Platform for African – European Partnership in Agricultural Research for Development

Friday, August 25, 2017

Agricolleges International (ACI)

14 August 2017. The aim of Agricolleges International (ACI), is to educate new young learners and up-skill those already involved in the industry. We are bringing this vision to life through the use of technology that will enable substantial improvements to the delivery of more relevant, up to date and accessible agricultural course content. The delivery of the coursework will be via smartphones and other devices with access to the internet, providing an exciting blended and shared-learning opportunity.
Through Desire2Learn’s (D2L) Brightspace platform, it is building the technical platform for their Learning Management System (LMS), which will include advanced tools and functionality to enable a full suite of online learning opportunities. Mumbai based innovations and education consultancy, Consilience, will design and build the courses offered on the Brightspace learning platform. 

One app, for example, makes use of artificial intelligence to evaluate the speed at which each student is able to study and learn and adjust the delivery and speed at which the coursework is taught. This leads to improved pass rates through a better understanding of the material. Other tools exist to provide web-based career guidance, where various skill sets are matched to suitable career prospects while yet others will be able to assess what field of the agri-industry a student would be best suited to.

Critical for an online learning system is the ability for students to go to a Wi-Fi hot spot, download the next set of coursework and then return home where they can continue studying at their own speed.

So, for the first time, it has become a reality that the teaching of the Agriculture Sciences can be scaled to include huge numbers of students. The platform offers them a more affordable, flexible, top-class learning platform, without the high cost of attending a formal, traditional bricks-and-mortar learning institution and without all the associated travel and boarding costs.

Related PAEPARD blogpost:New e-learning institution to help create Africa's next generation of farmers
29 May 2017. Agricolleges International is a new, modern, cloud-based e-learning institution that is using Desire2Learn’s (D2L)

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