AgShare II

AgShare is a collaborative  alignment initiative to leverage the attention of existing organizations in various domains to create and openly share different types of OER that strengthen MSc agriculture faculty and curriculum and create downstream uses of the OER for other stakeholders. This phase targeted three tertiary education institutions situated in Ethiopia and Uganda. The institutions are: Haramaya (Ethiopia), Makerere (Uganda) and Mekelle (Ethiopia) Universities and aims to help institutionalise the AgShare methodology in these institutions.  With the addition of RUFORUM (Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture) as a new partner, AgShare II is integrated with an extensive network with the potential to build upon the success of the pilot by disseminating results.

This is the home for all courses from partner institutions developed during AgShare Phase 2 project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

All courses are available as OER (Open Educational Resources) under CC (Creative Commons) licenses as stated within the materials.

The course ‘Fundamentals of Agricultural Information and Communication Management’ is core course in the AICM regional MSc program. It lays the foundation for the program. It covers six chapters. It starts by setting the context as to African Agriculture and AICM, and finally discusses the indispensable roles, applications and benefits of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the Context of Agriculture and Rural Development. Moreover, it discusses agricultural Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom hierarchy. It also explains innovation systems and systems perspectives in the agricultural knowledge systems perspectives. Agricultural communication is also conceptualized in the context of agriculture and rural development. On the whole, the course primarily intended to show the timeliness and relevance of e-agriculture in the context of developing countries in general and in Ethiopia in particular.

Description: This module on water harvesting systems will attempt to develop an understanding of the concepts, principles and techniques of water harvesting in the drylands. It is intended primarily for upper-level undergraduates and postgraduate students from different disciplines. However, it will also assist development agents in both the bureau of agriculture and water resources, experts working in the area of watershed development in different governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as communities involved in water harvesting practices.

Motivation: Haramaya University has been offering MSc programs in Rural Development and Agricultural Extension since 2005. More recently it has launched a new regional MSc Program in Agricultural Information and Communication Management (AICM). The development of the module is supported by the AgShare project phase II. The objective of the sub-project is to create a comprehensive set of course modules for selected course currently being offered by Haramaya University within its AICM Master’s Degree program. The overall goal of the postgraduate programme is to enhance the competence of agricultural information professionals, agricultural researchers and other development workers in AICM while strengthening the capacity of universities to provide higher-level education and research services in this field. To this end, the module ‘Farming Systems and Rural Livelihoods’ will contribute towards enhancing postgraduate teaching and learning and thus enable learners to obtain knowledge and skill that will enable them in making concrete contributions in a real life context.

Objective of the Course

The objective of this course is to provide students with a theoretical and empirical basis for valuating agricultural marketing organization and actors for market performance and public policy decision, and to enable them to develop and use the tools of economic theory to analyze issues related to the marketing of agricultural commodities.

Description: This hands-on workshop focuses on the practical development of your course or module for blended and online delivery. Working either individually or within your teams, we will carry out a series of activities that will enable you to make technology decisions regarding the implementation of your learning design using appropriate Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). You will be guided towards:

  • becoming familiar with the purpose, functionality and affordances of teaching and learning in an online learning environment
  • developing your online skills using the Moodle virtual learning environment (VLE)
  • designing and developing the landing page for your online modules and determining the subsequent layering of your materials
  • investigating the rich functionality of common activity and resource types in Moodle
  • developing a balanced variety of teaching and learning activities for blended or online course provision
  • selecting appropriate tools and functionality to match your pedagogical purpose
  • exploring some of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) tools available for use in teaching & learning