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3rd Quarter 2008


ICT-KM supports events and conferences

"Making Our Research Outputs Available - the AAA Approach"
Co-organized with FARA, this event will look into methods and systems to ensure research outputs are available, accessible and applicable. Tentatively scheduled to be held December 1st 2008 during the CGIAR 2008 Annual General Meeting in Maputo.

"Knowledge management- Why and Who for?"
The session will look into the "why" of knowledge management and sharing and discuss the challenges and opportunities afforded by implementing knowledge management techniques. The sessions is tentatively scheduled December 2nd, 2008 during the CGIAR 2008 Annual General Meeting in Maputo.

"Knowledge Management and Sharing: How?"
This all day event will specifically look into different strategies and methods and the benefits and or shortcomings. Scheduled for December 4th 2008 in Maputo

Extra Extra….

Read more about the Knowledge Sharing in Research project in the September issue of CGIAR e-News.

For more information on ICT-KM activities and events, visit our website and blog at http://ictkm.cgiar.org/

Snippets

Are you setting comfortably? Farmers share knowledge through storytelling
"My story with farming began when I was a child," says Mahmoud Shlash, whose village lies near the ancient city of Aleppo in northern Syria. "At that time, the rainfall was high unlike the rainfall this season. I watched my father when he collected spikes (barley seedheads) from here and there and brought them home. I asked him, 'Why are you collecting the spikes and nothing else?' Now I realise that he was doing the same as ICARDA is currently doing with the farmers."
For more information, please visit: http://www.new-ag.info/08/05/develop/dev2.php

Strengthening Partnership through increased collaboration: ICT-KM and FARA
Working with partners to increase effectiveness continues to be an important aspect of the ICT-KM Program. With this in mind, the ICT-KM Program, represented by Enrica Porcari recently participated in the CGIAR-FARA (Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa) consultation held in Accra 2-4 September 2008. The consultation aimed at increasing this strategic partnership and harmonizing research in Africa.
Taking into consideration past successful collaborations, representatives of FARA (Myra Woopereis-Pura and Francois Stepman) discussed with Enrica ways forward to increase ICT-KM/FARA partnership and joint activities.
More information about the consultation can be found at http://farastaff.blogspot.com
/2008/09/cgiar-fara-consultation.html

Pilot projects paving innovative paths to sharing information
The Institutional Knowledge Sharing project is supporting three pilot activities in three CGIAR centers in order to contribute to institutional innovation, and learn about the effectiveness of KS approaches. Two of the pilots have now made available their products.
“Recovering from natural disasters” A ‘Storymercial’ by WorldFish
“The storymercial is e a combination of video, audio and images. At the heart of the storymercial is the story; the oldest most proven way humans learn and remember information.” says Helen Leitch, Pilot Project Leader. “Despite a huge investment in communications, awareness of the CGIAR Centers’ work and contribution to development is often low. Since knowledge products with more mass appeal are needed, this project examined the role storymercials can play to attract our donors and partners to knowledge, thus increasing the uptake of research outputs”. Have a look at: http://www.worldfishcenter.org
/v2/rehabilitate%20livelihoods.html
Best Practices in Research data Management (IRRI)
“There is still little experience in using wiki technology within CGIAR. The openness and visibility of a wiki is often seen as a risk, rather than an opportunity for increased participation and collaboration in communities of practice.” states Thomas Metz, Project Leader. This project developed, collected, recorded, and applied good practices in research data management, and initiated a communities of practice for research data managers. It is enabling scientists to produce better quality research and release their primary data as global public goods that will be available and usable for future secondary use. See the wiki at: http://cropwiki.irri.org/everest/



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Online Learning Resources: the way forward

A workshop to review progress over the past four years of the CGIAR’s Online Learning Resources Project and plan for the future has made considerable progress towards defining the goals of a third phase for the project.

The OLR project is intended to provide an educational technology platform that gives access to information that can strengthen research skills, to facilitate cooperation between educators and researchers and to improve access to learning materials generated by the international, publicly funded research of the CGIAR. It helps to ensure quality training and education in the CGIAR and for partners.

The workshop brought together several stakeholders, among them universities in developed and developing countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the ARIADNE Foundation for the European Knowledge Pool.

Aissetou Yayé, Executive Secretary of the African Network for Agriculture, Agroforestry and Natural Resources Education ( ANAFE) welcomed the opportunity for partnership between the CGIAR and the 128 agricultural colleges and universities in 34 African countries that ANAFE represents. "The improved ability to access and share learning resources based on research results will benefit higher education institutions in Africa," she said.

The workshop, hosted by Bioversity International at its headquarters in Rome, devoted most of its attention to starting the process of developing a new phase for the OLR project. The goal is to help to address the complex, growing and inter-related challenges of global poverty, food security, climate change and environmentally-sustainable agriculture.

Wayne Nelles of the International Potato Centre, the new OLR project co-ordinator, explained that the meeting made progress towards ensuring that future CGIAR open learning resources will be more widely accessible, available in the appropriate open digital formats and easier to use, re-use and redistribute. "Our hope is that these tools and resources will also help strengthen the research capacities of partners, users and CG scientists, thereby contributing to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals".

One of the OLR project’s early achievements was to create a web-based repository of learning resources linked to Moodle, an open source learning management system. The repository hosts more than 500 such resources, and in the past year CGIAR staff and partners have delivered several courses through Moodle, ranging from Urban Agriculture to Research Methods.

"Thanks to our partnership with ARIADNE, the Moodle platform allows trainers to reach a geographically distributed audience more effectively," said Jan Beniest of the World Agroforestry Centre, former coordinator of the OLR Project. For a global organization like the CGIAR, producing international public goods, this is very important.

Other project achievements included federated searching across learning repositories from many other organizations around the world, vastly increasing the number of resources that can be easily located.

"Our relatively small investment has helped strengthen the community of education specialists in the CGIAR and vital connections with our partners to create processes and products that can be built into larger initiatives, some of which are already in the pipeline," noted Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer and leader of the CGIAR’s ICT-KM Programme, which launched and supports the Online Learning Resources Project.

One of the most exciting developments for the OLR project in the future will be for the CGIAR to evaluate the recent ISO standard for quality assurance for education, training and learning. "This could enhance the quality of CGIAR learning resources and partnerships," said Thomas Zschocke of the United Nations University, who conducted a preliminary study for the partnership. "Applying quality standards would also enable the CGIAR training community to serve external partners effectively and efficiently."

For further information, contact Elizabeth Goldberg e.goldberg@cgiar.org at Bioversity International.

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