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Additionally, Trade Union Presidents also participated in the development of the Triple ‘A’ Strategy. The President of WIGUT Barbados, a member of Open Campus staff also played a pivotal role in the strategic plan development and represented the other WIGUT presidents at the 8-9 December, 2016 retreat.
Holding meetings to get input before planning
As part of the pre-planning process, The UWI Open Campus staff were engaged in a series of focus group sessions as part of The UWI SWOT analysis. This form of environmental scanning was used to determine the status of the Campus. Environmental scanning is integral to any strategic planning process as it prepares the institution for any future changes, which may occur because of external forces such as the social, political, economic and technological environments. As aptly described by Conway (2013), environmental scanning is “about recognising that the future is unlikely to be anything like the past, and that we therefore need to spend some time understanding the trends and likely influencers on the future of our organisations (p. iii).
Cognizant of the fact that the results of the environmental scan would better prepare for future change, the University of the West Indies, as a part of its planning process, conducted institutional scanning. This process took the form of a SWOT and threats, opportunities, weaknesses and strengths (TOWS) analysis, conducted during September 2016. The TOWS analysis compares the external opportunities and threats against the internal strengths and weaknesses and is considered to add more value to strategic planning process than would be had by the conduct of only the SWOT analysis.
The UWI Open Campus utilized the findings of the SWOT analysis commissioned by the Vice-Chancellor to inform decision making as part of the Strategic Planning process. The PAIR Unit conducted focus group sessions, administered an online staff survey including every level of staff, and then prepared “Report on Focus Groups and Survey for Vice-Chancellor’s Task Force on The UWI Open Campus” (Appendix 6.1).