In Copenhagen, participating in the conference “The Future of Development Research: The Nordic Perspective(s)”. Tom Nyvang, PO Zander and I have prepared a joint paper with the title Scandinavian Participatory Design - Beyond Design, Beyond Scandinavia where we discuss participatory approaches in development the case in the paper is our collaboration with Dhaka University, ePolicyInPractice.
Paper presentations take place in small workshops where the interaction and discussion following presentations is very lively and interesting.
As this is a conference on development research, we feared to be sticking out, but fortunately people seem to find our approach and work interesting – using terms like ‘refreshing’ and ‘very different’ in the nicest possible way J
Students working, chatting, facebooking, etc., in the free wireless area at the Dhaka University campus. Pär-Ola and I joined them in the afternoons since there was no internet in our residence. Very interesting that even though the surroundings are rather different, the activities and interests of students are not very different, be they in Dhaka or in Aalborg.
The ePolicy in Practice project has been conducting workshops and fieldstudies at Dhaka University, Bangladesh. Two workshops were carried out with both teachers from various departments, and with admin staff from various offices around the university. Of particular interest to us was to see how participatory methods would work in these settings. We had three very good days, and found that the participants in all workshops came up with very good ideas for further development of their workpractices. We have brought back a lot of data (field notes, photos, products from the workshops, interviews), and I am looking forward to analysing it together with my colleague, Pär-Ola Zander.
Tomorrow I leave for Dhaka University, Bangladesh, where I will join with former Erasmus scholar and eLL-colleague, Sikder Murshed from Dhaka University, and Pär-Ola Zander and Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld from Aalborg University. We will all participate in the official inauguration of the collaborative reserach project ePolicy in Practice, aiming at exploring the scope for digitalising administration and teaching and Dhaka University (DU).
Pär-Ola and I will conduct some workshops with administrators, teachers and management from DU, where we will use a variety of participatory methods. We are very excited to see how it will all work out :-)
Visit from Dhaka University - signing, seminar, and setting out for future collaborations
Vice chancellor of Dhaka University, professor Arefin Siddique, has been in Denmark to visit Aalborg University and set the road for future collaborations. A formal MOU was signed, and meetings were held between the official AAU and prof. Siddique. From the perspective of eLearning Lab, a meeting was held to discuss ways of starting the work in proposed project ePolicy in Practice, formulated by PO Zander from eLL and Sikder Murshed from Dhaka University.
On Friday May 6th, the Faculty of the Humanities hosted a research seminar on the role of ICT and new media in the development of Bangladesh. A number of local Ph.D.-students and researchers presented ongoing work in Bangladesh and neighbouring countries.
