Learning4Content/Workshops/Face-to-Face schedule/L4C27/Workshop Report

The Kenya Institute of Education (KIE), through the Assistant Director –Open and Distance Learning (Mrs. Elizabeth Mbasu) made a request to the Commonwealth of Learning to conduct an L4C workshop inline with the overall objectives of the Learning4Content initiative. This workshop was conducted by Nicholas Kimolo and was attended by twenty participants comprising of 12 women and 8 men from various departments within the Kenya Institute of Education.

The workshop was scheduled for four days but was extended to cover an extra two days for practical sessions geared at developing a Life Long skills manual to be made available within the WikiEducator. More specifically the objectives of this workshop were:

1. To build capacity to selected persons from the KIE in content development and publishing and focusing (for now) on instructors and content developers.
2. Expose participants to the use of WikiEducator and Open Educational Resources
3. Expose the participants to multimedia (Video and Audio) content design including animation, image manipulation and flash using Open Source Software Technologies
4. To plan on the development of selected Lessons within WikiEducator

Workshop Proceedings

The workshop started off with introductory remarks from Elizabeth Mbasu who thanked the Commonwealth of Learning for supporting the workshop. She also summarized the objectives of the workshop detailing the long-term objective to be the development of relevant training materials that can be used by KIE in achieving its Open and Distance Learning Objectives.

After the Opening remarks, the COL Consultant (Mr. Nicholas Kimolo) introduced the participants to the WikiEducator and Open Educational Resources. This was then followed by a presentation on Open Educational Resources and a justification of the choice to develop materials as OERs. Participants were also introduced to sources of already existing OER’s that can be of benefit to them and of which they can use with immediate effect. The participants were introduced to the COL ODL Template and its functionality as this was seen as the standard of which all the content developed will adhere to. The participants then proceeded to work on the WikiEducator as per the agenda and were introduced to WikiEducator and were able to cover the relevant topics according to the WikiEducator tutorials.

The participants were able to produce a Life Long Skills Educational manual in WikiEducator. The participants agreed to continue working on their content to enhance its functionality and its effectiveness for use as learning materials.

Workshop Outcomes

The workshop was able to deliver on its objectives. The team trained will continue to develop its content on the WikiEducator platform. It was also agreed that KIE will develop a content portal within WikiEducator that the institute will use to host its content in addition to their website. Upon completion of the training, the following were the outcomes:

1. To work in the digitalization of both existing curriculum and content in the Department and make some of the content available to the WikiEducator portal; and
2. Organize two additional L4C workshop in the new year to continue the ongoing capacity building in the area of Open and Distance Learning and OER Content Development within the WikiEducator.

Following the completion of this workshop, the participants requested to be supported in the following:

1. To be supported in the digitalization of the content so developed. It is important to maintain the continued technical support to be able to ensure that the Department is able to participate effectively in OER Content Development; and
2. Support in facilitating the next two workshops in the new year.