The PHEA Educational Technology Initiative

Project Partners PHEA Foundations – Ford, Carnegie, Kresge, MacArthur South African Institute for Distance Education Centre for Educational Technology, University of Cape Town PHEA Partner Universities, starting with Makerere University (participation of universities based on initial expressions of interest)

Vision To support interventions in partner universities to make increasingly effective use of educational technology to address some of the educational challenges facing the higher education sector in Africa and improve the efficiency of use of technologies through research

Strategic Objectives Support teaching and learning initiatives which integrate educational technology; Promote collaborative knowledge creation and dissemination; Get core institutional systems to work so that they support teaching and learning more directly; and Research and report on educational technology activity in African universities by means of a long term project.

Project Structure A two-part approach will be used for the project: Part A: A set of institutional level activities to identify needs, envisage possibilities and make specific plans for the use of ICTs in and across PHEA institutions Part B: A set of projects and strategies arising from Part A activities

Deliverables for Part A Institutional Integrated Educational Technology Strategies, building on existing documents and plans, owned and driven by the senior management of the participating institutions Each strategy will incorporate detailed processes of analysing the needs of institutions, determining the current status of their operations and the extent to which ICT is integrated into these, and determining options that might be considered in using ICT to meet specific needs With these Integrated Educational Technology Strategies, each institution will be in a position to implement and deliver on context specific educational technology activities and projects with an associated research proposal, some of which will be funded during Part B

Examples of Possible Part B Activities Strengthen the capacity of Senior Management at institutions to be able to drive ICT Integration strategies effectively and to the long- term benefit of the institution Developing the skills and competences of academics to integrate use of ICT into their education and research Enabling, encouraging, rewarding and incentivizing innovative experiments with ICT to support higher education activities, and in response to specific challenges Running pilot online learning programmes and courses Supporting lobbying, advocacy, and fundraising processes focused on mobilizing additional resources for ongoing and sustainable implementation of the institutional ICT Integration Strategies Monitoring and evaluation of ICT Integration activities within institutions Support and mentoring for research at institutional level so that development projects can include research components

Possible Inter-Institutional Activities Inter-institutional workshops in specialized areas of shared interest. Preparation and dissemination of research and planning documents and information Online collaborative activities including the running of electronic discussion lists on relevant topics, special online events, resource sharing and asynchronous discussion spaces Use of the above activities to create online Communities of Practice that are sustainable beyond the life of the Project Selective printing and dissemination of key resources generated during research Coordination of institutional research programmes against an overarching set of generic questions

Key Operational Principles SAIDE and CET are African implementation partners, not funders Funds have been secured for Part B, but their release will be dependent on quality of plans and proposals developed during Part A Work done for Part A can have a vision much broader than the funding limits of Part B, to set up additional mechanisms for mobilizing funds from other sources Objective is to ensure donor funds are spent in Africa by African institutions, rather than on consultants from the developed world Given the above, budgets for projects need to include full costs of institutional participation in projects

Research objectives To establish a research agenda for the project in collaboration with the partner universities To support the development of at least one research proposal for the projects planned for Part B of the project To build research capacity where necessary To support the development of a Community of Practice between the partner institutions and the team from SAIDE and CET

Research Proposal Structure Background to the proposal (link between project proposal) Research context Purpose of research and key questions Key concepts, previous research, potential theories & conceptual frameworks Research approach Research methods Participants Data collection instruments & techniques Data analysis methods & techniques Research activities and timelines Budgeting

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