How should recorded lectures be distributed – exclusively to registered students or beyond the borders of the classroom? Read more
Posts Tagged ‘linkedin’
Lecture Capture in Higher Education–Part 3
What are the technologies that universities use to produce their lecture recordings? Read more
Lecture Capture in Higher Education–Part 2
Yesterday I looked at the possibilities that lecture capture provides for improving learning in university settings. Some of the early pioneers have written down their reflections about introducing lecture capture at their universities and shared them on their blogs.
UNU brings graphic recording to Online Educa Berlin
At an e-learning conference, you would usually expect people with laptops, netbooks, iPads or Kindles – and you’re right, I saw lots of them at Online Educa Berlin this year. That’s probably why most people looked at me a bit suspiciously when I came with paper, markers and chalk. Read more
Social Reporting – document your meetings collaboratively
Whoever has attended one of our workshops in the past 12 months or so could notice that there is always more than one person busy documenting the process and results of the meeting. Together with the participants we jointly contribute to some form of reporting about the event – be it in text, photos, images or videos.
From Access to Knowledge (A2K) to social inclusion
Independent of the fact that physical access to the internet remains a major problem in developing countries, improved access alone does not solve all problems. Physical access to ICT is not enough. In order to translate into practical benefits, access needs to enhance social inclusion.
“Information-Haves” vs. “Information-Have-Nots”
Today the internet has become an important space for business, interest articulation, forming of the political will and knowledge sharing. But it looks like only the minority of the global population has access to these new technology-enabled opportunities for participation.
African Research
Peer-reviewed African published journals
“Historically, scholarly information has flowed from North to South and from West to East. It has also been difficult for African researchers to access the work of other African academics.”[1]
Scientific publication rates, for example in peer-reviewed journals, are often used to measure the scientific productivity of a country.
“In surveying journals listed by the Science Citation Index for the period from 1991 until 1998, the authors found that 85 percent of all scientific papers originated from Western Europe, North America and the Asiatic region.”[2]
Three nations dominate Africa’s research output — with South Africa leading by a long way, ahead of Egypt in second place and then Nigeria.[3] In order to evaluate the state of science in a given country, one should look beyond the number of publications though. The numbers alone do not necessarily tell you everything about the dynamics of the scientific community or “scientific productivity”. Considering its total population, Kenya takes the first place in the production of scientific publication.[4]
And still there remains much to be done to support research in Africa. Because of this underrepresentation of African research, the African Journals OnLine (AJOL) tries to make African-origin research output available to Africans and to the rest of the world. It is a partnership between hundreds of African-published journals that even subsidizes access to the journal for low-income countries.
Maike Schansker (schansker[at]unu.vie.edu)
Further resources for further reading:
A citation analysis of sub-Saharan African library and information science journals using Google Scholar: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7002/is_2_19/ai_n42544257/pg_2/?tag=content;col1
This study shows that citation data from Google Scholar may be used to evaluate non-ISI indexed journals, in this case sub-Saharan African LIS journals.
Africa Research Central has the goal to “constantly update information about institutions with African primary source collections so as to facilitate international research in African Studies“ (available in English and French): http://www.africa-research.org/
The Africa Research Institute aims to reflect, understand and build on the dynamism in Africa by looking for practical examples of achievements and communicating that experience to organizations, companies and policy-makers: http://www.africaresearchinstitute.org
Africa Research Bulletin is a bulletin service on Africa, appearing in two series – Political, Social and Cultural, and Economic, Financial and Technical: http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0001-9844
[1] http://ajol.info/
[2] Manuel Martínez-Bueno, Antonio Gálvez, Mercedes Maqueda, Eva Vladivia: Scientific Publication Trends and the Developing World, in: American Scientist vol. 88, Issue 6, p. 526
Durban At Its Best – Getting Ready For The World Cup
From 18 May till 21 May I attended a conference in Durban, South Africa and could not help, but noticing, how excited everybody already was in the prospect of the upcoming Soccer World Cup. Read more
Graphic Recording of Climate Change Roundtable
On Friday 4th June the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), Germanwatch and the China Civil Climate Action Network (CCAN) organized a Europe-China Climate Change Roundtable at the UN Campus during the week of climate talks in Bonn. SCIENTIA was invited to support the preparation of the workshop and to graphically facilitate the meeting. Read more
History is boring? “UN Voices” proves it wrong
Do you still have bad memories of your history classes in school? In rankings, history regularly makes the bottom places of students favorite school subjects. But history is more than a bunch of boring things that happened a long time ago. “UN voices” proves how lively and interesting history can be and provides you with multiple perspectives on the evolution of UN ideas. Read more
Sustainable Development – a UN idea?!
Since its emergence the UN has played a significant role in bringing topics such as sustainable development on the global agenda. Through treaties and conferences the UN idea was recorded in many spheres of international reign. Since the Seventies a tremendous proliferation of UN agencies involved in Sustainable Development has taken place.Now it is time to reevaluate the UN’s efforts to not lose sight of the ultimate goal!
Read more
Capacity development has become a core instrument of modern development cooperation
Today everybody talks about “developing” capacity. Capacity “building” has been eliminated from many people’s vocabulary. But whether you talk about building or developing capacity – what exactly does everybody strive to advance in the name of development?
Integrating E-Learning: Key Challenges for Higher Education
Speed geeking, Human sociagram, World café, E-learning. A three-day workshop jointly hosted by UNU-ViE, DAAD and COL was anything but boring, bringing revolutionary concepts and a variety of facilitation tools, and participants from over a dozen Sub-Saharan African nations . Find out more on how they avoided death by powerpoint.
Facilitation-the ultimate ice breaker for meetings and workshops?
What exactly is the magic of good facilitation work? Is it true that a facilitator can break the ice between workshop participants right in the beginning of a workshop? Is it possible to bring everything into the open by using facilitation techniques? If you have your doubts, you should read this! Read more
