VUSSC DEVELOPS FIRST DIPLOMA PROGRAMME

Participants from (L to R) Jamaica, Dominica and Mauritius at the VUSSC workshop in Maldives

Participants at a Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) training workshop in Maldives in March developed course materials for a Diploma in Sustainable Agriculture for Small States. This is VUSSC’s first diploma-level programme.

Twenty-five educators from 19 countries took part in the content development workshop. Similar to the past seven “boot camps”, this session provided hands-on training in ICT skills and course materials development.

Sustainable agriculture is especially important in small states, most of which depend largely on agricultural imports. The Government of Maldives, for example, wants to reduce the importation of agricultural goods by 20 per cent and believes the solution lies in investing in human resource development through quality education. The new VUSSC diploma programme, which will be finalised through online collaboration over the next four months, covers the business aspects of agriculture, including how to establish a viable agricultural enterprise.

“This was our most productive VUSSC workshop to date,” explained Mr. John Lesperance, COL Education Specialist, VUSSC. “The participants honed their expertise in online course development and have committed to training five colleagues in their home countries. In this way, VUSSC continues to build a cadre of experts throughout the Commonwealth.”

VUSSC is led by a Management Committee representing small states in all regions of the Commonwealth. All VUSSC course materials are freely available online for adaptation and re-use by anyone.

www.vussc.org

BUILDING OPEN SOURCE SKILLS

Two groups of information technology (IT) managers have completed COL’s “Linux for IT Managers” programme, an Open Courseware online course that is helping educational institutions learn how to work with open source software. The programme, which is offered by FLOSS4Edu and freely available on COL’s website and the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) website, is designed for new users of the Linux operating system. By building capacity in working with Linux, COL is helping educational institutions and government groups to save money by working with open source software. Interested individuals or organisations can access course materials in either open and distance learning (ODL) or face-to-face workshop formats.

www.col.org/coursematerials
www.vussc.org
http://wikieducator.org/FLOSS4Edu

HIV/AIDS HEALTH PROMOTION IN SOUTH AFRICA

COL is partnering with the Media and Training Centre for Health (MTC) in an HIV/AIDS community learning programme in Northern Cape Province, South Africa. MTC is working with 500 targeted learners who have been selected by non-governmental organisations and high schools. The distance learning programme is increasing knowledge and support for people living with HIV and AIDS through a four-step process:

• Identifying needs. MTC conducted an assessment to determine what information or support learners would find most useful and the appropriate channels for communication.
• Monthly contact. Learners receive information and support through participatory radio programmes, SMS messaging, referrals to websites and printed communication.
• Face-to-face mentorship. Partner organisations meet with learners to reinforce learning and monitor their progress.
• Measuring the impact. Following up on the baseline study conducted at the outset of the project, a second assessment will measure the impact of the intervention.

“This is an excellent example of how key groups in the same community can come together in a win-win partnership to promote healthy communities,” said Mr. Ian Pringle, COL Education Specialist, Media. “We hope the Upington experience informs solutions in other communities concerning health issues.”

Media and Training Centre for Health

SUPPORTING DISTANCE AND FLEXIBLE LEARNING IN SOLOMON ISLANDS

Ms. Rose Paia of the Solomon Islands’ Curriculum Development Centre inspects a Freeplay Foundation wind-up radio at a national stakeholders’ consultation workshop

COL is supporting Solomon Islands in its efforts to scale up distance education. In partnership with a working group of educators and Government representatives, COL has assisted with the development of a draft strategic framework that outlines how distance and flexible learning (DFL) can be used to achieve educational objectives.

“We want to use DFL to increase access to basic, secondary, technical/vocational and higher education programmes,” explained Ms. Mylyn Kuve, Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MEHRD) Permanent Secretary.

The new strategic framework explores how to achieve education objectives through DFL in Solomon Islands. COL has applied its expertise to provide direction on issues such as strengthening higher education institutions, regulation of off-shore education providers and improving teacher training.

COL will continue to provide support for Solomon Islands in implementing its DFL strategy. As a member of the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth, the country participates in the development of VUSSC courses and a Transnational Qualifications Framework. VUSSC course materials are freely available for use and/or adaptation.

PARTICIPATORY COMMUNITY LEARNING

An FM-email station in Isabel Province

COL has completed the first phase of a community learning initiative in Isabel Province, Solomon Islands that brought together a broad-based group of partners to develop capacities to use community media for non-formal education.

Isabel Province has a network of radio and email stations that have struggled with social and financial sustainability. COL’s project, executed in partnership with the Isabel Provincial Government and national and provincial health services, focussed on collaboration and participation in content creation.

Following a series of workshops and ongoing mentoring by People First Network and the Solomon Islands Development Trust, media groups and health workers have collaborated to design learning programmes and create content. Covering subjects such as diabetes, sanitation and youth reproductive health, the programmes are broadcast in communities across Isabel Province, reaching up to 10,000 listeners and helping transform the stations into sources of learning rather than just music. The challenge for COL and its local partners is to turn listeners into learners. In addition, many young people gained valuable skills in collaborative programme development, presentation, editing and other technical skills.

The partners are continuing to collaborate and develop learning content that responds to community needs. The coming phase will see a stronger focus on networking content, use of mobile telephones (which were recently introduced to the island province) and professional development for health workers using two-way radio phones to provide learner support. An online community of practice with more than 90 members, the Isabel Youth Learning Network, enables participants to collaborate, share learning and build their skills.

http://isabel-youth.ning.com   

QUALITY AUDITS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

COL is conducting further trials of its new Review and Improvement Model (COL RIM). Designed to provide higher education institutions with the knowledge and tools they need to conduct an effective institutional quality audit, COL RIM is a cost-effective “do-it-yourself” approach to quality assurance monitoring and evaluation. Planning has begun on three COL RIM implementations this year: the Dominica State College (Dominica), the University of Calabar (Nigeria) and the Open University of Sri Lanka.
Following these trials, COL RIM will undergo any necessary refinements before being freely available to higher education institutions. For more information about COL RIM, contact Dr. Willie Clarke-Okah, COL Higher Education Specialist, at info@col.org.

For more information about COL RIM, see recent speeches by COL President Sir John Daniel (6 May) and Vice President Professor Asha Kanwar (9 April) at
www.col.org/speeches.

CAPACITY BUILDING FOR INDIA’S OPEN SCHOOLS

As the apex organisation for open schools in India, the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), is the largest open school in the world and is additionally responsible for training and research on behalf of, and certification of, open schooling in India. The rapid growth in open schooling in the country is creating a corresponding need for training and support for these institutions, many of which are newly formed.

To help open schools develop their capacity, NIOS needs to strengthen its training and academic capabilities. Noted at COL’s Pan-Commonwealth Forum for Open Learning in London in July 2008, this need for human resources development has now been acted upon. COL recently commissioned a report that provides an action plan for a capacity building cell within NIOS.

Written by Dr. Sanjaya Mishra, Associate Professor at Indira Gandhi National Open University’s Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education (IGNOU/STRIDE), the report recommends that a separate Department of Capacity Building in Open Schooling be established at NIOS. The report provides a comprehensive plan, including 30 recommendations, that outlines action items over the next three years. Since NIOS supports open schools in 29 Indian states, increased capacity at NIOS could have a dramatic and far-reaching effect. The final report, which is available on COL’s website, was delivered to NIOS in April.

www.col.org/OpenSchooling
www.col.org/consultancies
www.nios.ac.in  

COL’S BLOG

In recent months, COL’s blog has included posts about subjects ranging from legislative barriers to distance education and quality failures in dual mode universities to why the very poor opt for private schooling and the challenges of educating adolescent girls. Read news and thought-provoking opinions from the COL team at www.col.org/blog.

MEGA CLASSROOM FOR COMMONWEALTH DEBT MANAGERS

By Angela Kwan, Learning Manager, International Organisations

It is a classroom that spans over five continents, ten countries and multiple time zones – and it promises to transform training for Debt Managers throughout the Commonwealth.

This mega classroom includes learners from Africa, South Asia and Pacific regions of the Commonwealth. Developed through a partnership between the Special Advisory Services Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat and COL, the online classroom exists virtually on Moodle (www.moodle.org), an open educational resources (OER) learning management platform. Nineteen debt specialists from ten Commonwealth countries (Belize, Botswana, Guyana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Samoa, Tanzania and the Gambia) enrolled in training on the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Debt Reporting and Management System (CS-DRMS) “meet” asynchronously to:

• Discuss issues,
• Ask questions,
• Complete online quizzes,
• Submit assignments,
• View marked assignments,
• Get help,
• Check marks, and
• Collect certificates.

The physical distance between the learners and their e-tutors (based in The Gambia, Jamaica and Kenya) is huge, but through Moodle, the learners are connected to each other and supported 24/7 by the COL e-tutors and administrative team. Each learner is given a stand-alone, comprehensive CD-ROM that teaches the concepts of debt management, terminologies and the step-by-step recording and reporting of debt through a purpose designed software. The COL eLearning for International Organisations team used a wide range of simulations to teach the software application skills.

Following this pilot, the new CS-DRMS training programme will be rolled out to 60 more debt managers in July. In addition to enhancing debt management in Commonwealth countries, this eLearning initiative is staking out new ground by exploring the potential of such mega classrooms to accelerate and expand learning at scale.

www.col.org/COLeLIO
http://www.thecommonwealth.org/news/34580/222770/210410csdrmsonline.htm

L3 FARMERS EXPANDS IN JAMAICA, UGANDA AND PNG

Dr. K. (BALA) Balasubramanian, COL Education Specialist, Agriculture and Livelihoods (right), discusses the launch of L3 Farmers in Jamaica with Mr. Phillip Chung (left) and Mr. Hartnell Campbell from the Rural Agricultural Development Authority

COL’s Lifelong Learning for Farmers (L3 Farmers) programme is expanding beyond Asia to other regions of the Commonwealth. Launched in India in 2004 and Sri Lanka in 2007, L3 Farmers is now getting established in Jamaica, Papua New Guinea and Uganda.

In Jamaica, COL is working in partnership with the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) to provide learning for farmers. In a country where mobile phones are much more prevalent than computers, RADA is piloting the use of Learning Through Interactive Voice Educational Systems (LIVES), a system that provides audio lessons to multiple users over mobile telephone networks. Developed at the University of British Columbia in Canada, LIVES is also being tested in India.

The L3 Farmers programme in Jamaica is focusing on recertification of RADA extension officers and strengthening an existing farmer training and support programme called Financial Assistance for Responsible Members (FARM).

In Uganda, COL is working in partnership with Makerere University Agriculture Research Institute Kabanyolo to improve farmer livelihoods in the country’s southwest. The L3 Farmers initiative in Uganda is focused on 500 people involved in potato, sorghum and honey-bee farming. L3 Farmers is helping them access credit and updated market information through radio programmes, mobile phones and the Strengthening University Capacity for Promoting, Facilitating and Teaching Rural Innovation Processes (SUCAPRI) website. Farmers are gaining valuable information about subjects such as pest control, product pricing, market development, loan management and farming practices.

In Papua New Guinea, COL has initiated L3 Farmers activities in partnership with the National Agricultural Research Institute. PNG Women in Agriculture, a national group representing women in the agricultural sector, and farmers in the Central Province are the major stakeholders.

L3 Farmers is a response to a critical need: the wealth of information resulting from agricultural research and development often fails to travel the last mile to farmers in the developing world who need it most. By bringing together farmers and knowledge through the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the context of the social and economic value chain, L3 Farmers enables rural farmers to improve their livelihoods and embrace learning.

www.col.org/L3Farmers
http://lives.cs.ubc.ca 

LEARNER SUPPORT AND ODL: THE CHALLENGES AND REWARDS

By Dr. Michael Robertshaw

A distance education professional with a career spanning some 30 years, Dr. Robertshaw is a tutor for COL’s eLearning for International Organisations programme and the U.K. Open University. His successful approach to learner support offers insight and ideas that could be useful for tutors in both online and face-to-face environments.

As an online tutor for COL’s Operational Data Management Learning Programme for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), I work with people located around the world. In most cases, they work in one of the refugee/IDP (internally displaced person) camps in places like Colombia, Lebanon, Rwanda, Serbia and Sri Lanka. In nearly all cases, the learner is the only person in the operation (or in that country) studying in our programme, so they are truly isolated.

All our communication is through email. My academic tasks as an e-coach are first to guide the participants’ study through the 16 chapters, provide feedback on each of the associated assignments, assess whether they have attained the required standard and secondly to support their development of a project proposal and finally assess the end product of this project.

More fundamentally, I provide a human presence that offers advice, counsel or just a friendly sounding board. It is essential to develop a relationship with each participant that breaks down the teacher-student barrier that he/she is probably expecting. The e-coach must be seen firstly as a source of friendly support and guidance and secondly as an assessor. While email is not the ideal environment for establishing such a relationship, it does provide advantages for anyone who uses English as a second language – the ability to prepare and improve the text before sending gives the participant more confidence about communicating with the “expert” than may be the case with spoken communication. Including non-academic topics in messages helps to establish a more chatty environment. At the start of the programme, I describe the view through my window and ask each participant to do the same – usually a stark contrast. Sharing photos also provides a more human feel.

Like the other e-coaches in this programme, I have no personal experience of life within a UNHCR operation and probably only a lay person’s appreciation about how the organisation itself operates. It is essential to appreciate the potential challenges faced by participants who have to continue their normal duties while studying. The unexpected influx of a large number of new refugees that have to be processed, a change in the local security situation, health problems, the need to cover a colleague on leave are just a few of the potential factors affecting a participant’s studies. There are no fixed dates for the submission of each assignment, which provides flexibility for the participant. But each component of the programme does have an end date so it is essential for the e-coach to apply friendly pressure for steady progress without nagging.

Many of the assignments require the participant to relate the content of the chapter to their own work or operation. Responses to questions are likely to vary considerably across operations and usually relate to circumstances outside of my own experience. It is essential to develop an appreciation of enough of the context in each case to be able to provide feedback that is both relevant and constructive. This is particularly the case for the project component, which requires the solution of a real problem within the operation. For one participant, I may be advising on the development of a spreadsheet database system to aid the camp schools to store and process academic scores; in a second it may be the revision of data collection processes in the registration of refugees; in a third it may be the training of staff on good practices in data management; and in yet another, the creation of maps of a camp indicating the distribution of population, water sources and schools.

Developing the participants’ skills and the understanding of data management is the core purpose of this programme and their project work clearly indicates how their confidence has grown in this area. Arguably equally important is their development as distance learners who have accepted the responsibility for managing their own learning in one of the most challenging learning environments. The self-motivation and self-discipline required for the successful completion of the programme clearly marks these participants as valuable staff within the organisation. All this has to be done when your primary contact is a native-English speaker sitting in his Welsh home who needs educating about the operation, the local context and to some extent the organisation! My students make excellent teachers.