A Platform for Courses Online

ICTP's Science Dissemination Unit (SDU) has started the "Didactic for Development" (DxD.tv) or "Didactica para el Desarrollo" initiative, which will provide a platform for institutions from around the world to share recorded educational material.  The aim of DxD.tv is to create a network of scientific and academic institutions that can offer videos of educational courses that are complete, of high quality, free, and in the institutions' native languages. 

ICTP is supporting the participating institutions with grants to obtain the low-cost hardware, and the automated recording system, openEyA. OpenEyA is an innovative automated audio/video/slide recording system, developed to archive and share scientific lectures and talks carried out using digital presentations (PPT, PDF, animations, etc) and traditional chalkboards that are extensively used for mathematics and physics lectures.

Currently, DxD.tv contains more than 1000 hours of courses offered by the Departamento de Fìsica Juan Josè Giambiagi, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina and the Departamento de Fìsica, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotà, Colombia. The language of instruction for these courses is Spanish. However, physics courses in Portuguese and English are also available on DxD.tv. In addition, complete high-school level courses in physics and mathematics (language of instruction, Italian), recorded using openEyA in collaboration with Liceo Classico Dante Alighieri di Gorizia, Gorizia, Italy, are also being offered on DxD.tv. 

Results and analysis of using DxD.tv will be discussed at the next SDU International workshop on "Science Dissemination and On-line Certification for All". The activity will be held in Trieste at the end of September this year.  The developers hope to continue supporting the production of more educational courses from different countries in their own native languages in order to attain quality education for all and preserve cultural diversity.