COL Focal Points from all 13 Caribbean Commonwealth countries took part in a two-day consultative meeting in Jamaica in March 2008. The meeting provided an opportunity for COL staff and its key contacts in Caribbean countries to review the progress on Country Action Plans, to obtain input for COL's upcoming three-year plan for 2009-12 and to provide an opportunity for networking and future collaboration. After a presentation of COL's objectives and the strategic planning process, Focal Points presented reports that highlighted the achievements and relevant needs of each country. COL Education Specialists reviewed programme work with special focus on the Caribbean.

This first Focal Points' meeting provided evidence that COL's move to establish and develop this system was a successful strategy. The role of Focal Points is to act as COL's main contact in a country by:

More than 600 people representing educational institutions, governments and development agencies will attend the Fifth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF5) from 13-17 July in London. The Forum has grown to become one of the world's leading conferences on learning and global development.

The PCF5 programme will feature workshops, discussions and presentations that address each of the Forum's main themes:

The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) continues to move forward with another training and programme development workshop for educators and the creation of a global qualifications system for online courses.

The sixth VUSSC workshop took place in Seychelles in March 2008. Nineteen educators and experts from the Fisheries industry from 15 countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacific attended the two-week workshop, which focussed on training in online technologies for learning materials development. Participants collaboratively developed learning materials related to Fisheries Management. They are continuing to develop the materials upon their return home and have also been encouraged to share their new skills with other educators in their country.

PARTICIPANTS AT THE VUSSC WORKSHOP IN SEYCHELLES GATHERED USEFUL INFORMATION DURING A VISIT TO INDIAN OCEAN TUNA LTD., THE WORLD'S LARGEST TUNA CANNERY

Already more than 100 people from small states of the Commonwealth have received training at VUSSC workshops. COL is planning to host more workshops focussed on creating learning materials for the construction industry in The Bahamas in November 2008, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Samoa and the maritime industry in Maldives next year.

COL's President, Sir John Daniel explained the need for a Transnational Qualifications Framework (TQF) in remarks to a group of government representatives and educators who met in Singapore in February to discuss the initiative:

When the Ministers conceived the VUSSC they wanted to launch their countries into the e-world and to have them acquire the skills necessary to look larger countries in the eye as equals in their mastery of eLearning and online education. The proof of that mastery is not only the ability to put electronic learning materials in a repository, but more importantly the know-how to get them out again and into the hands and minds of students, whether studying in classrooms or learning at a distance.

For that to happen it is not enough for the eLearning materials to be attractive and well designed. They must fit seamlessly into the curricula and programmes that your tertiary institutions are offering so that students can receive credit and awards in the normal way. Hence our decision to begin work on a Transnational Qualifications Framework that we hoped would facilitate the adoption and use of VUSSC programmes of study in all countries, thus supporting institutions in their wish to offer online qualifications internally. This should contribute usefully to the general development of education in the small states. You know better than we do whether that aim is being achieved.

We must confess that when we started work on the TQF we had no idea just how timely the idea of a qualification framework was. When we wrote to Ministers last year asking for them to send us their national qualifications frameworks we expected only a trickle of replies. Instead we have not only had replies from most countries, but those replies have shown us that qualifications frameworks are a live issue for many countries.

The Transnational Qualifications Framework is a comparison and transfer mechanism that is being created by the small states of the Commonwealth. It comprises a ten-level system that will act as an enabling mechanism between national and regional qualification systems. A TQF Management Committee has been established to work through the fine details of the framework and the processes that will be followed. Courses and programmes that satisfy the requirements of national and regional qualifications authorities will be submitted for listing on a VUSSC-TQF website that is to be created in late 2008. Prospective learners will be able to determine the accreditation status of online courses offered by consulting this website.

The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth is not a university in any normally accepted sense of the term. It is not a body that teaches programmes to students and awards degrees. Nor will the VUSSC become a university in that sense. One reason is that the authority to grant degree-awarding powers rests with national governments, not with intergovernmental bodies such as COL. Another reason is that ministers have made it clear that they want VUSSC to reinforce and expand the impact of existing tertiary institutions, not to compete with them.

VUSSC is currently an informal network of ministries of education supported by the part-time efforts of a number of people at COL. The vision is to evolve into a more formal consortium. Having developed considerable capacity in content creation and the use of online technologies through its training workshops, the aim now is to strengthen the involvement in VUSSC of the institutions that are actually developing and using the VUSSC eLearning materials.

"We believe that by following an informal bottom-up approach, ministers have obtained excellent value for the small investment that has been made in the VUSSC since 2003," Sir John told representatives from small states at their meeting in Singapore in April. "But we suggest that the time has now come to formalise arrangements. Each country must now ask itself again what goals it intends to achieve through the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth and put in place the local institutional arrangements necessary to see that it reaches them."
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Geographic distance and expense make it rare for people in Commonwealth nations to work with others outside their region. COL's VUSSC training workshops bring together small groups of participants from a wide range of backgrounds. In addition to the technical skills they learn, workshop delegates gain new friendships and valuable insights into other cultures. Some participants have admitted they had regarded particular groups or religions in a negative way before the workshop but found a common humanity when working with individuals from these groups.

Workshop participants did things they had never experienced before, from travelling on a boat to participating in a traditional kava ceremony. A woman in traditional head-to-toe clothing was helped in climbing a mountain by her team. A man from a landlocked African country learned to swim and went snorkeling to his great delight.

The cross-cultural understanding fostered by the VUSSC training workshops has been an important additional benefit to these highly successful meetings.

The Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation (CFTC) is providing funding of UK£15,000 to support multimedia components for COL's Commonwealth Computer Navigator's Certificate (CCNC). A free content project to provide computer skills training to learners who may not have the financial resources to acquire these skills using proprietary software, CCNC will provide training on subjects such as word processing, databases and concepts of information technology through distance learning. CFTC funding will support the development of multimedia components for each of CCNC's seven modules.

COL is overseeing development of CCNC with the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand leading the instructional design. The programme will be available later this year.

Get the latest news about learning for development and open and distance learning from the COL News Service. It is updated daily with feeds from a wide range of web sources. The service is available from COL's home page, by clicking on the "News Service" link.
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