PCF6: "ACCESS AND SUCCESS IN LEARNING"
More than 600 delegates from 70 countries attended the sixth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF6), held in November in Kochi, India. The four-day conference addressed the theme "Access and Success in Learning: Global Development Perspectives".
Many conference delegates were attending a Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning for the first time, explained COL President Sir John Daniel in his opening remarks. Most of the conference's sponsorship funds are directed to first-time participants, ensuring that new voices are heard.
"It is no longer enough – and it never was – to pride ourselves on the role of open and distance methods in widening access to learning," Sir John told delegates. "We must judge our efforts by the success of those who engage in the learning that we facilitate."
Sir John saluted PCF6's honorary chair, Professor M.S. Swaminathan, saying he could think of no one in the world who exemplifies COL's motto, "Learning for Development", better than Dr. Swaminathan. Known as the "father of the Green Revolution in India", he is the founder and Chairman of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation.
India needs to focus on nutrition, food security and education, said Dr. Swaminathan in his inauguration address. Education, social motivation and regulation are required to conserve the environment; regulation alone won't ensure protection, he explained. "Nutrition and basic education are two legs of a human being – once these two components are in [place], nutritional security is achieved and this is what I plan to achieve in this Decade of Innovation realising the Millennium Development Goals."
In his welcome to conference delegates, IGNOU Pro-Vice Chancellor and PCF6 Programme Chair, Professor P.R. Ramanujam spoke about the link between the conference's four themes and global development.
"Global Development Perspectives can be achieved through navigating the four broad themes that PCF6 has envisioned – Formal Education at the bottom leading to knowledge and Skills Development of individuals, and enabling overall Community Development, which will take us to the ultimate goal – Social Justice."
The state of Kerala, which hosted PCF6 in the city of Kochi, is an example of how tough targets such as the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved through proper planning and a dynamic vision, said IGNOU Vice Chancellor Professor V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai. "From formal education to social justice, from women empowerment to skills development, whatever parameters we are discussing here have been achieved in Kerala."
Formal Education: A New Approach?
In his keynote speech for the Formal Education theme, Professor Steve Maharey, Vice Chancellor of Massey University in New Zealand spoke about Massey's successes as the university celebrates 50 years of distance education. He also addressed the challenge of ensuring access to quality higher education.
"At a time when the pressure to extend access to quality education is growing, we are discovering the cost may be too high," Professor Maharey noted.
New technologies and new models of learning may finally change the way we have learned for centuries, he said. Massey's response is to adopt blended learning, "the best of collaborative face-to-face learning and a rich digital environment that will also support collaborative learning."
In certain circumstances such as professional learning, open and distance learning (ODL) is not simply as good as other methods: it's better. This was one of the messages delivered by Professor Frank Banks, Director of International Development in Teacher Education at UK Open University in his speech, "Revamping Teacher Education". Professor Banks used examples from around the world to demonstrate the effectiveness of school-based training for teachers.
"Programmes that remove a teacher from the classroom to a centre for two or three weeks, gives them the 'training' and then says 'Right, you are trained, now go and apply it in the classroom!' just don't work," Professor Banks said. "They are expensive, and they don't work."
Courses for teachers must consider the realities of the school, the pupils' lives and needs, and what teachers want for their learning, he stated.
Discussions in the Formal Education theme sessions placed strong emphasis on quality assurance, noting that quality assessment in higher education will only be significant if well integrated to that taking place at secondary level.
The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) has allowed for the local ownership of programmes emanating from a Commonwealth community engaged in developing and delivering courses relevant to small states. Collaborative capacity building has been an essential foundation to the work, and the VUSSC Transnational Qualifications Framework is proving to be a point of reference for establishing national qualifications frameworks.
Participants believed that open schooling will develop strongly in the coming years, with a particular focus on professional and vocational education. It will be important to integrate this development with the more academic curriculum.
Discussions on teacher education stressed the importance of focussing on the classroom, the potential of mobile technologies and quality rather than access numbers alone.
Community Development: Technology and Education
The main role of higher education is to assure continuity for people with basic education, generate knowledge to drive and transform the community, widen access and create equity in higher education, according to Professor Emeritus Tan Sri Anuwar Ali, President and Vice Chancellor of the Open University of Malaysia in his keynote speech about Community Development.
"Communities need universities and higher education more than ever before," he said. "Universities serve the people; they advise governments in policymaking decisions; they help develop skills, create knowledge and train leaders."
The digital divide must be transformed into digital equity, Professor Ali stressed. "Without commensurate technological infrastructure, the poor will remain deprived of both education and development. The investment in technologies is an imperative and will be the first step for many nations before they can truly progress in education."
Discussions in the Community Development theme sessions urged that we emphasise community processes, such as sharing stories and experience, as a way to ground community learning products. Educational institutions do not have a monopoly on learning: they need to adopt models that privilege communication and move beyond top-down approaches to community development.
Participants argued that we must focus less on technology and more on how innovations are used, noting the increasing appreciation of the role of community media and the important task of ensuring that community radio really is an expression of the community.
Social Justice: Expanding Access to Learning
The Social Justice theme was addressed in a keynote speech by Mrs. Chetna Gala Sinha, founder of the Mann Deshi Foundation, which fosters economic development in rural areas through a non-profit co-operative bank, a business school and a community radio station. This innovative group also promotes access to education in a simple but effective ways, such as by making it possible for 5,000 girls to have bicycles to transport them to secondary schools in other communities.
Almost every decision made in the creation of the bank and business school was the result of listening to women, Mrs. Sinha told PCF6 delegates. The village women are determined to pay their own way rather than rely on handouts; to train to be entrepreneurs, not merely to be employed. She is constantly surprised by both the simplicity and the sophistication of their views, Mrs. Sinha said.
Participants in the Social Justice theme stressed that if it is to contribute to development, ODL must be placed within an existing development strategy involving participatory processes with stakeholders. Careful strategies are needed to bridge the gap between policies, which should integrate a gender sensitive framework, and implementation.
There was strong emphasis on quality assurance of ODL as a means to social justice. This means, first, capacity building for staff in understanding and managing quality assurance. Second, quality assurance frameworks should include a social auditing of learning systems and materials in terms of gender, class and environment.
Skills Development: The Potential of Blended Learning
There is an urgent need to provide learners with employable skills, said Dr. Caroline Seelig, Chief Executive of the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand in her keynote speech on Skills Development. "There is no doubt that governments and institutions around the world have reached a critical stage where we must increase our efforts to find creative solutions to world-wide skills shortages, deficits and challenges.
Echoing Professor Steve Maharey's words two days earlier, Dr. Seelig said one of the solutions to the skills development challenge is for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) organisations to adopt a system of blended delivery: a mix of ODL and face-to-face learning.
"I am not sure, however, that policymakers – and indeed many practitioners in the TVET community – have fully recognised the true potential of this model to meet the global skills development challenges before us," she stated.
Conference sessions related to this theme discussed how skills development is the next frontier for ODL. ODL is gaining increasing recognition as a way of increasing access to technical and vocational development and the quality of that development. This is particularly true for the large numbers of people who seek non-formal skills development.
The main obstacle to expansion is the need to train teachers in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for vocational teaching and learning. Collaboration between institutions and development partners is vital for the optimal use of resources. One clear aim of collaboration should be the creation, adaptation and use of OER.
"Educate Girls"
Delivering the prestigious Asa Briggs Lecture, noted writer and Indian Member of Parliament Dr. Shashi Tharoor made a strong plea for the education of girls to attain development goals. Dr. Tharoor said when he is asked the single most important thing that can be done to improve the world, he would without hesitation offer a two-word mantra: "Educate girls".
He referred to research that shows that if you educate a boy, you educate a person, but if you educate a girl, you educate a family and benefit an entire community.
Dr. Tharoor spoke about many issues related to education and development, including the low literacy rate in his own country. "Of all the many paradoxes with which India abounds, the saddest must be that we are a country where nearly half the population is illiterate, but which has produced the world's second largest pool of trained scientists and engineers," he said.
Exploring this, Dr. Tharoor said, "What is missing is not just financial resources, but a commitment on the part of our society as a whole to tackle the educational tasks that lie ahead."
Bridging the Digital Divide
Closing remarks on the final day of PCF6 reflected on the role of Learning in Development. Looking back to the first Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning in 1999, COL Vice President Asha Kanwar spoke about how technology has transformed education. "When PCF was born, the world was facing a huge digital divide. Today, content is being generated at the grassroots level and local communities are far more aware of their livelihood and developmental issues."
The Chair of COL's Board of Governors, the Honourable Burchell Whiteman, saluted the IGNOU team who "took on a gargantuan task and accomplished it with deceptively apparent ease". And he encouraged delegates to use the energy of PCF6 upon their return home.
"If we can translate but a fraction of the intellectual energy and the passion which have been present here into continued action in Nairobi, Delhi, Wellington, Vancouver, Port of Spain or Port Moresby, then our sojourn in this most welcoming city and this state, which is a centre of educational opportunity, would have been more than worth it," said Mr. Whiteman in his closing remarks.
In addition to COL and IGNOU, other PCF6 sponsors included the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), UNESCO, the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS, India), the Commonwealth Secretariat, The Open University (UK) and the University of London.
See also:
Planning for PCF7
COL is reviewing expressions of interest for co-hosting the next Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning and plans to make an announcement within a few weeks.
www.col.org/pcf6
RADIO COMMONS
The Radio Commons was a media demonstration centre at PCF6 that used "Radio in a Box", a device developed by UNESCO in association with the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. Hosted by Maraa, a media collective based in Bangalore, the Radio Commons provided radio broadcasts during lunch and tea breaks at PCF6. Conference delegates were able to experience participatory media and learn about how radio and mobile phone applications function.
MOBILES AND COMMUNITY RADIO: TOGETHER AT LAST
By Ian Pringle, COL Education Specialist, Media
One of the most exciting parts of PCF6 for me was the media centre set up to demonstrate appropriate learning technologies by actually putting them to use during the forum. Alongside daily programming, the centre was also the site of a promising marriage: the synergy of mobile telephony and community radio. At hand were two innovative mobile applications that can act as a complement to radio. Freedom Fone and GRINS enable people to use mobile phones to access content and interact. This has powerful potential for the community learning programmes that COL and its partners are supporting. Developed in Zimbabwe, Freedom Fone saves audio content on a server that people can access on their phone through an interactive voice response system. Callers can choose the content they want to hear – it could be current market prices, weather forecasts or health tips. They can also listen to past programmes, leave feedback through a voice message and cast their vote in polls. GRINS (Gramin Radio Inter-Networking System) was developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi for use by community radio stations. It is a plug-n-play server that enables radio stations to schedule broadcasts, store content, manage phone calls and record live transmissions. With GRINS, community radio stations are better able to interact with their communities and increase access to their programmes through mobile phones. The marriage of mobile phones and community radio is a natural one. They both facilitate "anywhere, anytime learning", but in different, complementary ways. Learning programmes can use phones to interact with learners – register them, provide learner support and assessing learning outcomes – overcoming barriers faced by radio and other traditional media. Learners can access educational content as and when they need it. Radio, on the other hand, provides for an engaging and collective learning environment that can reach large numbers with a single broadcast at a low cost. Together, mobiles and radio can increase the degree of participation in learning for development, which is key. Communities must be active participants in community learning – by shaping priorities, sharing experiences and providing ongoing input.
http://freedomfone.org
http://gramvaani.org/community-radio