UWIDEC APC P. 6

2003/4

UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES

 

A report from a meeting of DEC Site Co-ordinators (October 8th, 2003) to the UWIDEC Academic Programme Committee

 

1.       The first of a new series of regular meetings of DEC Site Co-ordinators was held on October 8th, chaired by PVC Carrington at the Mona site.  Sites participating were:

 

Antigua

Bahamas

British Virgin Islands

Cayman

Dominica

Grenada

Jamaica: Denbigh

Jamaica: Montego Bay

Jamaica: Morant Bay

Jamaica: Ocho Rios

Jamaica: Vere

Montserrat

St Kitts

St Lucia

St Vincent

Trinidad: Mayaro

Trinidad: Port of Spain

Trinidad: San Fernando

Trinidad: Sangre Grande

UWI Cave Hill

UWI Mona

UWI St Augustine

 

 

2.       The meeting heard updates on developments within UWIDEC with respect to staffing and telecommunications matters.

 

3.       An issue for further discussion was that of Staff/student ratios and local capacity/cap on enrolments.  The Chair undertook to circulate a paper addressing the various issues that were identified under this head and inviting continued discussion:

 

·         problems of very small groups - costs for local tutors and difficulty of finding such; need for more advertisements and for different programmes; possibility of teletutorials or use of CDROMs instead of local tutors;

·         problems of very large groups - inadequate space at Centres; inadequacies of other available space and associated costs; management issues when activities spread around;

·         problems of security of examinations with large groups;

·         implications of the move to Internet delivery for these issues.

 

4.       Some problematic issues were identified:

 

·         Exemptions for mature students: Letters of acceptance do not state student status.  The Chair noted that a request for altering the exemption rules had been favourably received by BUS but he had not yet heard officially how far it had gone in making exemptions uniform.

 

·         ELPT:  Ms Bellot reported problems with a recent English Language Proficiency Test (same test on near-by days; no pass/fail list available).  The Deputy University Registrar indicated that she had heard informally that the repeat might have been due to problems of space.  She thought that there ought not to be any difficulty in getting a pass/fail listing in order to account for all students.

 

·         Topsy-turvy changes to assignment dates: Noted that the regulations need to be adhered to.  Noted also that one student had taken legal action when recorded as absent/fail after a date had been changed at short notice. 

 

·         Scheduling of examinations on religious holidays:   Noted that Trinidad faced a problem because the date of several religious holidays could not be fixed in advance.

 

·         Examinations clashing with teleconferences: Noted that this was ultimately a matter for the DEC to manage and that it would become easier when the DEC controlled its own examinations.

 

·         Breakdown in communications: Dr Fraser noted a case where the Cave Hill Registry had not been informed of a change in policy with respect to optional courses.

 

 

 

 

Office of the Board for NCC/DE

October 14th, 2003