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 2010. The meeting brought together open schooling practitioners from 15 countries and 15 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 published 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.”
Building Capacity
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 is an extensive collaboration that involves COMOSA members. New open educational resources (OER) have been developed for 20 secondary courses by educators from Lesotho, Namibia, Seychelles, Trinidad & Tobago and Zambia. And COL has been sponsoring training workshops, meetings and exchanges on open schooling between India and Africa for many years.
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 and 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.
April 2011