VANCOUVER - The Commonwealth of Learning's fourth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning will be held in Jamaica in 2006. The announcement was made this week by Sir John Daniel, COL's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Professor Stewart Marshall, Director, of the University of the West Indies' Distance Education Centre (UWIDEC), who will both co-chair the conference.
The Forum will be organised jointly by COL and UWIDEC, in co-operation with the Caribbean Association for Distance and Open Learning; the Jamaican Association for Distance and Open Learning; the Trinidad & Tobago Distance Learning Association; and the Office of Continuing Education and Distance Learning at the University of Technology, Jamaica. It will be held in the Ocho Rios resort area from 30 October to 3 November 2006. Ocho Rios is located in the beautiful "garden parish" of St. Ann on the north coast of Jamaica. Several levels of accommodation will be available, all at off-season rates. The dates are post-Ramadan and after the end of the Caribbean's hurricane season.
Professor Marshall said, "We will be very pleased to host educators from throughout the world here in the Caribbean. It is an ideal location for the Forum - for international visitors to experience the Caribbean culture and the educational challenges that small island developing states face, and also to bring international open and distance learning experience to bear on these challenges."
COL 's Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning is held biennially in collaboration with the Federation of Commonwealth Open and Distance Learning Associations. It is co-hosted with different partners in different regions of the Commonwealth each time. The five-day programme is designed to address open and distance learning through widening educational access, bridging the digital divide and by advancing the social and economic development of communities and nations at large. The Forum's focus is on topics relating to, and participation by, societies in developing countries. COL's Excellence in Distance Education Awards are also presented at the Forum.
Sir John said, "COL is grateful to the four bidders from around the Commonwealth who offered to host the Forum. Previous events in the series have been held in Asia (Brunei Darussalam), Africa (Durban, South Africa) and the Pacific (Dunedin, New Zealand). I am delighted that we shall now have the opportunity to meet in the Caribbean. The fourth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning will be a most significant event for COL, coming as it will at the beginning of our 2006-09 triennium. We look forward to bringing together our partners and stakeholders from around the Commonwealth to set an agenda for using open and distance learning to advance the development agenda."
Through 30 Centres located in 16 countries, UWIDEC provides distance education opportunities to students located throughout the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean. Its aim is to improve the quality of UWI distance education offerings and help the University move towards being a full dual-mode institution, in which distance education programmes are offered alongside traditional face to face programmes.
The Commonwealth of Learning was created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. The Commonwealth comprises 53 countries - most of which are developing nations - and one-quarter of the world's population.
Further information:
UWI Distance Education Centre: www.dec.uwi.edu
PCF4 website: www.col.org/pcf4
Mr. Dave Wilson
Communications Manager
Commonwealth of Learning
www.col.org/dwilson