COMOSA TAKES FLIGHT
The Commonwealth Open Schooling Association (COMOSA) held its first Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) in Delhi, India in November. The meeting brought together open schooling practitioners from 15 countries and many Indian states. Established in 2009, COMOSA supports the efforts of ODL institutions to co-ordinate, co-operate and collaborate in developing and delivering education for sustainable development that is innovative, high quality, relevant, equitable, gender-sensitive and cost-effective.
COMOSA introduced the first issue of the COMOSA Journal of Open Schooling at the AGM. NIOS hosted the meeting and publishes the new journal. Dr. S.S. Jena, Chairman and CEO of NIOS, is the founding Chair of COMOSA.
“Open schooling is an idea whose time has come,” declared COL President Sir John Daniel in his address to the AGM. “It is education for the 21st century. Therefore it is time for you to raise your game, emerge from the shadows and take your place in the educational ecosystem that is needed to achieve the noble goals of education for all.”
Collaboration and networking aren’t just aspirations; they are already occurring, Ms. Frances Ferreira, COL Education Specialist, Open Schooling told the group. The “OER for Open Schools” initiative (described in more detail on page 7) is an extensive collaboration that involves COMOSA members. And COL has been sponsoring training workshops, meetings and exchanges on open schooling between India and Africa for many years.
The rapidly growing demand for secondary education means business is booming for open schools. The annual enrolment of NIOS, which is currently 300,000, will need to double quickly and could reach 1.5 million pupils this decade, according to Shri S.C. Khuntia, India’s Joint Secretary for School Education and Literacy. Like many open schools, NIOS is being encouraged to expand its vocational skills offerings. COL is working to support this growing demand.
www.comosa.org
PROMOTING RESEARCH IN OPEN SCHOOLS
Having identified that lack of research is holding back the development of open schools, COMOSA held a workshop that focussed on developing a research agenda.
Workshop participants prepared a generic framework that open schools can adapt in order to create a research policy for their institution – and each agreed to submit their research policy at the next COMOSA meeting in 2011.
Delegates also agreed on a global open schooling research agenda based on priorities identified by participating open schools. The 11 priority research areas include curriculum and course development, gender, teacher training/in-service and success factors in online learning. Small groups of open schools have been assigned to collaborate on each research area. COL is facilitating the process by providing a consultant who will support the research projects.
TAKING OER BEYOND THE OER COMMUNITY
A COL/UNESCO joint initiative aimed at increasing use of open educational resources (OER) has concluded with agreement that as the use of OER expands, quality control must be maintained and developing countries must be creators of knowledge, not just users.
“Taking OER beyond the OER Community: Policy and Capacity” was launched by COL in partnership with UNESCO’s Higher Education Division in early 2010. The objective: promote the wider use of OER by expanding understanding of OER by educational decision makers and quality assurance experts.
The initiative, which focussed on universities in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, was implemented as part of the COL/UNESCO Joint Work Plan Agreement, with financing from both organisations and the Government of the United States.
“Taking OER beyond the OER Community” involved four capacity building workshops (in India, Mali, Namibia and South Africa) involving more than 140 people representing governments, higher education institutions and quality assurance agencies. Three online discussion forums facilitated information sharing among more than 340 participants. An OER Dossier that presents evidence that the use and adaptation of existing OER raises the quality of teaching and/or reduces costs is freely available online at
http://oerworkshop.weebly.com. Two additional resources will be published later this year.
The initiative’s 2010 activities concluded with a meeting at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in December that drew experts and delegates from more than 60 countries. They discussed current use of OER, quality assurance, copyright and the need for OER policies.
“Through this initiative, we have taken several approaches to take OER beyond the OER community,” said Ms. Trudi van Wyk, COL Education Specialist, eLearning, who led the initiative in partnership with Ms. Zeynep Varoglu from UNESCO. “Our challenge now is to continue this work by supporting governments and institutions to develop OER policies and helping educators understand how to use OER.”
Read more about the COL/UNESCO OER initiative, including links to articles about the UNESCO Policy Forum in World University News: www.col.org/OERPolicy
NEW OER AVAILABLE FOR OPEN SCHOOLS
New open educational resources (OER) for 20 secondary courses created through COL’s “OER for Open Schools” initiative are now freely available online. The self-instructional learning materials, developed by educators from Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Seychelles, Trinidad & Tobago and Zambia, are appropriate for the existing secondary education curriculum. Educators can download, adapt and re-use the OER at no cost.
“OER for Open Schools” was a two-year initiative funded in part by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. It involved building capacity in the effective use of technology in classrooms, development of OER and creating learner support materials. The 100 Master Teachers involved in this training are now providing training to colleagues in their countries.
The 20 print-based OER are available as PDFs on the COL website, WikiEducator and on CD ROM by request. eLearning versions will be available later this year.
www.col.org/OpenSchooling
VUSSC LAUNCHES LEARNING PORTAL
COL President Sir John Daniel (front row) and COL Education Specialist Mr. John Lesperance (back row, second from left) join members of the VUSSC Management Committee at their meeting in Kochi, India in November.
The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) has introduced a new online Learning Management System that makes it easier for learners and educators to access and contribute to VUSSC courses.
The new VUSSC website offers free online materials and tips for learning online. Educators can access learning materials, information about how to adapt learning materials to their needs and other resources. The VUSSC website features the Moodle Learning Management System. Moodle is an open source web application for producing, offering and managing online courses. VUSSC is also offering an offline platform, Poodle, which is Moodle from a memory stick. Poodle can serve as a backup for a course being developed on Moodle and enables course delivery without Internet access. The VUSSC Learning Portal is freely available to all VUSSC participating institutions.
The Learning Portal was unveiled at the second VUSSC Management Committee Meeting, held in Kochi, India, prior to COL’s Sixth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF6). Management Committee members agreed on three areas of focus for the coming year:
- establishment of the VUSSC Transnational Qualifications Framework (TQF) Portal,
- implementation of the TQF, and
- development of new courses.
Senior government officials from participating countries who serve as VUSSC Interlocutors also met in Kochi prior to PCF6. They discussed the need to further address quality assurance, copyright issues, transferring credits among countries and new funding sources. The Interlocutors also identified priority areas for VUSSC course development.
VUSSC is hosting the ninth International Training and Materials Development Workshop in Lesotho in March in collaboration with COL, the National University of Lesotho and the Lesotho Ministry of Education. Participants will collaborate on the development of courses for a degree-level Business/Entrepreneurship programme.
VUSSC is a partnership of 32 small states of the Commonwealth dedicated to expanding access to tertiary education. All VUSSC course materials are freely available online for adaptation and re-use.
www.vussc.org
A COMMUNITY OF BROADCASTERS
Mr. Ian Pringle, COL Education Specialist, Media with COL partners, Ms. Gail White, Executive Director of the Media and Training Centre for Health (South Africa) and Mr. Patrick Prendergast, Lecturer and Coordinator, Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication, University of the West Indies (Jamaica) at AMARC 10, the global conference of community radio broadcasters. COL sponsored a contingent of community radio representatives to attend the week-long conference in La Plata, Argentina.
HELPING FARMERS GAIN ACCESS TO LEARNING AND LENDING
COL’s Lifelong Learning for Farmers programme is a powerful partnership that brings together farmers, learning institutions, information and communication technology (ICT) providers (including mobile phone companies) and banks. By gaining access to relevant learning and credit, farmers are empowered to improve their livelihoods, with far-reaching impacts on communities.
L3 Farmers was launched in Tamil Nadu, India in 2004 and has since been replicated in Jamaica, Kenya, Mauritius, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka. While the objective is to facilitate the creation of a self-sustaining programme, COL provides ongoing support to L3 Farmers initiatives. Here are two updates from India and Sri Lanka.
25,000 Farmers Ask India’s Banks to Value Learning
A meeting of stakeholders in COL’s Lifelong Learning for Farmers programme drew an estimated 6,000 people in Tamil Nadu, India in November 2010. Comprised mostly of self-help groups and farmers, the predominantly women participants also included representatives from universities, banks and mobile phone companies.
At the meeting in Bodinaikanur (Bodi), Tamil Nadu, organisers presented senior bankers with a petition signed by more than 25,000 people who work in agriculture. The petition requested the Reserve Bank of India and other banks to consider four suggestions to help improve the livelihoods of people working in agriculture:
Banks and financial institutions should invest 2% of their total agricultural and self-help group (SHG) credit portfolio in providing credit-specific learning packages to the borrowers of agricultural credit as well as to the SHGs, which would not only help the borrowing poor community but also enhance the repayment rates to the banks.
The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development’s Assessment of Self‐Help Groups is based on nine principles. We suggest that NABARD should include capacity building as the tenth principle. SHGs with well organised capacity building should be given a better assessment.
Appropriate institutional arrangements involving various stakeholders such as universities, NGOs, private sectors, banks, telecom companies etc. should be evolved for the delivery of the capacity building process through ODL mode using modern ICT, and certification procedures need to be established.
Community banking (which is based on social capital, community‐based organisation, joint liability and responsibility of the community) is not the same as microfinance institutions (which are managed by external institutions). Community banking needs a distinctive recognition by the government and the financial institutions.
“The immense support for this petition reflects the recognition that learning is an essential part of farming today,” explained
Dr. K. Balasubramanian, COL Education Specialist, Agriculture and Livelihoods. “We are hopeful that the banks and policy makers will consider the constructive suggestions put forward in the petition.”
In his address to the large crowd in Bodi, COL President Sir John Daniel explained COL’s role in promoting learning for development.
“Our role is not to give you money and tell you what to do, but to help you do what you think is best in a way that creates sustainable improvements in your livelihoods and prosperity,” Sir John noted. “At that point, COL is happy to move on and help other communities, knowing that you are on a secure path to better lives and richer communities.”
Bankers who attended the meeting in Bodi are bringing forward the suggestions to their organisations. The petition has also been forwarded to the Prime Minister of India and other key policy makers in an effort to generate discussion at the national level.
The Voice of Women Farmers
Close to 70 percent of the estimated 6,000 people who attended the L3 Farmers meeting in Bodi were women farmers, according to a COL survey conducted at the event. More than a quarter of them (27 percent) have had no schooling and only 24 percent have attended school beyond primary grades. Most (71 percent) had participated in L3 Farmers, and of that group, all of them said it is making a difference in terms of improving their income.
A copy of the petition is at www.col.org/L3Farmers. Sir John Daniel’s blog post on the meeting in Tamil Nadu: www.col.org/blog77
MICROFINANCE COURSE FOR SRI LANKA’S BANKERS
A cohort of 250 students from banks across Sri Lanka has graduated from the first Microfinance for Rural Bank Staff course. Originally a face-to-face learning programme developed by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, the course was converted into a multimedia open and distance learning (ODL) course by the Open University of Sri Lanka.
The availability of credit is essential to the success of L3 Farmers. In India, where the model was first developed, commercial banks have been under pressure to increase lending in rural areas. They found that farmers who participated in L3 Farmers had a good record of repaying loans.
The Microfinance for Rural Bank Staff course seeks to bring about a similar trend in Sri Lanka. The course is helping to build awareness and capacity in microfinance in Sri Lanka. The ultimate goal is to enable farmers to get credit from commercial banks, which strengthens links in local communities. By tapping into the infrastructure and ODL expertise developed by the Open University of Sri Lanka, the Central Bank can provide “anywhere, anytime” training in microfinance to large numbers of people at an affordable cost.
After a second cohort of students completes the microfinance course in 2011, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and other banks will assess the impact of the course and decide about further offerings.
Sir John Daniel’s speech to the graduates: www.col.org/RuralBanking_Daniel
FLEXIBLE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA
Dr. Philipa Idogho, Principal of Auchi Polytechnic in Nigeria receives a workshop certificate from COL President Sir John Daniel and Ms. Alison Mead Richardson, COL Education Specialist, Skills Development.
COL has begun work with ten technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions in Africa to develop strategies to introduce more flexible delivery methods into their programmes. Principals from flexible skills development (FSD) Key Institutions met for a workshop in Kochi, India prior to the Sixth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF6). The workshop focussed on potential challenges to FSD, management issues and technical infrastructure. Workshop activities included looking at methods to address and meet national policy directives, as well as monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
In preparation, all the Principals at the Kochi workshop had recently completed an online course in the management of flexible skills development on the COL Moodle platform. Forty institutional managers and policy makers took part in the four-week course, which helps participants to engage with the issues of managing change from traditional to more flexible teaching approaches through eLearning and discussion forums.
Following the workshop, the Principals attended PCF6, which was “a wonderful welcome into the ODL family of COL,” according to Mr. Yona Okidia of Kenya Technical Teachers College. “We met so many people who are really bringing flexible learning to life. They greatly added to our knowledge and to our motivation to make this work in our own institutions.”
The Key Institutions that COL is working with to build capacity in flexible skills development are:
- Auchi Polytechnic, Nigeria
- Coast Institute of Technology, Kenya
- Gambia Technical Training Institute,
The Gambia
- Kenya Technical Teachers College, Kenya
- Koforidua Polytechnica, Ghana
- Masai Technical Training Institute, Kenya
- Mbeya Institute of Science & Technology, Tanzania
- Mombasa Technical Training Institute, Kenya
- Technical & Vocational Teachers College, Zambia
- Zambia Institute of Business, Zambia
COMMUNITY LEARNING NETWORK LAUNCHED
An online platform that promotes learning and discussion about flexible skills development was launched at the biennial Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics in Africa (CAPA) conference in Lesotho in December. A partnership between COL and CAPA, the Flexible Skills Development (FSD) Community Learning Network provides information and resources to facilitate the use of information and communication technology (ICT) by technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions.
The CAPA conference was attended by more than 140 people from TVET institutions in nine African countries. The FSD Community Learning Network was introduced during a one-day workshop devoted to Flexible Skills Development. At the end of the workshop, Ms. Rose Kiiru from Thika Technical Training Institute spoke about the changes in her work since she has “switched on” to ICT.
“The use of ICT tools was never an important thing to me until I attended the Flexible Skills Development introductory workshop in June 2010 at Mombasa Technical Training Institute. It was amazing to realise how the use of ICT tools can influence teaching and learning as well as social life, leading to quality service delivery and increased access.”
Although focussed on TVET institutions in Africa, the Community Learning Network is open to anyone in the Commonwealth. To find out more or to join the Flexible Skills Development Community Learning Network, contact the COL FSD Team at flexibleskills@col.org.