文章基本信息

标题：e/merge in Africa
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作者：Tony Carr ; Laura Czerniewicz
期刊名称：International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology
电子版ISSN：1814-0556
出版年度：2009
卷号：5
期号：5
页码：3-7
出版社：University of the West Indies
摘要：/merge 2008 -Professionalising Practices(http://emerge2008.net) was the third virtual conference on educational technology in Africa, following and building on on the e/mergeconferences in 2004 and 2006. e/merge2008took place online from 7 -18 July 2008 and was primarily designed to share good practice and knowledge about educational technology innovationwithin the further and higher education sectors in the region, as well as to strengthen communities of researchers and practitioners. e/merge2008was mainly for educational technology researchers and practitioners based in Southern Africa and the English-speaking African countries in West and East Africa. Participants from other regions who have an interest in the use of educational technology in Africa were also w armly welcomed, and in some cases actively recruited as presenters or workshop leaders. The Infodev Survey of ICT and Education in Africa (2007) across 53 countries described severe challenges to the integration of elearning within higher education institutions. Farrell and Isaacs stated that most "African universities are seriously constrainedin the use of ICT by a lack of computer stations and a lack of access to affordable high-speed Internet connectivity" (p23). These basic infrastructure issues may however be easier to address than the limited "human resource capacity to exploit the technology" (p26). In the same year the report on ICTs in Higher Education in Africa (2007) provided a detailed analysis of the use of ICTs in higher education across 8 African countries. Their results suggested a dearth of pedagogically based research on the use of ICTs in African universities and also that "many of the countries and their higher education institutions (HEIs) are struggling with the issue of recognised and accepted paradigms of e-learning that are not only pedagogically sound but also appropriate to their context" (p3). Both of these issues may suggest limited human capacity