- Easy MTP has left the building...
- Knowledge Sharing Workshop kicks off
- A Science Week with a difference
- Now we’re cooking! Good practices for managing research data
- Ensuring quality training and education in the CGIAR
- Consortium on Spatial Information (CSI): Stocktaking, strategic positioning and a new funding opportunity
- ICT-KM Team News
Snippets
Advancing Agriculture in Developing Countries through Knowledge and Innovation
The International Food Policy Research Institute's ISNAR Division held an international consultative conference in Addis Ababa at the Hilton Hotel April 7 – 9, 2008 on "Advancing agriculture in developing countries through knowledge and innovation." Scholars, policymakers, and practitioners from a wide range of sectors came together to exchange ideas and experiences (positive or negative) on how knowledge and innovation (technological, organizational, and institutional) are affecting agricultural advancement. The conference showcased innovative research in the field and provide a forum to identify further areas for research and cooperation.
The ICT-KM program is a sponsor of this event and delivered a paper to the conference and will be contributing a chapter in the resulting book on knowledge and innovation experiences for improving developing-country agriculture. The book will show knowledge and innovation frameworks, applications, methods, and empirical research results.
ESA training meeting and workshop and wrap up meeting
At the end of 2007, the ICT-KM program entered into agreement with CIP to take leadership of a project for the Americas Centers (CIAT, CIMMYT, CIP and IFPRI) that focuses on enterprise security activities for these Centers. These activities have included improving the security of Centers network infrastructure; fortifying the CGIAR global network security by including analysis of the CGNET NOC; securing intellectual property, and training information systems security personnel.
One of the key components of this project is the ESA training meeting and workshop and wrap up meeting being held in Lima from 31 March through 11 April. Participating are two participants from each of CIAT, CIMMYT, IFPRI, plus guests from Bioversity, ICARDA, WorldAgroforestry and ILRI (total 10). This packed ten days will include a CISSP (Certified Information Security Systems Professional) certification preparatory course; a CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) certification preparatory course; a ESA project review which also benefits from the guest participants in pulling together the threads of the ESA project with a similar global project (Enterprise Security and Business Continuity Project) that wrapped up in 2007.
Latest word from Anthony Collins, the ESA project manager is that the consensus view emerging from the meeting is that the ESA group will be forging ahead in stimulating the establishment of a base-line of agreed best practices on information systems security and standards for the CGIAR.
ICT-KM Homepage
As part of the portfolio of projects in 2004, the ICT-KM program supported the CGIAR 'Online Learning Resources' (OLR) project. This project encouraged an international capacity strengthening community of practice, interested in agriculture and natural resources management in the tropics, to enhance the quality of their teaching and learning, and to promote inter-Center collaboration in training, education and learning resources development and dissemination. The project resulted in the setting up of an Online Learning Repository on CGXchange containing learning resources and some courses from 11 CGIAR Centers.
The momentum of the OLR project carried forward into the ICT-KM's 2006 Investment Plan further improving the provision of quality CGIAR agricultural training and learning materials in the OLR repository by establishing a quality assurance and management system. It also continues to build the network of the CGIAR training community of practice and its collaborating partners in the national agricultural research systems (NARS).
There are two particular achievements that have been breaking new ground. First is blended learning – trialed through the ICRAF-ILRI's Research Methods Group. The blended learning approach (e-learning combined with face-to-face contextual training) has received very positive feedback and is the subject of at least one journal article written by members of the community of practice. This approach and the use of Moodle (the learning management system that contributes to the blended learning techniques) have been taken up by others including the Knowledge Sharing Workshop reported in this newsletter.
Secondly, as one of the final stages in the project, the project team organized a joint workshop with the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn, Germany in February 2008. The workshop brought together over 20 members of the community plus a number of invited guest speakers to develop a set of policies and procedures to ensure quality training and education in the CGIAR. The outcomes of the workshop have been an agreement on a common set of standards that will be used by the CGIAR training and education community based on the ISO International Standard ISO/IEC 19796-1 'Information Technology – Learning, education and training – Quality management, assurance and metrics'. The community also discussed a number of eLearning initiatives undertaken by various Centers and proposed an activity plan for these for 2008.
The OLR project joins an impressive array of joint actions among the CGIAR Capacity Strengthening Community including education partnerships (Center Partnership Offices and the International Partnership for Forestry Education); the Cereal Knowledge Bank; the "Virtual Genebank" ; the Agricultural Open Curriculum and Learning Initiative (formerly GO-FAU), and learning from distance education.
What the OLR project has demonstrated is that the CGIAR Capacity Strengthening Community has a lot to offer in terms of improving the context and impact of CGIAR research. Jan Beniest, co-coordinator of the OLR project says "I sincerely believe that the CGIAR could be at the cutting edge of the use of ICT in learning. There seems to be tremendous interest in what the community is doing judged by the requests/responses we are getting from the outside world to attend conferences, review papers and present our experiences". The OLR project and the community of practice it has promoted has shown that joint commitment and multi-center collaboration using ICT is a practical and efficient way to enhance capacity strengthening for development and to reach larger and more remote audiences.
The ICT-KM program is looking to capitalize on this investment and find ways to support the CGIAR in this vision.
Back
We welcome feedback on the ICT-KM News, so please feel free to contact us at ictkm@cgiar.org