ICRISAT Archival Report 2006 - The seedlings of success in the ...

This note has been endorsed by nine organizations (including six agricultural universities) in India, and has been
presented as the basis for a novel approach to knowledge management in agriculture in India, under the National
Agricultural Innovation Project of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. It has also been accepted as the
conceptual framework for content development and distribution by the Global Open Food and Agriculture
University and the Imperial College Distance Learning Program associated with the GOAFU. It is under further
elaboration to include the practice of Open Educational Resources and Open Standards architecture (joint industry
specifications led by IBM and Microsoft) allowing any partner with any kind of online platform to participate in the
process of content creation, validation, update and delivery to the learner.
Output B: New approaches for enhanced access to ICRISAT IPG’s developed, tested and shared with
partners annually
Outputs in 2006:
B 1
Twenty two learning material modules on ICRISAT and VASAT web sites transformed into learning objects mode.
These are available on the VASAT site: www.vasat.org, link to learning resources, then to the following topics:
groundnut production practices, crop-weather relationships, soil health.
B 2:
Two workshops organized with partners in assessing the usability of LO’s and reports from partners were compiled.
The first one was with IFPRI and Imperial College London (attended by NARES partners and IPGRI-Bioversity)
and the second one was under the India Mission 2007 Alliance with NGOs and CBO’s.
Reports are now available. One NGO and one CBO partnering ICRISAT on this project presented posters at the
CSO-CGIAR Forum (AGM06) based on the workshops held which are also available to partners.
GOFAU/IMPERIAL COLLEGE REPORT ON REUSABLE LEARNING OBJECTS WORKSHOP
(Hosted by ICRISAT, Hyderabad, India, October 6 th -7 th , 2006)
This workshop was organised with the overall aim of ‘developing an RLO Strategy that can be adopted by all
content developers and contributors within the GOFAU programme’. A range of different stakeholders (four
agricultural universities, one Open University, IFPRI and Bioversity (then IPGRI)) attended this workshop.
The workshop took place over two days, hosted by ICRISAT who provided the venue and logistical support, with
sponsorship from Imperial College Distance Learning Programme, through its funding stream associated with the
development of an authoring model.
The authoring process was discussed and the attributes that contribute to good quality distance learning materials
were reviewed, in the context of quality checklists. The Universities represented had different models for authoring
materials. Whilst there were many areas of overlap, the role of academics, assistants, professional writers, learning
technologists and instructional designers varied. In some cases the courses produced were very much the teachers
own resources, which they had developed. In other cases the writing had been done with an academic supervisor, a
contracted author, and possibly a multidisciplinary team, and materials were owned by the programme not the
individual. In IGNOU authors were also directly involved in storyboarding and development of additional
resources, e.g. e-tutor videos.
The partners involved in development or use of learning materials for both static and dynamic content, could make
use of learning resources on the ‘grid’ and as far as possible reuse and improve grid resources rather than reinvent
the wheel. Some partners will be net contributors of RLO content, whilst others will primarily be users.
Questions were raised about the implications of developing RLOs for distance learning programmes in relation to
cost, time spent authoring, and whether or not it simplifies or complicates the authoring process. Lessons will be
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