UNESCO Centres of Excellence colloquium

The journalism and media educators continue to meet at Highway Africa conferences. This year, the educators from Africa and beyond discussed pedagogical methodologies in journalism education, enhancing gender in journalism education and supporting science journalism in Africa. Regarding gender in journalism and media education, there is a strong motivation that gender is one of the criteria for any institution to be classified as a UNESCO Centre of Excellence. Through the IPDC SPELL OUT, Gender Links will develop an online gender course for trainers to build their capacity to teach gender in journalism and media studies.

Based on the GIME findings and the review meeting at the World Journalism Educators Congress (WJEC 2010) GL, an accredited training provider in South Africa, will provide sustained training, provision of information and an ongoing engagement with journalism and media educators. The training that will be extended to six trainers from six institutions will include three face to face interventions supported by virtual teaching and learning between sessions. GL has set up a virtual GIME Community of Practice (COP). The COP will be used to facilitate the online training. GL will also work with the institutions to develop gender policies to create an overarching sustainable framework within which gender may be integrated into all aspects of the journalism and media education and training at institutions of higher learning.

Immediate objectives of the IPDC training include:

• To develop a foundation course on mainstreaming in journalism and media education and training.
• To train educators in six Potential Centres of Excellence of Journalism and Centres of Reference in Africa to mainstream gender in their curricula.
• To pilot the use of face to face and online teaching and learning as a model to build the capacity of journalism and media educators and trainers.