The following pilot projects have been selected. Each of the four pilots all use a different focus which allows the core team to pilot test different approaches for authoring, sharing, customizing and using OER to strengthen MSc agriculture curriculum: 

Collaborative Master of Science in Agricultural and Applied Economics (CMAAE)
Haramaya University and Moi University (Kenya), both members of CMAAE, will build commodity focused case studies that will be used in the CMAAE program in Agriculture Economics. Cases will focus on the Economic Role of Prices and Approaches to the Study of Agricultural Market Organization for Coffee in Ethiopia and Maize in Kenya. Students will be involved in creating the cases and community-wide partners will be involved as subjects in the cases and also in the review of the materials. This collaborative approach to the creation of case studies can be a potentially cost-effective model replicated throughout CMAAE and other universities. These modules will then be available to the entire CMAAE membership in East, Central, and Southern Africa.

Haramaya University, Ethiopia
Creation of a comprehensive set of course materials to be used for the Perspectives on Agricultural Extension course, currently offered by the university within its Masters Degree Program on Agricultural Information and Communication Management (AICM). AICM is one of the regional postgraduate programs implemented through the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity-Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM). It is a course in the RUFORUM Agriculture Information Communication Management master’s program and has potential for network-wide localization and replication, as well as a model for subsequent courses.

Makerere University, Uganda

Makerere University is focused on improving a dairy production while improving the use of graduate students in the processes of working with farmers and providing science-based, timely OER which can be used in MSc course modules in both the veterinary school and the agriculture school. Involving students directly in the research process, capturing the work with and for farmers, will provide replicable model for many other important commodities. This pilot will be carried out jointly by the agribusiness and management program and the livestock development program.

United States International University (USIU), Kenya

USIU is developing OER that utilizes a practical case method and active learning while building an AgShare Fellows program that will embed expertise within the faculty and students to create and use OER, which are aimed at assisting farmers to transform their traditional practice of farming as a livelihood to farming as a business enterprise. The collaborative content generation is through partnerships between USIU business school, agriculture universities and community-wide partners. The pedagogical model and the OER development process have the potential for an entirely new agribusiness curriculum.

Providing evidence for scalability and sustainability is the key to the pilot portion of the grant. This phase of the project will focus on gathering evidence and documenting a process by which AgShare can be extended and scaled up, including an engagement plan for additional collaborators and co-funders. This critical activity is one of the primary goals of this planning and pilot grant and key to continued growth of the AgShare collaboration. It will include an engagement plan for collaborative expansion. By creating and documenting networks, it will enable the learning’s from this project to be shared with other OER and curriculum development activities globally. We expect our findings to positively influence the way others think about OER in Africa, in agriculture curriculum, and beyond.