e-learning

The Mozambique ICT Institute (MICTI) is one of the prioritized projects in the Action Plan for the country’s ICT implementation Strategy that was developed in 2000.

Tanzania has embarked on enhancing the availability and quality of secondary education. Through an earlier Sida supported project, necessary data infrastructure has been installed at 32 government teacher’s training colleges with a purpose to quickly train a large number of teachers, mostly in-service and at distance through the utilization of ICT tools.

There is a great demand for education in Mozambique. E-learning technologies are still to be introduced and make part of the national strategy for ICT policy implementation. In comparison with the first world, many students lack access to tools and a proper study environment. The objective of this project is to establish an E-learning Centre in order to:
• Facilitate flexible e-learning solutions and access to new learning technologies
• Offer a structured and professional study environment
• Stimulate the interest for software application and development through computer games
• Facilitate LAN gaming and access to educational games
• Facilitate access to Internet
• Create an environment that stimulates innovation and entrepreneurship within the area of ICT

The E-Learning Centre will consist of; 1) E-Learning, 2) Internet Café and 3) LAN games.

The centre will be situated within the Eduardo Mondlane University area, and will facilitate serious studies as well as Internet surfing and gaming, and serve as a resource centre for distance learning initiatives within UEM. The centre aims to be self-sustainable within short to medium term, given that the initial infra-structure is supplied by an external party. MICTI is fully responsible for implementing the centre according to the below work plan.

This is a pilot project for the ICT4ICT Swedish research and will serve as a test bed for delivering ICT based learning modules that will induce wider spread of ICT. The project will focus upon creating and delivering e-modules that can help regional ICT development in two countries in the CEE region. The specific objectives are to: 1. identify the needs for ICT related content in each of the two countries, 2. find the suitable way for distributing it, 3. create sample learning modules and make them widely accessable, and 4. establish a Local Dissemination Point for continous development and implementation of the modules. The principal goals of the project are increasing the critical mass of ICT aware people and networking skills for ICT difusion.

1) Both the Swedish research and the Project aim to create a web based e-learning education platform. Both parts support each other and the one cannot be without the other. Improvements in computer technology and reinforced networks will be necessary.

The subject matter will be the creation of a Masters programme in Transport and Energy for a Sustainable Development, including health aspects. GIS will be among the methods applied in the programme. This e-learning programme can be extended to any other country, provided that it has the required ICT facilities.

2) The main method will be e-learning on an e-learning education platform equipped with voice- and camera-chat, mail, exchange of files, discussion board. Weekly meetings will be held to develop the various parts of the common educational programme. Both the Swedish and the non-Swedish partners will play active parts in this process.

3) Bibliography: http://www.people.memphis.edu/~ffowler/onlineu.html

University of South Africa: Colleges Online http://lsa.unisa.ac.za/

World Bank Global Distance Educationet http://www1.worldbank.org/disted/

The Educator's Reference Desk http://www.eduref.org/

The Gateway to Educational Materials http://www.thegateway.org/

The Education Resources Information Centre, with the ERIC Database http://www.eric.ed.gov/

The Open University http://www.open.ac.uk/ 

Sivertun, Å (2000) Distance GIS - A distance course in GIS based on PBL.

Sivertun, Å. (2002) ‘Professional training as a resource.

Both the Research and the Project aims at creating a web based e-learning education platform for a Masters programme in Transport, Energy and Health for a Sustainable Future. The main method will be e-learning on a web based education platform equipped with voice- and camera-chat, mail, exchange of files, discussion board. Improvements in computer technology and reinforced networks will be necessary to carry out the web based e-learning education. GIS will be among the methods applied. Weekly meetings between the partners and Swedish research team will be held from December 2004 to April 2005 to develop the programme. This e-learning education programme can be extended to any other country, provided that it has the required ICT facilities. The significance of this proposal will be to design and evaluate a web based e-learning platform which will greatly advance Third World higher education.

The proposed study concerns content and platform development for a rural e-learning project in Tanzania in cooperation with pCET at UDSM, Tanzania. The research project will focus on how platforms and content are developed and used by university staff and the target group in the rural areas chosen. We want to point towards the need for a deeper reflection over the technologies per se and what connotations they carry in a postcolonial context. Focus group interviews, analysis and process evaluation together with the researchers at UDSM and focus group interviews in the target group will be the methods applied. The project has the ambition to integrate the on-going technological development at UDSM with process evaluation and involvement of potential users of the systems. Feminist and postcolonial technoscience is the theoretical base.

This is a continuation of a previous project funded by SPIDER during 2005-2006. The purpose is to support development in four African countries by improving health research, teaching, and services. Objectives include building national and regional capacity in information retrieval and training, encouraging collaboration among persons involved with information retrieval, and capitalizing on Swedish investments in research training and research.

In the first part of this project (funded by SPIDER 2005-2006), a set of resources for processing Amharic (the working language of the Ethiopian government) was developed. The resources consist of text collections and tools for word-level analysis of Amharic. The primary goal of this continuation is to refine, extend and further develop the resources in order to make them useful to both the public and the research community.

This project, a continuation of a previous SPIDER-funded project, targets a large-scale implementation of an interactive TV and SMS "classroom" setting for ICT-enabled distance tuition at Bangladesh Open University.