Ethnographic Action Research Begins in Mali
17-03-2005 (Paris)
UNESCO and OneWorld International have announced a partnership to introduce a participatory evaluation methodology into the francophone Western Africa country of Mali. This project comes within the framework of UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centre (CMC) scale-up initiative and OneWorld’s Open Knowledge Network (OKN).
Both initiatives support the creation and exchange of local content in local languages across the South. The two partners will fund the research project jointly for one year.
Ethnographic Action Research (EAR) research is an innovative research approach to study the impact of information and communication technologies. It uses ethnography to guide the research process and action research to link the research back to the project’s plans and activities.
The aim of setting up EAR in Mali is to establish a real and permanent learning/research culture at community level where there are many local level projects using ICTs. People using EAR are more aware of the activities they are involved in and are permanently assessing whether those activities actually have a positive effect on the community.
UNESCO has already piloted EAR within CMC projects in South Asia. UNESCO and OneWorld will ensure that the results of the introduction of EAR into ICT-based activities in an African country will be shared widely with other partners, in order to foster more effective and more participatory project development across the continent.
Ethnographic Action Research (EAR) research is an innovative research approach to study the impact of information and communication technologies. It uses ethnography to guide the research process and action research to link the research back to the project’s plans and activities.
The aim of setting up EAR in Mali is to establish a real and permanent learning/research culture at community level where there are many local level projects using ICTs. People using EAR are more aware of the activities they are involved in and are permanently assessing whether those activities actually have a positive effect on the community.
UNESCO has already piloted EAR within CMC projects in South Asia. UNESCO and OneWorld will ensure that the results of the introduction of EAR into ICT-based activities in an African country will be shared widely with other partners, in order to foster more effective and more participatory project development across the continent.
Related themes/countries
· News Archives 2005
· Mali: News Archive 2005
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