DELIVERING ON THE PROMISE OF LIFELONG LEARNING
Arasakumari is one of more than 400 women who joined COL’s Lifelong Learning for Farmers (L3 Farmers) programme in the Tamil Nadu region of India in 2005. This is the story of how the unique approach to development has had a profound impact on one family.
COL’s Lifelong Learning for Farmers Programme has enabled Arasakumari to earn a livelihood and support her family in challenging circumstances.
After ending her formal education in middle school, Arasakumari worked as an agricultural labourer in the village of Uppukottai in the Theni district, Tamil Nadu. She married another landless agricultural labourer from the same village. Murugan worked as a labourer in a sugarcane field. The couple has a boy and a girl.
In 2005, COL supported Mr. Ganankulandai, the local Internet kiosk operator, to develop an L3 Farmers programme in the village. Using information and communication technology (ICT), Mr. Ganankulandai helped nearly 30 women learn about various livelihood opportunities, particularly backyard dairy management. The programme also partnered with banks to provide credit and with markets for buy-back arrangements.
Arasakumari obtained a bank loan and bought two cows. Using what she learned through L3 Farmers, she managed the animals in a scientific manner, yielding 15 to 20 litres of milk per cow, compared to a village average of about ten litres.
By 2006, COL was able to withdraw from direct involvement after the L3 Farmers programme became self-sustaining. Then tragedy struck Uppukottai and Arasakuamri’s family. A peculiar strain of Foot and Mouth disease hit the cows. In spite of vaccinations, productivity declined drastically to about two litres of milk per day.
Using Mr. Ganankulandai’s ICT facilities, the village community contacted veterinary experts, bankers and insurance agencies. The insurance company argued that they would not be able to pay any insurance unless the cow became completely dry.
During this period, Murugan suffered an accident in the sugarcane field, which resulted in the amputation of both his legs. Arasakumari’s family had now lost both sources of income.
Though shocked, Arasakumari was undaunted. She and her fellow villagers approached the bank for help and discovered their loans could be waived under a Government of India scheme. Arasakumari sold both her cows at a very cheap price. The local community and a self-help group gave her a loan with a low interest rate to buy two new cows. With her new knowledge gained through the L3 Farmers programme, she identified two healthy cows. She consulted the veterinary experts, using emails and telephone, and developed a balanced feed and disease management plan.
Today, Arasakumari again gets a yield of 15 to 20 litres of milk from each cow and her monthly income (between Rs. 2,500 and 3,000) is much higher than what she would get as an agricultural labourer. She attributes the higher productivity to the feed management which she learned through the L3 Farmers programme.
She devotes her time to her family and to the backyard dairy. Her two children are in school. Her husband helps her in her activities. Arasakumari goes to the Internet kiosk regularly to talk to veterinary experts, and meets her friends in the village frequently to learn about new developments in local dairy. Her lifelong learning continues.
www.col.org/L3Farmers
CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF COMMONWEALTH EDUCATIONAL CO-OPERATION. COL's president Sir John Daniel, confers with former COL president, Dato' Professor Gajaraj Dhanarajan, now Vice Chancellor and CEO of Malaysia's Wawasan Open University (left) and Namibia's Prime Minister, The Hon. Nahas Angula at a conference held 31 March and 1 April, 2009 in Oxford, U.K. sponsored by the University of Oxford, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Council for Education in the Commonwealth and COL, the invited attendance included government ministers, education professionals and students from 27 Commonwealth countries to mark the 50th anniversary of Commonwealth Educational Co-operation, the First Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) was held in Oxford in 1959. The 17th CCEM is being held this month in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
COPYRIGHT DEMYSTIFIED
COL is working with experts in copyright to help member countries gain insights into the present copyright situations and implement education-friendly legislation that makes learning content accessible and affordable for more people. The copyright section of COL’s website offers extensive resources including:
• An information sheet that explains Creative Commons “NC” and “ND” restrictions;
• Introducing Copyright: A plain language guide to copyright in the 21st century by Julien Hofman (see page 15 for more details about this new book);
• Copyright Guidelines, which explain COL’s position on the sharing of learning content; and
• Copyright & Distance Education: A trainer’s toolkit, which provides resources for hosting a workshop that introduces participants to copyright as it relates to distance education.
www.col.org/copyright
FOLLOW COL ON TWITTER
President Obama has one. So does Westminster Abbey. NASA has several. Now COL has its own Twitter page. This is where you’ll find messages from COL staff about interesting sources of information, programme updates and other news. Anyone can access the COL Twitter page; those who have a Twitter account can receive updates about COL’s Twitter Feed.
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging system that people use to send out short messages, known as “Tweets”. A Tweet can be no longer than 140 characters (about the length of a mobile phone text message) and can include photos (TwitPics) and links to websites. Twitter is rapidly gaining popularity among organisations worldwide as an informal communications tool.
http://twitter.com/colkm
MAKING QUALITY WORK IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Dr. Willie Clarke-Okah, COL Education Specialist, Higher Education, with consultants Ms. Caroline Donovan (left) and Ms. Alison Schmidt at the Utech Training for COL RIM.
The University of Technology, Jamaica is piloting a cost-effective institutional quality audit model developed by COL. The COL Review and Improvement Model (COL RIM) provides higher education institutions with the knowledge and tools they need to conduct an effective institutional quality audit. Developed in partnership with Quality Works (Pty) Ltd., COL RIM integrates internal and external quality assurance processes, with an emphasis on improvement. This “do-it-yourself” approach to auditing quality will help higher education institutions reduce costs and increase effectiveness.
COL developed COL RIM in response to a growing demand for institutional quality audits. After leading teams that conducted audits of UNISA (the University of South Africa) and the University of Ghana in 2007, COL concluded that the use of external teams can be very expensive. Cost effectiveness can be achieved with the use of credible, well trained people, good planning and focus, and the use of technology and other tools. Self-assessment seems to be particularly effective.
COL RIM is a model for internal quality assurance, planning and systematic institutional improvement. The two-part package includes a conceptual framework and a handbook. While it is especially useful for countries where there is no functional external quality assurance system for higher education, it can also be used to good effect in partnership with, and supplementary to, national external quality assurance.
At UTech, COL provided training for the internal verifiers who will conduct internal assessments. The results of this internal institutional quality audit will inform revisions to COL RIM, which will then be made publicly available. Seventeen universities have already expressed interest in obtaining this tool for conducting their own audits.
OERs FOR COMMUNITY MEDIA
The Community Radio Support Centre (CRSC) in Nepal has donated seven open educational resources (OERs) for community radio to COL’s Community Media Space. The materials from CRSC, which cover strategic planning, performance assessment and institutional strengthening guidelines, are now freely available for download and use.
The CRSC materials are part of a growing cluster of training materials, case studies and other resources related to organisational development on the Community Media Space on WikiEducator. Other excellent materials have been shared by Roots-FM,
Jamaica (financial sustainability), Maraa, India (six modules covering topics such as conceptual clarity, management and sustainability), and open source community radio pioneer, KRUU-FM, USA (Volunteer Handbook).
If you have training curricula, manuals or handbooks that will benefit groups involved in community media, visit the Community Media Space or contact Ian Pringle, COL Education Specialist, Media at ipringle@col.org.
www.wikieducator.org/Community_Media/Organization_Development
OERs FOR OPEN SCHOOLS
COL is pleased to report significant progress in the Open Educational Resources for Open Schools initiative. A two-year partnership between COL and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, it aims to improve access to secondary education by developing open educational resources (OERs) and training teachers in online materials development.
Participants at the OERs for Open Schools Workshop in Botswana
Six countries are taking part in the initiative: Botswana, India, Lesotho, Namibia, Seychelles and Trinidad & Tobago. Each country is developing learning materials for open school students. After two years, 20 subjects will be developed for the free use or adaption by open schools in the Commonwealth.
Training workshops in all six countries in early 2009 focussed on building the capacity of teachers to develop OERs. Country Management Committees will ensure the materials comply with the country’s syllabi. The materials will then undergo peer review by committee members in the other countries.
“This is an exciting development, because it will build a library of quality OERs that can be freely used by open schools, while also developing the skills of educators to create more learning content,” said Ms. Frances Ferreira, COL Education Specialist, Open Schools. “This is large-scale collaborative effort; we are pleased to have participation from more than 100 educators, government representatives, trainers and evaluators from across the Commonwealth.”
The South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE) will conduct rigorous ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the inputs and outcomes to ensure it meets the goal of broadening access to secondary education and increasing student achievement.
www.col.org/openschooling
VUSSC DEVELOPS ACCREDITATION SYSTEM,
MORE COURSE MATERIALS
The TQF cluster meeting in Pretoria, South Africa in April 2009
An international group is collaborating on the development of a widely recognised system of accreditation for the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC). Three regional cluster meetings, attended by executives of qualification authorities and quality assurance agencies for the Africa-Mediterranean, Caribbean and Asia-Pacific regions, were held in South Africa, St. Lucia and Samoa during the first half of 2009 to provide input to the new Transnational Qualifications Framework (TQF).
The aim of the TQF is to encourage the use of VUSSC programmes in all countries by ensuring students receive credits. The TQF is of particular interest to nations that don’t have a quality assurance authority.
The TQF Management Committee, comprised of representatives from six small states of the Commonwealth, is incorporating input from these regional meetings into the final TQF document for presentation to Commonwealth Education Ministers this month.
Meanwhile, educators continue to collaborate on courses in technical and vocational education and training (TVET), including entrepreneurship and tourism, which began in VUSSC training workshops or “boot camps”. The materials will be available on the COL website.
Two more content development training workshops are being planned for Samoa and Maldives later in 2009.
www.col.org/vussc
SUPPORTING TEACHER EDUCATION IN
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
COL and the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) consortium have formed a partnership for the dissemination and use of TESSA resources by primary school teachers and teacher educators in Uganda and Zambia. This initiative, which will be jointly funded by COL and the TESSA Secretariat in Milton Keynes, UK, will help primary schools and teacher training institutions in Uganda and Zambia make effective use of the teacher training resources provided by TESSA.
TESSA is a consortium of 18 organisations, universities and teacher training institutions in Africa including the Open University UK, the BBC World Service Trust and COL that are collaborating to improve the quality of teaching in primary schools and teacher education in Africa. The consortium has developed an extensive range of multilingual open educational resources (OERs) that are appropriate for all primary school teachers, including those with little or no formal training. Over 100 teacher educators and 1,000 teachers have been involved in the creation of the TESSA resources. It’s estimated that half a million teachers are working with these materials.
COL has been involved with TESSA as a partner since the consortium was established in 2005.
www.tessaafrica.net
MULTIMEDIA MATERIALS FOR OPEN SCHOOLS
COL and the Namibian College of Open Learning (NAMCOL) are encouraging the use of multimedia learning materials in open schools by making newly developed materials freely available.
NAMCOL is introducing multimedia materials through a strategy developed for them by Mindset Network. This strategy considered issues such as investment in equipment, most effective approaches and how to combine media. Following training in how to develop multimedia materials, the NAMCOL team developed learning materials for five subjects using print, video and audio elements. These materials are being piloted, and an evaluation report will be written.
COL will make these learning materials freely available for educators to adapt, use and share. Open schools will also have access to the strategy document to help in planning their own strategy, the evaluation report so they can learn from NAMCOL’s implementation of their multimedia materials and training from NAMCOL so they learn how to incorporate multimedia elements in their own learning materials.
“Most open schools rely exclusively on print materials because integrating multimedia into learning materials can be a challenge,” said Ms. Frances Ferreira, COL’s Education Specialist, Basic Education and Open Schools and formerly a director of an open school. “Through this initiative we are delivering a model, materials and training so that other open schools can more easily develop quality materials that enhance learning through the use of different media.”
NEW eLEARNING PROGRAMME FOR COMMONWEALTH SECRETARIAT
COL has developed an eLearning programme to support the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Debt Reporting and Management System (CS-DRMS). The COL eLearning for International Organisations team has converted a face-to-face training workshop for the proprietary software into a distance education programme on CD-ROM supported by online tutors.
The CS-DRMS eLearning Programme Team meeting in Vancouver, Canada in March 2009.
The Commonwealth Secretariat has been assisting its member countries in the area of debt management for over 20 years. The CS-DRMS software enables countries to track external and domestic borrowings and supports a wide range of financial instruments including loans, bonds and securities. It also provides a suite of reports, reporting utilities and analytical tools to support borrowing and debt restructuring decision making. More than 50 countries use CD-DRMS, which is recognised as a leading debt recording and management system.
With a growing number of workshops required to train users in CS-DRMS, the Commonwealth Secretariat decided to explore introducing an eLearning programme with COL, according to Mr. Walton Gilpin, Debt Management Advisor with the Commonwealth Secretariat.
“The main advantage of this course is the ability to offer anytime, anywhere learning,” he said. “We’ll be able to provide on-demand training for new users and existing users who need to refresh their skills.”
Learner support will be provided through eModerators, who will communicate with learners online. The CS-DRMS eLearning programme will be piloted at the end of 2009, with roll-out scheduled for early 2010.
www.col.org/COLeLIO
STRENGTHENING LOCAL LEVEL GOVERNANCE
COL’s work in governance is focussed on partnering with local groups to strengthen the skills and knowledge of elected officials. In Papua New Guinea, COL has played an important role in bringing together post-secondary training institutions along with all levels of government through their work with the University of Papua New Guinea to develop training for district, local and village government officials. Reaching individuals with various levels of formal education represents a new area of work for the University of Papua New Guinea. Seven training modules have been developed and are being piloted.
In Bangladesh, COL is supporting Rupantar, a local non-governmental organisation that has developed training for local government officials through use of traditional drama and songs in addition to other more common development tools. Rupantar has developed four modules and hopes to augment this material through mobile telephony and radio. As this is Rupantar’s first venture into open and distance learning (ODL), COL is helping to build capacity by supporting training for 300 Rupantar employees and development of an ODL policy. To further train their own staff and other non-governmental organisations interested in learning about ODL, Rupantar is opening an ODL training institute and radio training studio in southwest Bangladesh.
THE ADVANTAGES OF ATTACHMENTS
Q & A WITH MS. FRANCES FERREIRA
COL’s Professional Development Programme includes Executive Secondments – opportunities for senior officials/academics in Commonwealth governments or institutions to live in Vancouver, Canada for up to three months and work on specific projects related to COL’s mandate. Sponsoring organisations and recipient individuals must commit to a return to full-time employment for a minimum of one year following the placement with COL and sponsoring organisations/institutions are also expected to continue to support the salary and benefits of the individual during the secondment.
Ms. Frances Ferreira is a current COL staff member who has benefited from Attachments, including an Executive Secondment to COL in 2005.
She shares her thoughts about this experience.
Q: How did you find out about COL’s Executive Secondment Programme?
A: I didn’t know about it; I was just told one day that I was going! I was attending the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Edinburgh in 2003. I was Director of the Namibian College of Open Learning (NAMCOL) at the time and was accompanying the Namibian Minister of Education, the Hon. Nahas Angula, who is now Prime Minister. The Minister was speaking with COL’s then President, Raj Dhanarajan, asking why COL didn’t offer more professional development for Namibians. Raj offered to host someone at COL’s office in Vancouver under its Attachments Programme, the Minister suggested me and it was a done deal!
Q: How was it helpful to be in the Vancouver office?
A: First, it was a huge advantage to have protected time where I could fully focus on research and planning. As the head of an institution, I got so caught up in day-to-day activities that I found it difficult to think strategically. My three months in Vancouver gave me the opportunity to reflect from a distance – not just on my subject, the cost and financing of open schools, but on all the different areas. My discussions with colleagues at COL, the meetings that were arranged and the reading I did all contributed greatly to my work.
Q: How did your secondment help your organisation?
A: While in Vancouver, I gained a broader understanding about the real cost of distance education. It’s not just materials; it’s also learner support, professional development and other issues. So I brought a whole new dimension to the discourse on the cost and financing of open and distance learning in southern African educational institutions. I think I assisted NAMCOL as an institution and the country.
Q: Did you expect to be employed with COL after your secondment?
A: Not at all! I didn’t even know such a position (Education Specialist, Basic Education and Open Schooling) was going to be open when I left COL. I certainly thought I’d love to live in Vancouver one day, but I didn’t know the opportunity would come so soon. I joined COL a year and a half later. The work I did during my Attachment led to a major study on the cost and effectiveness of open schools, which has in turn resulted in the development of several tools for open schools. So I would say it was a beneficial experience in many ways!