ABC BlendEd - African BlendEd Course: novel pedagogies boosting employability and socio-economic prosperity

The ABC BlendEd project (ABC) aims to adapt the BlendEd learning paradigm for blended mobility challenge-base project courses – running in Europe since the academic year of 2009/10 – to the reality of African universities in the field of agriculture and stimulate multiplier effects to mainstream blended mobility challenge-based project courses to other study fields and other regions in Africa. The general objective of ABC is to stimulate the adoption of blended mobility challenge-based international, multidisciplinary project course units to promote students’ entrepreneurship, teamwork, and transversal skills while producing and transferring to the local society results of significant added value.
ABC is anchored in three specific objectives:
- Foster student employability and generate added value to the local communities and local economy by designing, fine tuning and deploying a BlendEd project course suited for African universities in the field of Agriculture
- Stimulate the effective adoption of BlendEd courses by all its key stakeholders, students, teachers, and beneficiary companies, by developing the required content, infrastructure and training
- Promote multiplier effects and mainstream the adoption of BlendEd courses in Africa through a Community of Practice empowering local stakeholders
The project partners are
- Polytechnic Institute of Porto (IPP), Portugal (project leader)
- University of Nigeria (UNN), Nigeria
- Federal University of Technology, MINNA (FUTMIN), Nigeria
- Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), Mozambique
- University Zambeze (ZU), Mozambique
- Makerere University (MU), Uganda
- Soroti University (SU), Uganda
- Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building (RUFORUM), Uganda
- Hellenic Mediterranean University (HMU), Greece
- University of Siegen (USIEGEN), Germany
- Odisee (ODISEE), Belgium
The University of Siegen is leading the Quality Assurance Board, which consists of the following partners
- University of Siegen (USIEGEN), Germany
- Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building (RUFORUM), Uganda
- University of Nigeria (UNN), Nigeria
- Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), Mozambique
- Soroti University (SU), Uganda
BlendED Community of Practice
The BlendEd Community of Practice (BlendEd CoP) is an inclusive, dynamic online space for educators, researchers, practitioners, students, and industry partners committed to open new pathways for collaborative learning, and foster the dialogue crossing geographic, institutional, and disciplinary borders. The community connects like-minded professionals and learners from across sectors and countries to develop flexible mobility models and co-create solutions to real-world societal challenges.