Photo by UNMIL Photo/Staton Winter

UNU-EHS recognizes the importance of digitalization in advancing the sustainable development goals and aims at developing and providing educational and capacity building opportunities through online and e-learning technologies. 

To fulfill the UNU-EHS mandate on education and capacity building, the Pan African Cooperation and Educational Technologies (PACET) section designs and develops eLearning-based materials and events. Through numerous projects, it translates state of the art research outcomes within the core competencies of UNU-EHS into technology-enhanced learning (TEL) offerings for academics, practitioners and policy makers. Its multimedia lab is equipped with appropriate hard- and software components to support the design and development of multimedia-based educational resources for online and offline purposes.  

Projects in the section enhance graduate education, sustainable development, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) by contributing knowledge towards the development of Information Communications Technologies (ICT). With regards to research, educational technology projects at PACET contribute to the development of appropriate methods and tools to strengthen the competency and capacity of stakeholders facing climate change challenges. These projects also contribute to the development of innovative models and solutions to support knowledge exchange, internationalization of higher education, mainstreaming of Open Educational Resources (OER) within higher education and quality in eLearning. 

Examples of project activities with an eLearning component include the RARSUS Online Summer School, teaching students about urban resource management through a fully virtual event, the GlobeDrought Webinar and Online Lecture Series on drought risk and impacts, and the PAUWES Community of Practice, an online community to connect students, alumni and other stakeholders of the Pan African University. 

Scientists, also in their lecturer capacity at the institute, are using educational technologies to deliver teaching in the frame of Joint Master’s Programme and other training activities. Online tools are equally contributing to offering trainings for internal capacity building at UNU-EHS.  

For an archive of past eLearning activities at the institutes, visit the UNU-EHS eLearning platform: https://activities.ehs.unu.edu/ecampus/