26th ICDE World Conference on Growing Capacities for Sustainable e-Learning Provision

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14-16 October 2015, Sun City (South Africa)

The 26th ICDE World Conference took place only 2 weeks after world heads of states and prime ministers have approved the new ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), where SDG 4 is on education:

SDG 4

 

The conference counted about 67 countries and 900 delegates from all of the education spectre – from academics, practitioners and senior management in higher education, to experts and policy makers, who contributed to make this event a unique meeting place for exchange of knowledge, nurturing of innovative ideas and creating sound policies for the future educational agenda.

Special track on MOOCs for Development

The MOOCs4D II track explored the potential of MOOCs as a transformative lever for promoting education as a global common good, in developing economies, and in particular Africa, and as a possible platform for South-South-North collaboration.  The track brought together policy makers, experts, practitioners, scholars and representatives from MOOC initiatives from around the world to further the conversations begun during the initial 2014 MOOCs4D conference at the University of Pennsylvania in April 2014.

Stella Cavalcanti da Silva Porto, Learning and Knowledge Management Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB): “ICTs are allowing me to do things I could not do before. Don’t resist ICTs- reclaim your power”

Hence, Education is a common good: we should reclaim it from private to public spaces.

ITCILO participated in the special ICDE track on MOOCs for Development by sharing the experience of implementing a MOOC for developing new life-long learning pathways in the area of crowdfunding for development. More info can be found here.

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Most of our reflections can be found in the following takeaways from the conference:

  • The 4 areas in which MOOC are generally used: (a) Enhance core business; (b) promote research; (c) as resource; and (d) for credit.
  • The focus is on LEARNING; not on CREDENTIALS.
  • Completion is not necessarily the end goal of students, but the learning that happens during the MOOC;
  • New ways to assess learning progress: experience is more important than completion.
  • Interaction and social learning has much more relevance than traditional assessment.
  • There has been a shift from planning a output-oriented learning experience (certificate driven) towards an outcome-learning experience (project driven);

Interested in joining the next ICDE World Conference? It will take place in Toronto (Canada) in 2017! Stay tuned!

toronto

Massive Online Open Course on “Crowdfunding for Development”

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As part of the Centre’s innovation fund we explored the added value of ‘crowdfunding for development’. The results of this investigation have been documented step-by-step throughout the entire crowdfunding cycle and we think it’s about time to scale up this learning journey. In collaboration with GIZ and the Common Wealth of Learning we want to engage, jointly with you, in a massive open online course (MOOC). The objective of this collective networked learning experience is not only to share what we have learned already but to build upon this knowledge and crowdsource on interesting ‘crowdfunding for development’ cases globally. If your organisation or institution is interested to explore the added value of crowdfunding than joining this MOOC might be an excellent opportunity to transform your ideas into practice. The course will run over an eight week period and will start on the 4th of May. Signing up is free and can be done here.

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Takeaways from the UNESCO Mobile Learning Week 2015

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From our colleague Alessia Messuti

With a keen eye for innovation in learning, ITCILO attended this week the annual event on mobile learning hosted at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Since 2011, UNESCO hosts the Mobile Learning Week (MLW) to attract education leaders, researchers and practitioners from around the world to discuss the latest practices, experiences and issues related to how mobile technology (either alone or in combination with other technologies) can enable learning and open access to education.

With more than 1000 participants coming from 70 countries this year, the conference lasts for 5 days and offers the opportunity to attend workshops and breakout presentations from learning and development experts (USAID, UN WOMEN, UNESCO, GIZ, UNHCR, OECD…), private sector representatives (Pearson, Qualcomm, Intel, Microsoft, Vodafone…) and academics (UCL, ODU, …). Last but not least, the conference is FREE of charge. therefore an attractive opportunity for all those involved in leveraging technology for education.

 

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Blogging in 2012

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At the start of the new year we want to share with you the annual visitor’s report of this blog about learning and technology. It is available here : http://itcilo.wordpress.com/2011/annual-report/ . After 3 years, almost 60.000 visits and about 100 published articles it’s time to review, upgrade and innovate this knowledge sharing blog. Below you will a word cloud of key concepts that were addressed in the last  three years of writing.

What could we change ?

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Mobile learning toolkit launched

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A while ago we have mentioned our mobile learning plans at ITC-ILO. We are now happy to share some of the results of the ongoing mobile learning pilots. First of all Jennifer Parker finished her internship at ITC-ILO successfully and published her master thesis on ‘mobile learning for Africa‘. Part of this project included also the development of a mobile learning toolkit which we will use in the framework of the MyCOOP training package (“How to set up and run agricultural cooperatives“). With adding a mobile component to this training package, MyCOOP trainers will be able to choose out of 15 different methodologies where a mobile device can add value to the learning and training process. Feel free to contact us in case you are interested to pilot some of these mobile learning methods.

Mobile Learning Toolkit A5 by jenniparker

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E-Learning Africa in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

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ITC-ILO will be represented through DELTA in the upcoming E-Learning Africa conference, held in Dar es Salaam this year. DELTA will host an interactive knowledge sharing session which focuses on the rapid growth of Web2.0 technologies within the context of different projects in developing countries (with cases from World Bank Institute, International Training Centre of the ILO, UNHCR and FAO). The session will highlight how these types of technologies can become an important driver of innovation in learning and knowledge sharing from different perspectives.
E-learning Africa is the biggest network event in Africa for developing e-learning capacities in Africa.  Feel free to consult the entire conference programme.



Mobile learning (2)

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After introducing the mobile learning theme in this blog, DELTA started to explore how mobile learning could create an added value for learning at the Centre. Therefore we will update you in the upcoming months of the MyCOOP mobile project. The MyCOOP training package is about the management of agricultural cooperatives for cooperative managers and trainers. DELTA is exploring where mobile technologies could enrich the current existing training material. Mobile phones are widely used withing this target group and learning and training could be made more accessible by exploring this mobile track.

The exploration will tackle different important dimensions. What about the technology and infrastructure we can use for this? In this context it is interesting to refer to  new mobile for development report of UNICEF. Not only technological insights will be needed, more and more the pedagogical and didactical strategies that are needed to launch successful mobile learning are important. A good opportunity to explore these dimensions together with a range of mobile learning experts is to participate in the Massive Online Course on Mobile Learning. Click here if you want to learn more about this initiative.

Towards a new organization ?

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a visual overview of learning methodologies @DELTA @ITC-ILO

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International Certification for the Lifelong E-Learning course

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The Lifelong E-Learning course received its first international quality label for e-learning for capacity building. An intense review of the entire programme through peer review of international experts took place before granting this quality label. The ITC-ILO has proven its excellence in delivering e-learning supported capacity development together with other international institutions such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research,  the World Bank Institute and InWEnt – Capacity Building International.

The sixth edition of Lifelong E-Learning is planned in June 2011 and registration are currently open. A community of international professionals from developing countries will work, communicate and collaborate together during five weeks in a community of practice to improve technology enhanced learning within their institutions and organisations.

The international certificate can be found here.
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