Bringing African Civil Society to York:

1

• Bringing African Civil Society to York
• An International, Web-based Course
• Prof Richard Saunders (Political Science/Arts)
• Aditya Devalia (Student)
• Caitlin Watkins (Student)

2

• Preliminaries
• An extended process of consultation
• Nov. 2003 exploratory meeting with TARSC (Harare)
• How to efficiently share complementary resources?
  
• Web technology suggested as a solution
• York Internationalization Grant 2004-05
• Time-consuming inputs
• Technical capacity-building, Arts doTEL course
• Diverse partner needs (TARSC, CCS at UKZN)
• Travel to Africa for F2F consultation, scoping,
  testing

3
Course Objectives

• African CS State in Theory Practice
• Ways of theorizing/analyzing African CS State
• Ways of researching contemporary challenges
• Centrality of African debates, research,
  practices
• Design Innovation bringing CS practitioners in
• African participants from CS, not university
  students
• Case studies from own organisations, environment
• Means online lectures, readings, blogs, res.
  groups
• Goals of integration
• York exposure to CS practitioners, debates,
  problems
• Zimbabwe/SA exposure to wider debates, research
  resources, research training and mentoring

4
Tech Solutions

• Cobbling together bits and pieces
• PHP main pages for protection WebCT problems
• PunBB for group discussion
• Skype add-on to replace F2F meetings
• Navigating the Course Site
• Lectures, Readings, Questions
• Discussion Forum
• Research Group Fora, Assignment posts

5
Learning Results?

• York Student Experiences
• Caitlin Aditya
• Instructor Experiences
• KISS Keep It Super-Simple
• Web-tech as Obstacle?
• York students adapted to web-tech
• African participation often hampered by
• ?Zimbabwe connectivity (cost quality)
• ?SA institutional support, slow Internet
  access
• ?Both work commitments, course workoad
• Student Solutions

6
Issues for the Future

• Challenges
• Funding sustainability (class size, Internet
  access)
• Institutional responsibilities
• Course workload intensity, duration, credit
  issues
• Revisiting Web-tech
• F2F discussions using Skype (or alternative)
• Readings and other materials on CD-ROM
• Limitations of connectivity in Africa