The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth: What is your vision for the future?

Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC)

Regional Meeting of the Focal Points of the Caribbean
10/11 March 2008

The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth:

What is your vision for the future?

Sir John Daniel

Commonwealth of Learning

 

Introduction

I am delighted to have the opportunity to give an update on the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth to this meeting of COL's focal points for the Caribbean. The Caribbean is a major concentration of small states. Some of your countries have been very active in the work of the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth, the VUSSC, and I would like to see that activity become more intense and more widespread in future.

For me the VUSSC is very much front of mind right now. Two weeks ago I attended the VUUSC meeting in Singapore on the Transnational Qualification Framework. This was the largest VUSSC event to date, attended by 37 senior officials from 27 countries, including most of yours. Then last week I went to Seychelles for the fifth of our course development workshops that we sometimes call 'boot camps'. The subject was Fisheries and by day 2 of the workshop the participants, from 12 countries, were aleady busily producing learning materials. It is good to observe that with each boot camp we become better at doing this.

It was good to have a VUSSC event in Seychelles because when ministers of education conceived this initiative back in the year 2000 the then Minister of Education of Seychelles, Danny Faure, was a leading protagonist of the concept. Later, when a draft proposal had been developed, he hosted a meeting of a small group of ministers there in March 2003. They finalised the proposal and sent it to the 15th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers, which endorsed it later that year. That was exactly five years ago.

I also note that both these meetings reflected the developing collaboration between COL and UNESCO in assisting the small states with the development of higher education. There were UNESCO representatives at both events.

Today I want to give you a brief update on what you have done through the VUSSC to date. Then I shall challenge you and your governments to renew your vision of what you want the VUSSC to become so that I can become a major thrust in COL's Three-Year Plan for 2009-12 in the Caribbean region.

So first, some background on the accelerating development of the VUSSC. These remarks are based on a paper that Paul West, COL's lead staff member for the VUSSC, and I developed recently. It is on the COL website.   

So far we have held three planning meetings, two in Singapore and one in Jamaica, and five of what we used to call 'boot camps' because one of their functions is to provide basic training in IT skills for online collaboration. Last week, as I noted earlier, there was a very productive meeting in Singapore that laid the groudwork for a Transnational Qualifications Framework. This TQF will facilitate the offering of all VUSSC courses around the Commonwealth.

Each of the five course development workshops has tackled one of the topics that were identified as priority subjects by your Ministers when I wrote to them three years ago. The first, for developing materials in Tourism, Hospitality and Entrepreneurship was held in Mauritius in 2006. Last year we held three more: in Singapore for Professional Development of Educators; in Trinidad & Tobago for Life Skills; and in Samoa for Disaster Management. The fifth workshop, on Fisheries, is taking place in Seychelles as I speak and another workshop on Construction will be held in the Bahamas later this year.

The VUSSC: preliminary activities and outputs

The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth is gathering momentum. eLearning materials are coming on stream in these priority areas and you are getting better and better at doing it.

Each successive course development workshop has made greater progress than its predecessor in producing learning materials in electronic formats. We thought that the event on Disaster Management held in Samoa late last year was a model of how to operate such a workshop, thanks to the tremendous expertise and dedication of the team leaders in particular and the participants in general. From what I saw of the workshop on Fisheries in Seychelles they hit the ground running even faster.

The Transnational Qualifications Framework will help build credibility for small states that offer programmes internationally. Your colleagues from the qualifications agencies agreed in Singapore that programmes listed on the VUSSC website will carry national and where applicable, regional accreditation. Learners who are looking for online programmes will be able to clearly see the legitimacy of the VUSSC programmes and the associated accreditation.

But as you know, there have been some important spin-offs from the workshops apart from the learning materials. One is that significant numbers of educators from your countries have acquired good skills in the most modern forms of collaborative online working through ICTs. COL urges all workshop participants to share this training when they get home and many have done so. Belize's country report to this meeting notes how this has happened at the University of Belize. Nearly a hundred people will have attended the five workshops and we estimate that they have trained another 400 people when they got home. This has thrown a well-placed bridge across of the digital divide - one of the aims of Ministers when they conceived the VUSSC.

Another spin-off is the cross-cultural friendships and understandings that have been generated. Educators from small states do not often get opportunities to visit small states on the other side of the world. They seem to find it immensely enriching to meet people from a range of cultures and backgrounds who all have in common with you the experience of living in a small state.

So the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth is beginning to have some real impacts and is generating a sense of cohesion amongst the participating states.

So it is timely to ask you and your governments what you want the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth to become. I say what do you want it to become, because the VUSSC is an expression of the will of the small states to take their development in hand. What is your vision for how it should do this?

The overriding objective for the VUSSC that emerges from the original proposal endorsed by ministers is that it should help institutions in the small states to serve learners better. So how are we doing?

How has the VUSSC worked?

In fact the VUSSC has developed rather differently from what was envisaged in the original proposal, which called for the expenditure of $20 million over the first five years. In the event funds on this scale were simply not forthcoming.

Total expenditure to date has been closer to $2 million, for which we are all most grateful to the Hewlett Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation, the Government of Singapore and your own governments who have paid the salaries of colleagues taking part in VUSSC events. You could call the VUSSC a shoestring operation, because there hasn't been much money. You could also call it a bootstrap operation because we've built it from the bottom up.

We have followed two guiding principles. First, in order to remain close to the thinking of ministers of education we created the function of 'interlocutors', usually ministry officials who can speak for their countries in planning meetings. Some of you are VUSSC interlocutors.

Second, since the overall aim of the VUSSC is the development of learning materials that can be studied by real students in real institutions leading to real qualifications; we identified the role of 'implementer'. These are people, usually in tertiary institutions, who are involved in the teaching/learning process.

The identification of implementers has been very pragmatic. Ministers identified a number of subject areas in which they wanted the VUSCC to develop materials. When we hold a workshop to develop content in one of those areas, such as Fisheries in Seychelles at the moment, we ask all small states whether they are interested in taking part.

Countries that decide to participate identify a specialist in the subject from their most appropriate institution. We have been extremely impressed by the expertise and quality of many of the people who have come.

In order to get materials created we have focused on subjects and individuals rather than institutions. This approach has helped us get traction and secure involvement in the initiative. It is interesting to look back over the VUSSC meetings held so far to see who has attended from which countries and institutions.

This table gives the overall picture. The three planning meetings and the TQF meeting involved 132 people, nearly 60% of them from government ministries or agencies. 87 people have attended the course development workshops over 70% of them are from institutions.

This balance, with more ministry officials and interlocutors at the planning meetings and more institutional implementers at the course development workshops is what we would have expected. We are surprised that the proportion of people from institutions at the course workshops is not even higher, but we realise that in small states some people wear two hats and can represent the ministry of education and an institution at the same time. If we put all the events together we have 48% of participation from institutions, 46% from government and 6% from other bodies.

Which countries have shown most interest in the VUSSC? This table lists the countries with the highest level of total participation in terms of person-meetings. For example, across all the events the VUSSC has held, 21 places were taken by Trinidad & Tobago, though of course in some cases the same person attended more than one meeting. This table shows a nice spread around the Commonwealth regions and is good to see our smallest state, Tuvalu, right in there.

Who attended these events? This table ranks countries by the number of person-events involving ministry of education officials. There are similarities and differences with the previous table. For example, Namibia was number 3 in overall participation but since nearly all its participants were from institutions it doesn't figure in this table.

There are more Caribbean states on this list than the last one, indicating that you have a propensity to send Ministry officials to VUSSC events. You might want to ask yourselves whether this is a good thing if the overall aim is to develop institutional capacity/

Next, which countries sent most people from institutions? This table ranks the top countries by their institutional attendance. Again there is a nice spread. A total of 46 institutions from the small states have been represented at one or other of the VUSSC events. Mauritius spread the experience most widely with five institutions involved, followed by Lesotho with four. Going back to my last comment about Caribbean participation I find it worrying that only St. Vincent & the Grenadines makes it onto this list.

Our final table looks at individual institutions. Which are the institutions that have attended VUSSC events most assiduously? Again there is a nice spread with the University of Swaziland at the top but also key institutions in smaller countries like St. Vincent & the Grenadines and St. Kitts & Nevis also taking advantage of these opportunities.

However, on reading the country presentations that were submitted in advance of this focal points meeting I am quite encouraged. I mentioned that University of Belize participants have shared the training they got at VUSSC events with colleagues. Belize is also linking this to training received through CKLN. Grenada has used the VUSSC training to expand distance education at the T. A. Marryshow Community College and is also making links with CKLN. The VUSSC experience seems to have given impetus to the development of distance learning at the Further Education College in St. Kitts & Nevis. Trinidad & Tobago, which has participated in all the VUSSC boot camps has plans to have the materials developed at those workshops adopted by local institutions.

The surprise, if you compare this ranking with the original proposal for the  VUSSC, is to find that the two regional universities have not participated much in the VUSSC. The University of the West Indies was only involved in three events and the University of the South Pacific has not taken part at all. Does this mean that the VUSSC has most to offer to the smaller small states that do not have a well-developed tertiary sector?

So what do we conclude from all this?

When the Ministers conceived the VUSSC they wanted to launch their countries into the e-world and to have them acquire the skills necessary to look larger countries in the eye as equals in their mastery of eLearning and online education. The proof of that mastery is not only the ability to put electronic learning materials in a repository, but more importantly the know-how to get them out again and into the hands and minds of students, whether studying in classrooms or learning at a distance.

For that to happen it is not enough for the eLearning materials to be attractive and well-designed. They must fit seamlessly into the curricula and programmes that your tertiary institutions are offering so that students can receive credit and awards in the normal way.

Hence our decision to begin work on a Transnational Qualifications Framework that we hoped would facilitate the adoption and use of VUSSC programmes of study in all countries, thus supporting institutions in their wish to offer online qualifications internally. This should contribute usefully to the general development of education in the small states.

The VUSSC: Next Steps

To conclude these remarks I return to our  theme: what is your vision for the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth to become? What does that vision imply for the next steps to take?

Status and Structure

Let's start with what the VUSSC is not and will not become. The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth is the title chosen by ministers in 2000. However, it is not a university in any normally accepted sense of the term. It is not a body that teaches programmes to students and awards degrees.

Nor will the VUSSC become a university in that sense. One reason is that the authority to grant degree-awarding powers rests with national governments, not with intergovernmental bodies like COL or UNESCO. A second is that ministers have made it clear that they want the VUSSC to reinforce the impact of your existing tertiary institutions, not to compete with them.

If that is what the VUSSC is not, what is it now? It is essentially an informal network of ministries of education supported by the part-time efforts of a number of people at the Commonwealth of Learning. We believe that approach has served us rather well to date and has produced very creditable outputs given the very small investment of money.

But we suggest that it is now time for the VUSSC to go beyond being an informal network of ministries of education and become a forum for real collaboration between institutions. We need to strengthen the involvement in VUSSC of the institutions that are actually developing and using the VUSSC eLearning materials. An important task for you for the coming years is to nurture the participation of your institutions and encourage them to join VUSSC subject networks.

Later this year a web portal will be created for VUSSC that will provide access to online programmes offered by accredited institutions in VUSSC countries. Thanks to the good work in Singapore two weeks ago students will be able to register for these programmes with the knowledge that programmes offered through the portal will carry the national accreditation of the country in which the providing institution is based.

In addition to this, they will be able to see from the Transnational Qualification Framework how the qualification fits into their own country's framework.

Curriculum Expansion

During the first phase of the VUSSC we have given strong support to those people who needed more ICT skills in education. Once educators have the necessary skills to work online they can learn how to offer online learning as well. Several hundred educators have already improved their ICT skills through the VUSSC. We are now at a point where we should increase skills in eLearning - for both the creation of online courses and the tutoring of online learners.

Another concern is how we expand and diversify the eLearning materials that the VUSSC can make available to countries and institutions. The model that we have used to date, that of the three-week face-to-face course development workshop, has served us well and has begun to narrow the digital divide between participating countries. People have acquired the ICT skills required for work in the virtual world; learning materials have been produced in the process; and an inspiring sense of community has developed amongst educators from small states.

The three-week workshop model is fine but it is too expensive to be sustainable in the longer term. However, there is beginning to be a large enough cadre of skilled educators in the small states who can work confidently in the online world.

In the Caribbean you have a special opportunity to bring together the various projects that are aimed at making eLearning more widely available. COL was recently asked to evaluate the CUPIDE project and the assessment shows that it has resulted in the training of many people and the development of a number of courses. After some hiccups the CKLN project is also contributing to this movement. It is up to you to put all this together and we seek your ideas on how the VUSSC best fits into all this. 

The key point is that the offering of online programmes in  new subject areas does not mean developing all the material from scratch, Ministers were clear when they launched the VUSSC that, although they wanted to create an indigenous capacity to navigate in the e-world, their goal was not e-isolationism! Once people can operate confidently in the e-world they can draw on eLearning material from elsewhere, not only CUPIDE and CKLN, but the expanding corpus of open educational resources worldwide. 

As time goes on we shall see the VUSSC website include courses that originated in the boot camps; courses developed collaboratively online by institutions working together; courses developing under the aegis of CUPIDE and CKLN and courses derived from the growing body of freely available content. Posting programmes on the VUSSC website will signify that the programmes are credible: that is to say they have been vetted by national and regional structures and that they relate to the TQF processes that began to be created last month.

Accredited institutions in participating countries that already have online courses that are ready for international offering can put these on the VUSSC website as it develops later this year.

I emphasise this point because I am impressed from your reports to this meeting by the number of online courses being developed alongside the VUSSC activity. Barbados notes online courses being developed at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic and the Cave Hill Campus of UWI. The University of Belize is already offering an online course, Introduction to Computer Studies, in three other Caribbean countries. St. Kitts & Nevis is preparing to teach Spanish online. Finally, of course, despite the disappointing participation of UWI in VUSSC activities so far, putting all UWI's online courses on this portal would be a natural move.  

Course Delivery

Finally, we hope that your institutions will pool experience of the delivery of VUSSC course materials and other online courses. So far we are in the early stages of using these materials but clearly they will be used in very diverse ways. Sometimes they will enrich conventional on-campus instruction; sometimes they will be used for distance learning. Moreover variations in connectivity between and within states mean that distance learning itself will occur in a variety of ways. Pooling experience of what works and what doesn't will be most valuable.

Conclusion

Let me sum up. We believe that following an informal bottom-up approach in building the VUSSC has yielded excellent value for the small investment that has been made in it since 2003. But the time has now come to formalise arrangements somewhat more, especially the groupings of institutions offering similar programmes.

Please bear that in mind as you report back to your ministers. The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth is their project and they should determine what it becomes and how it can expand and improve learning in your countries.

Each country must now ask itself again what goals it intends to achieve through the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth and how can it put in place the local institutional arrangements necessary to see that it reaches them. Please carry that message back. It is a privilege for COL to coordinate this initiative but the ownership belongs to you. Please see that it becomes what you want it to become.

Thank you.