Please notice: New time for this event. If you already registered we already have your details. If you would like to take part please use the form below. 

You are invited to our e/merge Africa review session on Thursday 12 March 2015 at 3 pm (GMT +2 Your location), where e/merge Africa Convenor Tony Carr and Project Manager Jakob Pedersen will review highlights of 2014 and announce events until May 2015. The event will take place in an Adobe Connect live meeting room.

In 2014 e/merge Africa started regular online activities. Across the sixteen professional development events held by e/merge Africa there were signups from 691 unique individuals across 54 countries including 536 unique individuals from 27 African countries. There were 249 unique individuals (including 177 from Africa) who actively participated in events by posting messages in the discussion forums or Facebook or by appearing in live online events. We would like to put some words on these and other successes have experienced through the year and invite you to give your input on where you think the project should be heading.

We are very excited to announce three very exciting keynotes and to open free online registration for the Transform 2015 Research Colloquium. Transform 2015, with the theme of  “Transforming Pedagogical Practices in African Higher Education with blended and online learning” will be held online from 6-10 April 2015. Transform 2015 is a collaboration between The African Virtual University, the e/merge Africa network and the Educational Technology Inquiry Lab at University of Cape Town.

Transform 2015 will facilitate live and asynchronous encounters with some of the most interesting work by emerging and established educational technology researchers in and from Africa. We are planning for up to 20 peer reviewed and invited presentations including three three keynotes from highly respected researchers:

You are invited to join Transform 2015 to connect with colleagues across Africa and the world in learning about some of the latest e-learning research findings from our continent and about how we can become more effective researchers.

6 March 2015 1 pm (GMT +2)

During 2015 we will convene several peer assist sessions. 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.

Our first request for assistance came from educational technologist Stephen Kigundu from Walter Sisulu University in South Africa. His challenge is about how to improve staff uptake and usage of an LMS in a higher educational institution. We had a great online peer assist via Adobe Connect with Stephen on Tuesday 27 January and an additional follow-up session will take place on 6 March at 1 pm. This will also be a one hour Adobe Connect session and more details will be announced as we are getting closer. After the session Stephen summarised some of the points raised and used this to create a shared Google Doc – a collaborative and editable Action Document which will create the basis for the followup session on 6 March. If you wish to participate and get access to this document then please drop us a mail at [email protected]. Your input will be much appreciated, either asynchronously in the Google Doc or as Peer Assistant during the live session on 6 March. In case you missed this session and you are curious about the process you are most welcome to view the Adobe Connect recording here and see peer assist resources we have made available in our Facebook Group

As an additional resource we had Jolanda Morkel to create this Sketch Note of the outcome of the peer-assist session:

If you have a case, proposal or situation, where you would find input from peers useful, please contact us on [email protected].