Online peacebuilding course from CTEL’s Neill Wylie wins UNESCO award

Peacebuilding in High Risk Communities course from Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning instructional designer has been awarded the UNESCO OER Implementation Award for Excellence

Neill Wylie, Instructional Designer with WIT’s Centre for Technology Enhance Learning and a Guest Lecturer at the institute is one of a number of people worldwide to receive the UNESCO OER Implementation Award.

The award recognises the achievements of those whose work reflects the outstanding achievements and shared wealth of the open education community globally. Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others. This award recognizes exemplary leadership (individual or organizational) and practices to support the implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation on OERs.

Neill Wylie, Instructional Designer and Guest Lecturer, WIT said: “I’m delighted to have won this award for my work in being a mentor and developer of a massive open online course (MOOC) in tandem with Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) and Nelson Mandela University on Peacebuilding in High Risk Communities. The course will empower budding peacebuilders to carry out their important work in high risk communities in South Africa”.

The Peacebuilding MOOC intends to inspire aspiring peacebuilders to contribute to social empowerment. This course focuses on vulnerable communities, addressing issues affecting marginalised people. In this session and course, participants include those residing within high-risk communities in South Africa. The online course will help promote and enable a strong focus on developing training tools for vulnerable groups. As an OER it is malleable for people in different settings. It is to inspire learners to deliver peacebuilding programmes through considered action. ENDS