Education Programme

This programme is designed to provide the umbrella under which all educational activities of UNU-IIST are deployed. It is based on a multidisciplinary approach centred on education and pedagogy, with computer science providing the enabling technology for the development of educational tools to be used in teaching activities as well as providing the contents to be taught.

Research is carried out to define and implement methodologies and develop tools for education. Such methodologies and tools should be generally applicable to all disciplines encompassed by the UNU system and are intended to be made available to other UNU RTC and to the general public.

Purpose of the programme is to define, implement and apply strategies and technologies to enhance education and IT capacity building in developing countries.

The research component of the programme includes the definition of educational methodologies and frameworks and their implementations in a variety of learning platforms, covering traditional face to face learning and distance learning. It also addresses cooperative work in software development among geographically distributed students.

Strategies for facilitating IT education in developing countries includes exposing lecturers from those countries to the way curricula are implemented in industrialised countries, revisiting IT curricula to adapt them to the specific situations offered by distinct countries, delivering courses and providing postgraduate supervision.

This programme is naturally linked to the other UNU-IIST programmes in two ways: on one hand other programmes must provide the main ground from which to develop teaching materials to be used in the process of delivering education; on the other hand this programme must provide the other UNU-IIST programmes with the technology to support their educational efforts.

Finally this programme provides support to all UNU-IIST PhD students enrolled in joint PhD programmes with other universities, independently of the UNU-IIST Programme in which they work, and coordinates and supports the design of new joint postgraduate programmes with other university.