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Greetings everyone!

This posting is to launch the working group on Internationalization of HE in Africa.
Topics covered: Working group members
Communication among members
Group project

1. The members who have expressed interest so far are the following:
Claver Mike Chika Jowi Jane
Others are welcome! I am serving as facilitator for this group but will happily hand the reins over to another member or rely heavily on Mike and Claver for help on the technical side.

2. We need to figure out a way to communicate with each other. Options include
1. P2PU Course forum
2. Personal emails
3. SKYPE
4. others?
Our group covers many time zones given that Chika is in South Africa and Jowi is in Kenya, Mike and Claver are in the USA and I am in Japan. This may make SKYPE difficult but lets try. Any other ideas or preferences?

3. Group project-
The original idea was to develop an open textbook for a new MEd course on Comparative and International Higher Education that will be offered at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The course will be include students from across Africa and be distance- based with one intensive f2f seminar. It is expected that the students will be professionals/ practioners who may be working in the field of higher education either in universities, govt depts, NGOs etc. There will also be some recent graduates as well. It is primary a research masters but there will be 2 compulsory and 2 optional courses.

Is textbook the right term? Perhaps Course Reader or Handbook would be more appropriate as it could include key resources ( articles, chapters, video clips etc) on the internationalization of higher education with a special focus on Africa and be a resource for the two electives and research project.

Chika, Jowi and myself are new to OER but have familiarity with the topic. Mike and Claver have the OER experise and experience.I guess some initial steps could include:
1. Agree on objective and use of the book
2. Decide on the format and how students will access it.
3 Develop a draft outline
4 Identify sources of ‘open’materials that could be included in the book
5. Look at role of ANIE and AFIRE.

Let me leave it here. I am a complete newbie to OER so I am ‘winging’ it right now.
Let everyone share comments, questions, suggestions etc. This note is just to start the ball rolling!!!! Over to you………………..