The UWI Vice-Chancellery, Jamaica. Friday, October 27, 2017—The University of the West Indies (The UWI) Office of Administration is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Stafford A. Griffith as Regional Director of the Office of Online Learning (OOL), with effect from October 1, 2017.
The Office of Online Learning is a newly established office within the Vice-Chancellery at The UWI’s Regional Headquarters. Under Professor Griffith’s leadership, the OOL’s main responsibilities will include leading online programme development and facilitating all requests for approval of online programmes from all campuses of The UWI.
The OOL is one of the outcomes of the recommendations of the Open Campus Taskforce, convened in September 2015, to examine ways to maximize the Open Campus’ governance, structures, strategies and integration within the wider UWI eco-system. Expanding access is one of the three pillars in The UWI’s new strategic plan (Triple A Strategy 2017-2022). As the University continues to work toward its goal of at least one university graduate in each household in the Caribbean, equipped to meet the needs of their communities and the wider region, enhancing The UWI’s distance and online learning capacities is crucial in achieving this goal.
Speaking on his appointment, Professor Griffith conveyed, “I regard this appointment as an important responsibility to contribute to the further development and expansion of the online learning opportunities provided by The UWI to larger numbers of learners throughout the Caribbean, the Caribbean Diaspora and the global community. I expect that by supporting the initiatives of all four campuses of the University in designing and delivering online courses and programmes, the Office of Online Learning will make a valuable contribution to the University’s new strategic goals of Access, Alignment and Agility”.
Professor Griffith holds a Professorial Chair in Research, Measurement and Evaluation. Prior to his appointment as Director of the OOL, he served as the Director of The UWI’s School of Education and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the Mona Campus. He comes to the Directorship with considerable experience in the development and delivery of online courses. Under his stewardship, the School of Education initiated a number of innovations, including the concurrent teaching of students face-to-face at the Mona Campus and at multiple sites across the Caribbean through video streaming technologies.
Professor Griffith’s postgraduate qualifications consist of specialized study in research, measurement and evaluation, and curriculum development and he holds an LLB degree and completed graduate studies in the areas of in Political Science and Development Studies. He has over 46 years of combined work experience, 34 years of which are at the professional and senior management levels in fields covering educational measurement and evaluation, programme planning and management, curriculum development, and teaching.
Professor Griffith’s career spans multiple roles; among them: Director of the USAID-funded Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training (CCETT) headquartered at the Mona Campus of The University of the West Indies; Pro-Registrar of the Caribbean Examination Council, having previously served the Council as Assistant Registrar as well as Head of a Project Unit; Consultant/National Coordinator of a World Bank and Ministry of Education Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) Project, Jamaica; Director of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and The University of the West Indies Institutional Strengthening Project; and Senior Education Project Manager of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional Development Office/Caribbean.
He has also served as a resource person in a number of regional and national curriculum development, teacher training and measurement and evaluation activities, and as a consultant to a number of regional and international institutions and organisations, including the Ministry of Education (Guyana), the University of Guyana, the Caribbean Examinations Council, the Norman Manley Law School (Jamaica), the Eugene Dupuch Law School (The Bahamas), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), TECSULT International Limited (Montreal), the Van Leer Foundation (Holland).
Professor Griffith boasts an impressive record of public service and research and scholarly work. He has served on a number of national boards, committees and commissions and currently serves as the Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Caribbean Examinations Council. His research and publications include at least 85 items comprising journal articles, scientific/scholarly papers, technical reports, book and book chapters, and monographs in areas related to various aspects of education, including innovations in education, educational reforms, educational measurement and evaluation, and online learning. His recent book on School Based Assessment in a Caribbean Public Examinations (UWI Press) received the Principal’s Research Award in 2016 for Best Research Publication (book category) in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, at The UWI Mona Campus.
