Education

Impacts:

Policy: All governments are now emphasising quality as they strive to broaden access. COL helps them formulate policies for quality assurance, notably in the areas of teacher education, alternative schooling and higher education (with a special focus on eLearning). COL's participation in the evaluation of the NEPAD eSchools Pilot Project will yield policy recommendations for the use of ICTs in schools in Africa that will address concerns about the digital divide. Policies for adding distance education programmes to conventional teacher education establishments are a vital response to the chronic shortage of teachers.

Systems: There is a major need for training to help institutions convert to dual-mode operations and address the skills deficit amongst the staff of open schools and the NGOs that work with them to bring education to marginalised groups. COL will place special emphasis on integrating vocational skills training into alternative schooling. COL is also building capacity to meet the high demand for training in eLearning, notably in support of the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth, which will be an important bridge over the digital divide. In empowering educators with ICT skills COL will help them use technologies for online collaboration to share open educational learning content and resources. 

Models and Materials: The successful model of the open university has already been widely replicated. The model of the dual-mode institution, which teaches both face-to-face and at a distance, is less straightforward to apply and COL is working with institutions around the Commonwealth to share good practice. COL is now helping to refine the model for open schools, because such schools are a vital response to the rapidly increasing demand for secondary education. An important new model, which holds enormous promise for developing countries, is the collaborative production of open educational resources for eLearning. COL will remain in the forefront of these developments.
     COL is successfully sharing learning materials. For example, quality assurance materials for teacher education jointly developed for Asia and Africa will be introduced around the Commonwealth.

Partnerships: COL's education sector partners are numerous. Its collaboration with UNESCO supports COL's work on teacher training in Africa. The two organisations are also working together on quality assurance systems for eLearning, cross-border education and higher education generally. In Africa, COL provides some funding to two regional centres: the SADC Centre for Distance Education (SADC-CDE) based in Botswana and the Regional Training and Research Institute for Open and Distance Learning (RETRIDOL) serving West Africa from the National Open University of Nigeria. COL is also developing stronger relationships in education with the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Association of Commonwealth Universities. In developing eLearning, COL is working with The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and building a link with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on copyright matters.