Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia

COL's regional agency, the Commonwealth Education Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), implements COL's mandate in the eight countries of Commonwealth Asia.

In the Education Sector, working with partnering institutions, CEMCA conducts capacity building and training workshops on development of educational multimedia materials, instructional design and eLearning for teachers and professionals in the open school and open university systems. CEMCA has recently developed "Easy Now", an innovative open-source based platform that allows teacher-developers to create multiple ODL deliverables from a single electronic source. This is already being implemented in India, Malaysia, Maldives and Sri Lanka. It is also facilitating the development of "Quality Assurance for Multimedia Learning Materials (QAMLM)" programme with partners in India and Malaysia.

CEMCA is also very actively and effectively engaged in the use of mass media for development, particularly community radio. Working with the Government of India, CEMCA is facilitating the development of community radio stations on campus and in the community, with civil society organisations, for use by disadvantaged and marginalised groups, particularly women.

CEMCA publishes a quarterly EduComm Asia, and produces knowledge resources on various applications of ICTs in education. Partnering with several regional and international donor agencies, CEMCA has produced various multimedia training packages including Community Based Rehabilitation for Children with Special Learning Needs; Gender and Rural Development, in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO Bangkok); Tsunami Teacher with UNESCO, Paris; and an Education For All resource kit for use by media professionals, with UNESCO and the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD). CEMCA also serves as a regional networking and collaborating centre for open and distance learning and technology enabled learning services.