AGORA Online Course was held between 23 October – 5 November 2017: Follow-up
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(Image source: Open Educational Resources: Global Report 2017, CommonWealth of Learning, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License)
AGORA Online Course entitled “Fundamentals of Information Literacy and Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture” was held between 23 October- 5 November 2017. The course was provided by FAO of the United Nations in collaboration with Research4Life. We are happy to announce that over 200 people attended the course from 37 different countries !
| AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture) is one of four programmes in Research4Life initiative. AGORA team has been offering face to face trainings for many years in many countries. This e-learning programme complements AGORA’s face to face programmes and is offered in Moodle online course environment. |
The aim of the course was to provide information about the fundamentals of information literacy competencies and develop necessary skills to access and effectively use AGORA. It targeted for researchers, academics, research officers, librarians, IT specialists, other practitioners and students.
The participants were well proportioned among researchers, academics (41.55%) and librarians (40.85%). The rest of them were students as well as other practitioners in agricultural sciences.
92% of the participants recommends the course to the others. From the feedback that we received in the course evaluation survey, we would like to share some testimonials here :
| @ “The course saves a lot of time in finding relevant documents for professional development”. |
| @ “My understanding of certain issues has been broadened, e.g. the different types of plagiarism”. |
| @ “For me it is a refresher that gave me more confident and online course experience. It’s wonderful, encouraging and effective”. |
| @ “The course helped to understand AGORA in and out! I am in position of training my users with ease and also it helped me grow professionally. The fact that I am embarking on my studies so soon, I will have less difficulties with my research most especially with «Citing and Referencing». Thank you so much”. |
| @ “The course is useful, as a PhD candidate I have developed my search skills as well as reference management using Mendeley”. |
| @ “The practical aspect to me is so tasking and very insightful on the way and manner we use and search for information especially as contained in varied formats. This course has really giving a better and clearer understanding of the importance of information literacy skills on the use of information resources”. |
| @ “The blended mode of chat/interactive sessions, reading materials with illustrations, quizzes, video clips, directory of participants and the course website design made navigation very easy”. |
We are very thankful for the active participation of our AGORA Online Course Alumni. Due to limited capacity in the October 2017 course, some of the applicants are already placed in January edition of the course.
The course will certainly be repeated in 2018. For those who would like to apply for the upcoming courses, we suggest to follow the news here on the AIMS portal and its social media channels as well as AGORA web site.
