E-content/E-learning Resources

The RUFORUM Secretariat is actively working with its Member universities to develop Electronic teaching resources for all the Regional Postgraduate Programmes . This e-content and related capacity building initiatives for the lecturers will help us to revolutionalise the way that teaching and learning is happening in our faculties /schools /colleges of Agriculture. The target is that by 2014, the content for the RUFORUM regional Postgraduate programmes  will be available in electronic format and accessible from anywhere. This content will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attributions Non commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Experiences with developing the Network’s capacity to create OERs

1. Resources were pooled from the Association of African Universities and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund e-content development for 8 MSc Agricultural Information & Communication Management courses and 5 PhD Aquaculture & Fisheries Science courses. Egerton University, Bunda College of Agriculture, Haramaya University and University of Nairobi participated in this project. A total of 169 topics have been developed and have gone through the initial subject matter peer review. After the writers implement the suggested corrections, the courses will go through pedagogy review and language/style review – and will eventually be published.
2. Haramaya University, Moi University and Makerere University are engaged in the AgShare pilot projects that have resulted in the development of a number of open educational resources in the areas of Agricultural Economics, Perspectives on Agricultural Extension and Dairy Production. The project involves Creative Common’s ccLearn, FLOSS4Edu, South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide) OER Africa and Michigan State University. The project places emphasis on engaging a wide range of stakeholders - NGOs, extension and other stakeholders in agricultural value chains - and the compilation of real case studies to add value to teaching and learning. These case studies form part of what is shared as open educational resources.
3. Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, Haramaya University, Mekelle University, University of Nairobi and Egerton University are engaged in a follow-up project to develop e-content for the MSc Research Methods and MSc Agricultural Information & Communication Management post-graduate programs. This initiative is funded from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and to date a total of 57 topics have been digitized. The writing of this content is scheduled to be completed in August 2011, after which it will go through a peer review process.

A History of E-Learning and OER related network activities

• Efforts to create enabling E-learning and ICT environment in RUFORUM Universities are ongoing. In April, 2011 two major workshops were held focusing on E-Content development for MSc Research Methods and MSc AICM. The other workshop focused on developing E-Learning Polices and Strategies. 
•  Transforming Teaching and Learning in Faculties of Agriculture - An AAU funded Intitative. Please click here to read more about this project which involves Egerton Universtity, Kenya and Bunda College of Agriculture. https://mrci315.wordpress.com/
• We will soon be hosting a number of e-learning enabled courses for the Regional Postgraduate Programes supported by RUFORUM. Please visit our MOOODLE site to see what our Learning Management System will look like. Please note that this is work in progress. http://ruforum.moodlehub.com/
• First Web 2.0 Training funded by CTA, RUFORUM and COL (September 2008) http://wikieducator.org/CTA/COL/RUFORUM_Training_Course
• Second Web 2.0 Training funded by CTA and RUFORUM (June 2009) http://ruforumsecretariat.blogspot.com/2009/06/web-20-training-for-electronic-content.html
• E-Content Training Workshop funded by ASARECA, RUFORUMhttp://ruforumsecretariat.blogspot.com/2010/01/e-content-development-staff-retooling.html.