Presenter: Maxwell Omwenga, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, United States & Makerere University, Uganda
Format: Asynchronous discussion from 10 April – 13 April + Live online meeting on Monday 10 April at 2 pm
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How can researchers and communities collaborate to create and disseminate high quality OERs?
AgShare is a collaboration between existing organizations. It is an alignment initiative to leverage the attention of existing organizations in various domains to create and openly share different types of OER that strengthen MSc agriculture faculty and curriculum and create downstream uses of the OER for other stakeholders. The AgShare methodology consists of using a research-based approach for the co-creation and release/sharing of purposeful agricultural knowledge within and across stakeholder groups. It is a scalable and sustainable serving to fill critical gaps in agriculture related curriculum. Graduate students engage in participatory action research connecting them to communities and smallholders and through rigorous research practices, they collaborate to produce high quality, peer-reviewed research, case studies and extension materials for disseminating widely to the relevant stakeholders.
The College of Computing and Information Sciences (CoCIS) together with College of Agriculture and Environmental Studied (CAES) both from Makerere University, embarked on a collaborative research project whose aim was to investigate the forms of Agricultural Indigenous Knowledge used by different groups of farmers. Findings reveal that despite the advent of modern farming methods, many small scale farmers continue to embrace indigenous farming knowledge for managing soil fertility, controlling pests and diseases, controlling weeds, soil preparation, planting materials, harvesting and storage of indigenous root crops and animals.
The research project sought to establish the existing methods of documenting and disseminating such AIK, investigate the constraints of documenting and disseminating AIK, and determine the best strategies for documenting and disseminating of AIK as Open Educational Resources (OERs), so as to contribute to sustainable food security efforts in Soroti, Hoima and Masaka Districts in Uganda.
An AgShare Quality Assurance Toolkit was developed as part of the AgShare Project and is available at: (http://www.oerafrica.org/system/files/12155/agshare-toolkit-finalopt.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=12155). In it are resources supporting the development of open, high quality, localized content and research that follows best practices. The Toolkit provides resources and quality assurance processes which can be used to ensure that the open outputs developed for research and farm communities will follow best practices. This resource may provide inspiration to colleagues involved in similar initiatives in other disciplines.
Other open outputs from the project include an open online database that was developed using Agri-Drupal, to enhance access and exchange of information on agricultural indigenous knowledge. http://agshare-ik.mak.ac.ug [YouTube Videos]. Case studies to support agricultural research themes were also developed to support the delivery of the MSc Information Sciences programs in Makerere University.
Maxwell Momanyi Omwenga, is a PhD candidate at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, United States. His research interest include Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Multi Access Edge Computing. Omwenga was part of the technical team that developed the Agricultural Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) OER Database. Also worked closely with graduate students to train them on how to capture and produce AIK multimedia content using smart phones.
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