Changing Faces of Higher Education: Towards new Universities 2.0?
An exponentially growing number of students need to be educated; skills of academic staff need to be greatly improved and updated; and solutions to address the pressing development challenges embodied by the MDGs need to be invented. Can universities of the 21st century afford to go on business as usual?
-600x256.jpg)
Africa needs a new generation of universities that acknowledge the need for and commit to fostering changes to improve education and the well-being of the people, environment (both urban and natural), and economy of Africa. Universities 2.0 describes the efforts in which universities innovate their own structures and programs and collaborate with each other, governments, and a variety of non-governmental organizations, in order to provide and increase opportunities for improved learning across disciplines and across borders. By doing so, these universities and their partners will become nests of innovation for finding solutions to local and global problems. Two key initial questions are (a) in which ways do universities need to change, and (b) how can these changes be promoted and begun?
This wiki was started as a point of collaboration for a workshop on University 2.0 in Dakar (Senegal) that took place during the eLearning Africa Conference 2009. Its purpose is to enable all those concerned about the future of higher education in Africa to begin discussing the need for, scope of, and approaches to Universities 2.0. The wiki will constantly be updated with new material and discussions from further workshops on the same topic organised by the United Nations Universities and their partners. It is a place for visions and visuals and will be a platform for continuing the discussion, maintaining contact between participants, and providing access to archived information as new participants are recruited.
How to contribute?
- Make sure you have signed in.
- Every page can be changed - just by clicking on the "Edit" tab. Do it!
- As your first action: GO to the "Participants" page and ADD your name to the list (you need to click on EDIT tab, top of the page)
- GO to the "Thinking Out Loud" page
- there you have the possibility to ADD your comments or ideas to the input already there (click on Edit tab)
- you can also PUBLISH your own input (interesting article, link to a website, to a video etc.) (click on Edit tab)
- or you go to the related DISCUSSION FORUM on Universities 2.0 and start your discussion.
You are also invited to contribute to the University 2.0 discussion forum we have launched
A Wiki - what's that?
A Wiki, in simple terms, is a group of web pages with “edit” buttons on them, on the top of each page. You can collaborate with anyone you choose on your wiki. A wiki is simple enough for anyone to use, but has enough sophistication so that you can be creative and get things done. It seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape. |
