw material. Digital fabrication, complementary, is a process that joints design with production through the use of tools such as 3D modelling (computer-aided design) software and 3D printing. Nowadays, several studies assure that digital fabrication and making technologies, if coupled with proper learning methodologies such as Constructivism can provide learning experiences that promote young people’s creativity, critical thinking, teamwork, and problem solving skills, which are essential and necessary in the workplace of the 21st century.

The eCraft2Learn project will research, design, pilot, and validate a learning ecosystem for making computer-supported artefacts in both formal and informal learning contexts. The eCraft2Learn project seeks to establish digital fabrication and making as 21st century learning activities in formal and informal educational contexts; and to encourage a paradigm shift in technology education from black box and silo products – avoiding pre-programmed and pre-fabricated solutions which appear as black boxes – to the white box paradigm, so that learners change roles from consumers of digital technology to designers and makers of transparent problem solving artefacts.

In this webinar, Dr. Calkin Suero Montero will:

• Explain maker movement and digital fabrication
• Engage us in considering what this means for classrooms in educational contexts more broadly (formal and informal, school and university)
• Share PBL approaches that support 21st century skills through digital fabrication and making from the eCraft2Learn project
• Explain what a paradigm shift in technology education entails and why it is necessary
• Tips educators need to consider for using making in the classroom

This seminar has ended – for recording and resources presented please refer to the Facebook event page for this event

Dr Calkin Suero Montero obtained her PhD in computer science at School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Japan. She works at the intersection of human-computer interaction, affective computing and ICT for development within educational contexts. She has ample experience working in multicultural environments on the deployment of innovative solutions to societal challenges with a particular focus on the application of educational technologies. She is Senior Researcher and H2020 eCraft2Learn Project lead investigator and coordinator at the School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland.

WhatsApp is being used across African Higher Education Institutions for teaching and learning activities in a variety of innovative ways. Join Unity Chipunza (Bindura University, Zimbabwe) and Nicola Pallitt (University of Cape Town) as they share their experiences of using WhatsApp with students in their contexts and facilitate discussion. We want to hear from you too – we invite you to share your practices, tips, challenges and successes. Tell us what’s up in your WhatsApp:)

Tuesday 12 December 2017 at 1 – 3 pm SAST

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Before the chat:

1. You are invited to join Whatsapp group ahead of time as you will not be able to access the discussion and media shared in the group before you joined https://chat.whatsapp.com/LGlZMP08741EZIjnkQpabH  Joining this group will be your way of signing up.
2. Please view the introductory stimulus here:
   

During the chat:

As WhatsApp can be quite a messy space for discussion. Conversation will happen in stages, guided by 1 question at a time:

Q1: How have you been using WhatsApp with students in your context? (first 30 mins of the chat)

Q2: What motivated your choice to use WhatsApp? (15 mins)

Q3: What do you think your students learn through interaction with their peers and/or lecturers in WhatsApp groups for their courses? (15 mins)

Q4: What are some of the challenges you and your students encounter when using WhatsApp with students? (15 mins)

Q5: Do you have examples of particular practices that work well? (15 mins)

Q6: Imagine you have a colleague who is going to use WhatsApp with students for the first time – what tips would you give them? (15 mins)

Q7: Please share your reflections about this chat (15 mins)

* Please do not share irrelevant info or use people’s contacts for marketing purposes. If you wish to correspond with the e/merge Africa team, email us at [email protected]

* Feel free to post images, screenshots, videos, voice notes, documents – any media that helps you to participate in the discussion more fully.

* By participating in the group you are consenting to research about the use of WhatsApp for professional development by members of e/merge Africa.

After the chat:

• Activities in the WhatsApp group will be recorded for research but not shared publicly. Instead, we will provide a summary of the discussion where individuals’ contributions are acknowledged. Depending on contributions, we will harvest collective responses to create an OER.
• Once the chat has ended, group members are welcome to stay and extend the conversation. What happens next is up to all of us:) The group administrators will not delete the group.