On refusing the Balkanization of the African university

‘Neither the African governments nor anyone else can be satisfied with the present performance of the universities on the continent. If quantitatively speaking the results are not bad, as soon as one tackles the question of all the content of education, the quality of education and, above all, the problem of the distribution of students among various faculties, the picture looks completely different.’     

Education and Multimedia: the actions of the European Union

This paper sets out the findings and recommendations of a task force which was set up by the European Commission which investigated the “Educational Multimedia”. It illustrates some of the strategic planning which has taken place across EU member states to co‐ordinate work on new education technologies to enhance teaching and learning.     

Formation d'Ingénieurs en Génie Sanitaire: un exemple de collaboration entre deux universités

For eight years, the Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland and the Ecole Inter-Etats d'Ingénieurs de I'Equipement Rural (EIER) at Ouagadougou Burkina Faso, have collaborated in the postgraduate education and training of university engineers, offering a course in Sanitary Engineering, comprising 8 months in Ouagadougou, followed by 3 months in Lausanne. Successful students receive a diploma confered by the two Engneering Schools. Such collaboration is productive only if planned on a long-trem basis forcing some of the limiting principles of technical development programmes to be sidestepped. The better students may continue their studies towards an MSc or a PhD, developing the EIER's research facilities, working on topics directly related to Afircan needs and may benefit fiom EPFL's facilities and scientific experience.     

Using a digital game as an advance organizer

The use of digital games as an instructional tool has garnered increasing attention in the education community. Empirical work supported by theory on the learning affordances of digital games allowed the game-based learning community to arrive at the consensus that digital games provide an excellent medium for the acquisition of skills and the exploration of concepts. The field, however, lacks research on how best to teach with games. For example, an unanswered question is whether gameplay should take place before instruction, after instruction, or integrated throughout in order to maximize the effectiveness of the game. To answer this question, a study was conducted with 103 middle school students who either played a digital game designed to teach algebraic concepts before receiving formal instruction, received formal instruction before playing the game, or received formal instruction intermittently during their gameplay session. The results indicate while on average all participants showed improvement in terms of learning, those who played the game before receiving instruction showed significant improvement. These results provide evidence supporting the theory that games are effective when used as an advanced organization tool.