SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Department of Interactive Media and Learning (IML), Umeå School of Education, Umeå University

Postal address: Institutionen för Interaktiva medier och lärande, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå
Visiting address: Naturvetarhuset, Johan Bures väg
Web page: http://www.iml.umu.se/

Contact person: Professor Brian Hudson, phone: +46 (0)90 786 6037

South Asia related activities

Adjunkt Pär Segerbrant has initiated a new educational exchange project between IML and the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is based on experiences from a project on E-learning that has been supported for several years through the Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (SPIDER), and is coordinated by the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The programme involved the supervision of a ‘split’ PhD study into assessment practices for Srilankan PhD candidates on a large distance education BSc programme in Information Technology at diferent Swedish universities, and other Swedish-Srilankan collaboration projects. Professor Brian Hudson is involved in these projects that are carried out in collaboration with the National E-learning Centre of Sri Lanka (based at the University of Colombo School of Computing, UCSC). More information.

In March 2009 the Swedish International Programme Office for Education and Training decided upon the ninth round of Linnaeus Palme Exchange Programme grants, for the period 1 July 2009 – 30 June 2010. See a list of the South Asia related projects given support. One of the new projects for this year was the collaboration between IML, UCSC and the Dept. of Computer Science, Umeå University.
The aim is to build a long term exchange of teachers and most important students around the subject area of pedagogy of computer science with the following special strands: – Pedagogical issues in computer science education; – ICT-education in upper secondary school and teacher education; – Distance education in computer science education at undergraduate and master level; and – Joint degrees or coordinated courses at all levels of education.
The contact person on the Srilankan side is Dr. Ruvan Weerasinghe at the University of Colombo School of Computing. He has served on various committees and boards at the University Grants Commission, Ministry of Education and the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka in this capacity over the years. He was also part of the original group involved in introducing Internet and email connectivity to the universities and the country as a whole through the Lanka Education And Research Network and the former Council for Information Technology.

IML already had a strong connection to UCSC. This is partly due to a Srilankan PhD candidate, Hakim Usoof, who completed his doctoral studies on ”Unsupervised summative e assessment for higher order skills of students in large groups?” at Umeå University. In 2008, Hakim Usoof and Brian Hudson worked together on a workshop focusing on the topic of ”Designing the student experience for e-learning 2.0?”, in connection with the 9th International IT Conference held in Colombo.
The department also has a Sri Lanka Study Group involved in the e-Jump 2.0 project working across three courses and engaged in a process of conducting action research. This involves several staff members and doctoral students from UCSC and also the Swedish coordinator for SPIDER based at DSV/KTH with Hakim Usoof acting as a local pedagogical study supervisor. There are over 120 participants and about 20 tutors from West and East Europe, Central Asia, the Far East and China involved in this project and the ELGG-based social networking community environment is working in interesting ways. More information.