On April 30, 2025, the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI) successfully held the “Integration Workshop to the International Institute for Online Education (IIOE) Platform: Access to Courses and Resources”. There remains a gap in teacher training resources in the French-speaking region of Africa, particularly in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence. This event provided hands-on training on the IIOE platform for National Centres and partner institutions from French-speaking Africa, offering localized digital education resources to directly address the region’s needs for educational digital transformation, and supporting higher education professionals in enhancing their digital literacy and AI application skills. Participants included 172 higher education professionals and representatives from 20 universities across 10 French-speaking African countries, such as Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, among others.

Participants from UNESCO-ICHEI

Mr. CAO Zian, Chief of the Global Partnership and Programme Office at UNESCO-ICHEI, introduced UNESCO-ICHEI’s long-term commitment to the digital transformation of higher education. He highlighted the organization’s efforts to provide global universities with high-quality educational resources and AI capacity-building support through the IIOE platform. He noted that the platform currently hosts 38 courses focused on digital competencies and AI, including 5 courses in French. Mr. CAO specifically emphasised that the UNESCO-ICHEI will continue to promote the development of multilingual courses, supporting university teachers in better integrating AI technologies into their professional teaching practices and advancing the innovation and evolution of educational models.

Mr. CAO Zian, Chief of the Global Partnership and Programme Office at UNESCO-ICHEI

The workshop combined conceptual explanations, live demonstrations, and interactive Q A sessions. It covered three core modules: an introduction to the IIOE French platform, the functionality of the internal AI assistant, and Micro-Certification courses. More specifically, it addressed the content retrieval process on the IIOE platform, access to French Micro-Certification courses and related resources, an overview of the "DS-I" model and its operational guidelines, and a detailed analysis of Micro-Certification course structures.

The workshop was moderated by Ms.YUAN Xin, Programme Officer at the Global and Programme Office