The UWI Open Campus Training Regional Educators to Deliver Courses Online
Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal. Tuesday, March 31, 2020. As part of its outreach thrust and giving back to the region in light of the COVID-19 Pandemic, The University of the West Indies (UWI) Open Campus has been assisting regional education stakeholders to identify alternative ways of providing continuing education for their students.
The Campus is leading six hours of professional development training for stakeholders in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Saint Lucia, the British Virgin Islands, St Kitts and Nevis, Barbados and Anguilla. Three webinars are being conducted during the week of March 30 to April 3 focusing on topics such as: using a web conferencing tool to facilitate online delivery of content; basics for use of the Moodle Learning Management System; and, how to engage students in the online environment.
Among the groups participating in the training are community college academic staff, primary and secondary school teachers, principals and education and curriculum officers from ministries of education.
Dr Denise Gaspard-Richards, Director of the Academic Programming and Delivery Division (APAD) at the Open Campus said the objective of the training is to assist staff in educational institutions to quickly move to online modes for continuity of teaching and learning activities in the current school year.
The Open Campus response followed a joint meeting among regional education stakeholders, including the Open Campus and the Eastern Caribbean Joint Board of Teacher Education (ECJBTE) last week.
Professor Joel Warrican, Director of the School of Education at The UWI Cave Hill Campus, and Chair of the ECJBTE, said it was a strategic decision to call on the Open Campus to provide the training. “It is the only entity in the Anglophone Caribbean space with its core business being that of online education,” Professor Warrican explained. “The UWI Open Campus is equipped with a cadre of experts in online education and has the capacity to respond rapidly and with agility to this emerging need.”
“It is expected that approximately 600 participants will benefit from this professional development opportunity that the Open Campus has collaborated on with the ECJBTE to offer the East Caribbean region, at no cost to our stakeholders,” Dr Gaspard-Richards stated.
Professor Warrican expressed that “the alliance formed between the ECJBTE and The UWI Open Campus is an excellent demonstration of rapid response in a time of international crisis that is having an impact on education in the region.”
Hear from some of the Open Campus staff involved in delivering the training programme for regional educators by viewing this video: https://youtu.be/Swkiv5Lnds8
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About the Eastern Caribbean JBTE
The Joint Board of Teacher Education (JBTE) was established in 2000 under Ordinance 14 of the Charter of The University of the West Indies. It comprises Ministries of Education and national colleges in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Teachers’ Associations; and the School of Education at The Cave Hill campus.
The JBTE is the premier certifying body for teachers in the member countries and currently certifies teachers in Early Childhood Education; Primary Education; Secondary Education (with specialisation in the teaching of English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, History, Geography, Business, Modern Languages); and Technical and Vocational Education (Industrial Arts and Home Economics). For more information, visit https://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/education/eastern-caribbean-jbte.aspx
About The UWI
For over 70 years The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has provided service and leadership to the Caribbean region and wider world. The UWI has evolved from a university college of London in Jamaica with 33 medical students in 1948 to an internationally respected, regional university with near 50,000 students and five campuses: Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago, Cave Hill in Barbados, Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda and an Open Campus. As part of its robust globalization agenda, The UWI has established partnering centres with universities in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa including the State University of New York (SUNY)-UWI Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development; the Canada-Caribbean Studies Institute with Brock University; the Strategic Alliance for Hemispheric Development with Universidad de los Andes (UNIANDES); the UWI-China Institute of Information Technology, the University of Lagos (UNILAG)-UWI Institute of African and Diaspora Studies and the Institute for Global African Affairs with the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The UWI offers over 800 certificate, diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Social Sciences and Sport.
As the region’s premier research academy, The UWI’s foremost objective is driving the growth and development of the regional economy. The world’s most reputable ranking agency, Times Higher Education, has ranked The UWI among the top 600 universities in the world for 2019, and the 40 best universities in Latin America and the Caribbean for 2018 and 2019.The UWI has been the only Caribbean-based university to make the prestigious lists. For more, visit www.uwi.edu.
(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)
