CILL secures AAUN (Australia-Africa Universities Network) funding (AUD 10000) through competitive application process, for the project titled "21st Century Skills for Education Practitioners : Rapid e-Learning Tools to develop Interactive Learning Materials". The project is about the development of an online Postgraduate Certificate in Rapid e-Learning Methodology aimed at the professional development of educators. The aim is to equip educators with the relevant 21st Century Skills where ICT integration in Education practices is a main driver of change, innovation and reforms in educational practices.
The rapid e-learning methodology has been used at the University of Mauritius to develop its online courses, and has been used in capacity building initiatives for educators with the support of Microsoft. In Uganda with the Makerere University, and in India under the COL Lifelong Learning Programme for Farmers in Agriculture. It is now proposed to scale up from short duration capacity-building initiatives to an online professional postgraduate programme. The idea is to decentralise, and empower education practitioners to develop their own interactive materials for dissemination and sharing. It further aims to build local and regional capacity in the field of multimedia-based open (and distance) learning. The educational philosophy behind this project is inspired from Moon’s position in the 2010 issue of the COL Connections magazine. Moon argues that it is time to implement new technologies in teacher training courses so as to focus on the continuous professional development of educators. Adopting a very critical view of the so-called brick-and-mortar institutions for teacher training, Moon highlights “there is absolutely no way the bricks-and-mortar institutions of teacher training created in the last century will be adequate for the 21st century needs”.
The aim is to develop and digitize the four self-instructional modules that will make up the programme of studies. The key challenge will be for the team to propose a specific e-learning framework or model on which the pedagogical conception of the course will be based. The outcome of the work will be a complete programme of studies ready to be delivered online to participants coming from the different regions of the world with a main focus on Africa. The awarding body will be the University of Mauritius and the partners from Makerere University and Curtin University will contribute in the content development and the elaboration of the global pedagogical strategy for the conception and delivery part. The online learning platform that will host the programme will be based initially in Mauritius and delivered through the iLearn Platform of the University of Mauritius.
