Spotlight

Washington, DC (July 27, 2007) - Higher Education for Development (HED), in cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID/Ethiopia), announces a new award for a university partnership in Ethiopia. The University of Arizona (UA) will create a regional center of excellence on disaster risk management and sustainable development in collaboration with Bahir Dar University (BDU).

The proposed project will provide graduate training for faculty at BDU through a combination of face-to-face interaction with UA counterpart faculty as well as distance-learning through a web-based portal, www.rmportal.net owned by USAID and co-managed by UA. The partners will develop a 12-module graduate curriculum and establish a distance-learning platform that is complemented by faculty exchange between UA and BDU. The portal will be used to manage the knowledge resources needed for the successful completion of the graduate program.
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Online Learning

The Portal provides a web-based learning management system used for delivering online courses, and managing virtual learning communities. It is designed using sound constructivist pedagogical principles and has the ability to create syllabi, objectives, content modules, assignments, tests, and social course activities like forums, chats, news and calendars.
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Regional and Global Initiatives

• Africa (ENCAP)
• Asia and Near East
• Latin America and Caribbean
• Presidential Initiatives
• Amazon Basin Initiative
• Environmental Compliance

Issues and Challenges

• Conflict Management
• Conservation Financing
• Linking Producers to Markets
• Micro Enterprise
• Disaster Response
• Women in Development

How to Participate in the Portal

Much of the Development Resource Management Portal is available to the public. Some materials and functionality are private and membership is required for access. Members are allowed to publically or privately post and share content, and use group collaboration services. This level of access is currently granted to USAID staff and partners. If you are interested in becoming a member please contact your USAID staff representative, or email the Portal Administrator (info@rmportal.net).
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How to find Information on the Portal

Search Portal
Use the Search Portal tool in the upper left column to search for content indexed by keyword, title, description, and the text of entire Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat documents. This tool makes searching more comprehensive and relevant. Click Advanced Search for more detailed searching options.

Browse By
Use the Browse By links in the upper upper left column to search portal content in a way that fits your research style. You may browse the portal content collection by theme, keyword, title, language, date posted, portal content type, library catalog, group, and by geographic region.

The Partner Search tool enables you to search across our partner websites without leaving the Portal. Using external search technology the Partner Search tool brings back actual documents (PDFs, Word, PowerPoint) as well as relevant weblinks and html pages.
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Working Collaboratively Inside the Portal

The Portal provides members a neutral group space to collaboratively work together. Group 'workflow'; tools include: public and private news and calendars, a newsletter service, content sharing, group email notification, group member listing, shared library services, smartfolder content aggregators, and content flagging and indexing.
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Adding Content to the Portal

Different types of content can be added to the portal: webpages, documents, spreadsheets, images, flash videos, audio files, events, and news. Portal members are allowed to flag their content using metadata including self-suggested keywords, copyright, contributors, authors, and relevant time-sensitive information.
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