Featured Guest Speakers | Africa and IT Conference
Atieno Adala- African Virtual University
Dr. Adala is the Manager, Academic Programs and Delivery at the African Virtual University, an organization that seeks to expand access to higher education in Africa by leveraging information and communication technologies (ICTs). In this role, she works with universities across Africa to help design, develop and implement open, distance and eLearning programs. She is also currently helping to implement the AVU’s research and development agenda. She has worked in the field of education for over ten years, starting as a High School Teacher in Kenya and later Botswana. She worked for the African Studies Program at Indiana University, as the Managing Editor for the peer-reviewed journal Africa Today, and before that as the Coordinator for the African Studies Outreach Program. She has published and presented on her research interests which include investigating the role of ICTs in expanding access to higher education in Africa, and the experience of female students in eLearning. Laura Czerniewicz - University of Cape Town Laura Czerniewicz has worked in the field of educational technology for more than a decade and is one of Africa’s leading authorities on open access and open educational resources. She currently heads the Open UCT Initiative which aims to “make freely available as many as possible of UCT’s research, teaching and community-focused scholarly resources to those with internet access” and “engage with the higher education openness agenda, from the perspective of the global south.” Professor Czerniewicz was previously the director of UCT’s Center for Educational Technology, a cutting edge think tank which has pioneered a range of open learning and research initiatives. She works on various local, continental and international collaborative projects and is also interested in the emergent knowledge domain of the field, mobile learning, the digital divide and ICTs and scholarly communication. Yetunde Folajimi - University of Ibadan A University of Ibadan Computer Science Lecturer with specialization in Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Folajimi’s research is predominantly directed at Serious Games and e-learning. A significant proportion of her work is devoted to application of gamification and e-learning technologies for health and safety education, adult education, child education, youth empowerment and women empowerment. She was a recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Award (2009) and the Commonwealth Professional Fellowship award (2012). A Research Fellow at various centers of excellence including Laboratory for Computational Intelligence, UBC, Canada (2009), PAWS Lab, University of Pittsburgh USA (2010) and Center for Computational Intelligence, DMU, UK (2012), she has successfully implemented significant projects with international recognition. She is the Director of the Initiative for Technology Empowered Education (i-TEE), a Nigerian-based organization that provides professional and developmental support through the use of computer and related technologies. A Member of University of Ibadan Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA) Educational Technology Initiative (ETI) and Nigeria National Committee on IT Curriculum (2011), she has served in the conference committee of NCS for several years. She coordinates the annual Research Consortium on Information Technology Innovations (RECITI), a collaborative/mentoring event for young and experience researchers in Nigeria. |