MAN TEACHING COMMONS The primary focus of this JIU Capstone Project was to develop a general Teaching Commons to support MAN. A Teaching Commons (TC) is defined using the Carnegie foundations definition of TC as as a conceptual space in which communities of educators committed to inquiry and innovation come together to exchange ideas about teaching and learning and use them to meet the challenges of educating students. Accordingly, the MAN Teaching Commons will (1) provide forums for educators from African and US institutions affiliated with the Multimedia Education Reource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) to discuss issues related to the scholarship of teaching and learning using online digital resources (2) highlight best practices for using e-learning repositories to enhance learning outcomes. MAN Teaching Commons Visit the MAN TC.

MAN PROJECT: Conceptualization and Design During my tenure at JIU all my class projects focused on the implementation of ICT to support economic development and education in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The various course projects completed for EDU-542, Strategic Planning for Educators, EDU-630, Needs Assessment for Learning Environments and EDU-653, Assessment Strategies to Improve Adult Learning, investigated potential barriers for integrating ICT in SSA. Viable e-learning solutions to support current educational structure in the SSA region were particularly addressed in EDU-654, Developing and Implementing e-Learning Systems and EDU-652, Designing Information/Performance Support Systems. Solutions and educational models advocated were based on the adoption of global elearning repositories as a source of quality e-learning resources and the leveraging of open source software to be used as tools for course design and delivery as well as collaboration tools. The idea and project plan of developing a MAN project emerged from these course-specific projects and matured through my tenure at JIU. One of the major outcomes had been the development of a competitive proposal entitled “MERLOT African Network (MAN): Harnessing the wealth of global e-learning repository” in collaboration with the Multimedia Education Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) organization, that was submitted to NSF in September 2007. The project was developed during EDU 544 and calls for the creation of a Network of African higher education institutions affiliated with the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) organization and MERLOT partner institutions to conduct educational research leading to best practices in the scholarship of teaching and learning using electronic resources and to enhancing the usability and quality of the MERLOT e-learning repository.

MAN PROJECT: Framework and Rationale In recent years, the goals of increasing use of information technologies to create new learning resources and to manage existing learning resources to achieve learning and professional development needs, have received particular attention. One of the ways chosen to pursue these goals is to make high quality and free learning resources readily accessible to educators and learners worldwide through searchable e-learning repositories and to promote resource sharing among professional educators. It has become apparent that e-learning repositories present an unprecedented potential to innovate the way in which education and training are conducted. Interest in e-learning repositories has become a worldwide phenomenon, with large-scale initiatives emerging in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. E-learning repositories are seen as key enablers for bringing increased value to learning resources by providing opportunities for reuse, repurposing, or reengineering to suit a variety of purposes and end-user needs. However, the rapid development of innovation in this field and the fast adoption of online education have created a void in the literature relative to the lack of conclusive research concerning the effectiveness of online education and the best practices for searching and discovering quality instructional materials from digital repositories and the effective integration of e-learning resources to enhance learning outcomes. The few studies published to date are limited by the facts that they primarily compare online education to traditional education rather than evaluating the ability of an online education course to meet its predetermined goals (Newton et al., 2002) and also, research related to the best practices for integrating e-learning repositories, particularly in multicultural environment is clearly lacking. International partnerships are, and will be, increasingly indispensable in addressing many critical e-learning research questions associated with cultural diversity, social/political influences, legal issues, etiquette, geographical and learning diversity as well as digital divide issues. It is hoped that this proposed international collaboration will enhance current infrastructure of the participating African institutions and will help in addressing key barriers related to the effective integration of ICT for economic development. This project will catalyze a cultural change in U.S. institutions by establishing innovative models for international collaborative research and education in the field of e-learning. It will enable U.S. higher education institutions affiliated with MERLOT, a consortium of over 20 campus’s and systems of higher education in the U.S., to establish collaborative relationships with African higher education institutions recently affiliated with the MERLOT organization.

MAN PROJECT: Goals and Objectives The ultimate goal of MAN is to promote the formation of cross-cultural collaborative network of scholars and higer education faculty. MAN will implement a comprehensive research program aiming to evaluate the feasibility and assessing the needs for successfully implementing the following sub-goals. Encourage the development and sharing of qualityelectronic learning resources. Develop and validate research instruments to assess the e-learning readiness of MAN institutions. Identify professional development needs for integrating modular instructional resources in instructional design and delivery. Build capacity to train instructors, faculty, and teachers in the effective use of e-learning resource repositories to develop online courses. Initiate International collaborations and linkages between MERLOT and MAN institutions. Leverage the availability of open source software (OSS) to facilitate course management and delivery. Disseminate research findings and best practices through publications, yearly presentations and forums at academic venues including MERLOT and elearning Africa International conferences. Disseminate methodology and findings through doctoral dissertations and master thesis chaired by faculty researchers of MAN and MERLOT. Enhancing the usability of the MERLOT repository to accommodate Multilanguage audience.

About MERLOT MERLOT is an international cooperative of professional discipline communities that collects and makes freely available high-quality online resources to improve learning and teaching within higher education and K-12. MERLOT digital content repository includes over 18,000 free learning materials ( including: Simulation, Animation, Tutorial, Drill and Practice, Quiz/Test, Lecture/Presentation, Case Study, Collection, Reference Material, Online Courses, Workshop and Training Material) and supports materials from various disciplines that can be used to design online courses and e-learning programs. The infrastructure of the repository provides environments for adding annotations to those materials such as discipline communities peer reviews, assignments, comments and a ranking system which enables users to judge the quality and relevancy rating of resources for teaching and learning in their respective disciplines. To insure quality, learning resources are peer reviewed by Editorial Board members from 15 different discipline communities. Each editorial board goes through a selection process and a rating system of their respective collections of e-learning resources. Evaluation criteria are used to determine the overall rating for a learning material in MERLOT. MERLOT Visit the MERLOT web site to learn more about the organization and to join.

MAN PARTNERS: African Institutions Joining the MAN institutional network is a two-step process including filling out a MAN application that concludes with the signing of a Memorandum of understanding between your oraganization and the MERLOT organization. The project will recruit 15 MAN institutions to participate in the educational research network. Current members of the organization include: AAU (Ethiopia) CNTEMAD (Madagascar) ERNWACA (West andt Central Africa) INITELEMATIQUE (BURUNDI) UCAD (Senegal) Link to institutional web sites are given below. AAU ERNWACA INITELEMATIQUE UCAD

MAN PARTNERS: US Institutions US Institutions associated with MAN are MERLOT Educational institutions and system partners associated. A list of the institutions and links to the organizations' web sites cab be found at the target link given below. MERLOT Partners

MAN Forums: MERLOT International Conference (MIC) MAN institutions will use the MERLOT International Conference (MIC) and the e-learning Africa international conferences as hub and forums for discussion and dissemination of best practices

Man Forums: eLearning Africa (eLA) International Conference MAN institutions will use the MERLOT International Conference (MIC) and the e-learning Africa international conferences as hub and forums for discussion and dissemination of best practices

MAN Contact Us: The MERLOT Africa Network Project Director: Dr. M. Diack [email protected] (225) 771 2028