Articles in Periodicals & Books

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Open Access
Networks for Lifelong Learning and Rural Poverty Reduction in Asia – Lessons and Challenges
(2006) Balasubramanian, K; Maru, Ajit; Alluri, Krishna
Who should fund development? This billion dollar question has ideological, perceptional, operational and political connotations. Public sector, private sector, donor agencies and external aid are some of the sources which fund development at different levels in different regions. Scholars like Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor on the Millennium Development Goals to the United Nations Secretary General, argue for enhanced external aid and donor agency support to break the poverty trap in developing countries and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In an interview, he1 reiterated that “Donor financing for the MDGs should take a new approach. Developing countries should design MDG-based poverty reduction strategies, including investment plans to 2015, and donors should fund those strategies”.
Open Access
Mass Tertiary Education in the Developing World: Distant Prospect or Distinct Possibility?
(2007-06) Daniel, John; Kanwar, Asha; Uvalić-Trumbić, Stamenka
In the coming decades the global profile of tertiary education will be transformed by the multiplication and growth of institutions in the developing world. Age participation rates in tertiary education are below 10% in many poorer countries. To achieve the rate of 35% considered the threshold for 'developed' status these countries will greatly expand forms of provision that are marginal in richer countries today: private for-profit institutions, distance learning, and cross-border operations. When today's developing countries account for the majority of college students, tertiary education worldwide will look even more diversified as commercial providers adopt the systems and technologies of production and service industries. With appropriate international safeguards and national regulation, however, the benefits to individuals of this global expansion of access of tertiary education will outweigh any concerns that higher learning is losing its soul in a huge marketplace.
Open Access
Chapter 6: Open Licenses (DRAFT)
(2008) West, Paul; Hofman, Julien
A draft of Chapter 6 'Open licences' of Copyright for authors, educators and librarians by Julien Hofman and Paul West, 2008.
Open Access
The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth
(2009) West, Paul; Daniel, John
The Virtual University for the Small States of the Commonwealth was conceived by Ministers at their triennial Conference of Commonwealth Ministers of Education in 2000. The Commonwealth of Learning was asked to investigate possible models and presented a proposal to Ministers at their next conference in 2003. The concept of a virtual university as a network was approved and COL was asked to help countries collaborate and strengthen the capacity of national education institutions through this mechanism. The concept of sharing course materials and programmes was a fundamental principle from the start and gained momentum as the trend to open courseware and Open Educational Resources developed. The VUSSC uses a range of materials that conform to different Creative Commons copyright licenses, all of which allow the free reuse and usually, customisation of materials. The VUSSC works with governments and national institutions, many of which have established national qualification frameworks. The VUSSC is working with these governments to establish a “Transnational Qualifications Framework” (TQF). The TQF will be a translation point between the systems in different countries and regions and help provide momentum to the transfer of courses, qualifications and learners between countries. National institutions that wish to offer educational programmes that are co-branded with VUSSC will have these approved within the institution, by the national qualification authority and where applicable, the regional qualification authority. The programmes that fulfil these requirements will be posted with their accreditation status on the VUSSC website that will be developed in 2008.
Open Access
Breaking Higher Education's Iron Triangle: Access, Cost, and Quality
(2009-04) Daniel, John; Kanwar, Asha; Uvalić-Trumbić, Stamenka
Expansion is now the defining trend in the worldwide development of higher education. Some predict that by 2020, 40 percent of the global workforce will be knowledge workers with a need for tertiary qualifications. So the World Bank, which made basic education its priority in the 1980s and 1990s, is now urging countries that have not yet done so to develop their higher education systems. And indeed, most claim that they want to join the knowledge society by following the example of developed countries, where age participation rates (APRs) in higher education of 40 to 50 percent are now perceived as necessary for sustained and sustainable development. // Accordingly, student enrollments in the developing world are burgeoning. Already there are some 140 million postsecondary students globally, if part-time enrollments are included. China and India have doubled enrollments in the past ten years, giving China the world’s largest higher education system, with some 25 million students. But the many developing countries with APRs of less than 10 percent have a big hill to climb.
Open Access
eLearning for Development: Using Information and Communications Technologies to Bridge the Digital Divide
(2009-06) Daniel, John
eLearning has the potential to make an important contribution to reducing educational deprivation, which in turn can aid progress in achieving development goals. The major obstacles to eLearning are connectivity, equipment, software and training of people. The Commonwealth of Learning is leading several initiatives to overcome these obstacles and help bridge the digital divide.
Open Access
The Virtual University for the Small States of the Commonwealth – the First Nine Years
(2009-09) West, Paul
The Virtual University for the Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) is an initiative that was created by the Ministers of Education of Small States. The Ministers approved the initiative for implementation at their triennial meeting in 2003 and COL (The Commonwealth of Learning) was asked to provide the support to enable the initiative to build its base. The intention has been to build human resource capacity in the Small States, to stimulate an increase in the course offerings in those countries and to create a mechanism to enable the transfer of credits and qualified people across borders of countries. // The Initiative has been directed by representatives of the Ministries of Education who have to date, met on four occasions. The VUSSC Initiative has trained over one hundred professionals in six workshops from twenty-six of the participating countries, who have in turn trained colleagues. Ministries of Education frequently comprise less than six professional staff members. Each of the countries usually has one national university. The seemingly small numbers of people have made deep impacts, which a parallel monitoring and evaluation study continues to uncover. // Training of workshop participants has been practical and hands-on, with course materials being a by-product of the training. Course materials produced have been released under Creative Commons copyright licenses and have been included in courses offered by institutions in the Small States. The initiative has operated as a learning organisation by incorporating lessons learned throughout the implementation period from 2005 to 2009. A VUSSC Management Committee (VUSSC MC) was established to take over the leadership of the Initiative. A Transnational Qualifications Framework (TQF) was conceived and established with a TQF Management Committee (TQF MC) to lead its development. The TQF MC forms a sub-committee of the VUSSC MC. // The future of VUSSC depends on the ability of the VUSSC MC to take on its leadership role in directing the VUSSC, including the important role of raising funds to continue the activities they deem appropriate. Technology and bandwidth advancements in Small States limit the potential of the VUSSC only to the imagination and efforts of the VUSSC and TQF Management Committees and all who participate in its activities.
Open Access
Changing Roles of Agricultural Extension: Harnessing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Adapting to Stresses Envisaged Under Climate Change
(2011) Meera, Shaik N; Balaji, Venkataraman; Muthuraman, P; Sailaja, B; Dixit, S
The linkages between agriculture and climate are pronounced and often complex. Agricultural systems are most sensitive to extreme climatic events such as droughts, floods and hailstorms, and to seasonal variability and changing rainfall patterns. The role of inadequate institutional support is frequently cited in the literature as a hindrance to adaptation. In context of climate change, extension will increasingly face challenges of addressing vulnerability. The effectiveness of extension will be influenced by the factors such as identifying vulnerable regions, vulnerable groups, farmers having multiple stressors, areas which will be doubly exposed, for assessing and strengthening the coping strategies among vulnerable regions/groups and improve the ability for adaptive measures. Effective and timely provision of information will play a crucial role in future extension. Despite the need for timely and well-targeted information on climatic risks, there are currently a number of gaps and challenges in providing climate information to the farmers. Of late, organisations in agriculture realised the importance of managing the Knowledge (Implicit & Explicit; Internal & External) for the dissemination purposes. In this chapter, we have discussed at length the cases for developing insights into the contemporary initiatives of integrating ICTs and climate information in extension. In order to promote the development of appropriate community-based ICT endeavors for sharing climate change information and technology options at grassroots level, it is important that we also understand the attributes that must be considered for building more practical and broad based approaches. For the benefit of the readers, a comprehensive framework involving various components of climate change vis a vis Extension is provided. In the context of climate change, information needs assessment and strategies for strengthening Research-Extension-Farmers linkages are discussed in this chapter. Further looking at the complexities of climate change scenario, it is proposed that ICT enabled extension framework may be tested, refined and adapted in future extension endeavours.
Open Access
Contemporary information and knowledge management: impact on farming in India
(2011) Kumar, R Ajith; Balaji, Venkataraman; Guntuku, Dileepkumar; Prabhakar, T V; Yaduraju, N T
Farming is an important part of Indian economy and it involves a wide range of stakeholders, of whom the small holder farmers are the largest group. Information sharing on new production processes with farmers was prominent in the ‘sixties which was key to the success of the Green Revolution. Agricultural extension, the process of enabling farmers and experts to exchange information with each other, has since been institutionalized to a high degree and is assessed to be not as effective as it had been a generation back. The advent of digital, technology-mediated information and knowledge management was thought to offer significant new opportunities for knowledge exchange in Indian farming as a whole. These hopes led to the launching of a number of initiatives in different parts of India, which has emerged as the host of the largest number of rural development projects where contemporary information and communication technology (ICT) play a pivotal role. While analyzing the outputs of such initiatives, many studies have pointed out that farming is not a priority concern of most of them. On the other hand, we can notice a noncomplimentary strand of ICT in agriculture projects operated by a number of institutions with ICT resources playing a key role in some of them. These efforts, generally speaking, do not promote user participation in information flows quite unlike the contemporary trends. Almost two decades later, the original hope remains unfulfilled. The nation-wide availability of digital content in relation to the farming sector is small when compared to equally important development sectors such as public health. This has considerably limited the opportunities for various stakeholders to build viable online services on production, marketing and meteorology for farmers and other stakeholders. What we now have is a collection of projectized activities that are fragmented in their overall understanding and approaches. What we need is an approach that can bring together the two strands, namely, of ICT in rural development and ICT in agriculture. Such an effort, however, needs a new IT architecture to be developed for aggregation of content and to make services available in multiple modes. Two groups of projects in India, namely, the Agropedia and the KISSANKerala, have built large prototypes and human capacities using unprecedented innovations in web technology areas and in integrated services delivery (including mobile telephony). With their advent, a wider range of solutions to the challenge of developing a novel architecture for information services for farming in India are now feasible and need to be researched upon. Countries that offered extension models for India in in an earlier generation do not require innovations for mass outreach for prosperity through farming and are thus in position to offer models for the present India needs to build solutions, processes and structures of its own so that the advantages accruing from its rapidly advancing ICT and mobile telephony infrastructure and export-oriented IT sector can flow to the benefit of its farmers. Formation of synergies with non-traditional partners such as those in ICT sector will be essential. There is a task to be accomplished, and it is contrary to the prevalent understanding in the leadership of farm education, research and extension sector that all the ICT solutions needed are available.
Open Access
A theoretical framework for rural knowledge centers
(2011) Guntuku, Dileepkumar; Chaudhary, Sanjay; Balaji, Venkataraman; Holz-Clause, Mary; Sai, Kuna A
Exponential growth in ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and establishment of RKCs (Rural Knowledge Centers) have been fast spreading across the globe. In the continuous process, there are tens of thousands of RKCs are being established by various agencies, to provide shared public access to ICTs for meeting educational, social, personal, economic and entertainment needs of the rural community. As most of these initiatives are relatively new, there are mixed opinions on the social and economic impacts of RKCs. There is also lack of good understanding on the conceptual and theoretical framework for planning and designing of RKCs. The authors conducted a study to fill this information gap by assessing selected ICT4D (ICT for development) project sites in rural India. Through the systemic analysis of the data and continuous interpretation of the observations, the study proposes a framework for planning and designing of RKCs. In this paper, the authors present the study results, and discuss the evolution process of RKCs and factors that influences planning and designing of RKCs.
Open Access
Knowledge Transfer for a Horticultural Revolution: The Lifelong Learning for Farmers Model
(2012) Balasubramanian, K; Daniel, John
This paper examines the relevance of the current theoretical perspectives in extension for promoting horticultural revolution in developing countries. At present agricultural education and extension occurs within a framework inspired by the green revolution. This paper analyses the inadequacy of this approach from two theoretical perspectives and proposes an alternative framework. It describes the relevance of the alternative framework of the Lifelong Learning for Farmers initiatives of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in developing countries. In particular it stresses the role of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in enabling extension systems to address the dynamics of horticulture.
Open Access
Promise and/or Peril: MOOCs and Open and Distance Education
(2013-03) Anderson, Terry
The New Times declared 2012 to be the year of the MOOC (Pappano, 2012) and certainly 2013 is becoming the year to talk about MOOCs! Questions related to the design and inherent pedagogies, registration numbers, persistence rates, revenue models, neo-liberal agenda, fears and aspirations of all of us in postsecondary education have been ignited by this combination of technology and pedagogy. MOOCs are rapidly becoming the type of disruptive technology described by Christensen (1997) as cheaper, smaller, initially less fully featured and attracting a new set of consumers into an existing market. // Much has been written and much more will by the time you are reading this article, from when I write it in March 2013 - the MOOC terrain is under very rapid development. John Daniel (2012) article, does a good job of defining and describing MOOCs and clearly notes the different models and pedagogy (xMOOCs, cMOOCs) that differentiate pedagogies, practices and profits involved in today’s MOOC offerings. In this article, I attempt to update our map of the terrain and provide a lens through my 2003 Interaction Equivalency Theorem (Anderson, 2003) to help us understand and explain this latest development and/or fad in higher education. // I begin with a short description of the characteristic of the four words included in the MOOC acronym and try to show how each contributes to the complexity of this education phenomena.
Open Access
Using Community Radio in a Rural Women’s Post-literacy Programme in Nepal
(2014) Nagaoka, Chizuko; Karki, Manohar
This paper examines the literacy and post-literacy needs of rural women in Nepal, describes a pilot study in using community radio to supplement a classroom-based post-literacy programme for these women, analyses the findings of this intervention and considers the implications for similar programmes in other settings.
Open Access
Technology Leadership and ICT Use: Strategies for Capacity Building for ICT integration
(2014) Mwawasi, Felix M
Technology leadership is a fairly new concept in school leadership focus. It has become a concern for study in recent times, in tandem with the pedagogical change of integrating ICT in teaching and learning especially in the developed nations. However, few such studies have been done in Africa. A number of studies in the developed countries have advanced descriptive approaches on how educators should go about the using of ICT in education. Teachers, therefore, need to have prerequisite skills to integrate ICT in teaching and learning and school leaders have a role in enabling the effective use of ICTs. This study aimed at investigating how school leaders help build capacities of teachers to be able to effectively integrate ICT in their teaching and learning, at school level, in a public secondary school in Kenya. Using a qualitative case study approach, five school leaders involved in the capacity building, were purposively sampled for interviews, four teachers were engaged in a Focus Group Discussion and two teachers were observed engaged in classroom practice. Further data was obtained by analysing official school documents. The data analysed indicate the school leaders facilitated increased access to ICT facilities to the teachers and supported them, alongside training, to enable them explore various ways of integrating ICT in teaching and learning.
Open Access
What Learning for What Development?
(2014) Daniel, John
After reviewing the evolution of attitudes to poverty and education we note how it influenced the early provision of schooling and the emergence of a global agenda for international development and universal education. At first, this agenda was grounded in the Enlightenment values that inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but economic arguments for reducing poverty and expanding education became more prominent towards the end of the 20th century. Sen’s notion of development as freedom brings these ideas together and will strongly influence the development agenda for the coming decades. Implementing this agenda will require a shift from top-down, donor-driven projects to grassroots approaches that take advantage of mobile technologies.
Open Access
The Jeffrey Town Model for Community Development
(2014) Gordon, Ivy V
The Jeffrey Town model for community development has been effectively applied to the rural community of Jeffrey Town in Jamaica with Information and Computer Technology (ICT) as a key element. The farmer's association is the vehicle that has driven the change. Included is a brief outline of the community plus highlights of the tangible and intangible components of the model. Special attention is paid to the investment in the human capital to help build capacity of all locals without exploitation so that real empowerment could begin. Jeffrey Town is a success story validating the modern development assistance programmes whereby communities are empowered, allowed to select their own imperatives and, in this case, redressing some of those difficulties with superb results.
Open Access
The Role Distance Learning has to Play in Offender Education
(2014) Seelig, Caroline; Rate, Leanne
This article looks into the uses of digital and online tools in distance learning to improve literacy and numeracy of offenders in New Zealand prisons. Looking at the benefits and restrictions of digital education within the prison environment, this article discusses the solutions that Open Polytechnic, in partnership with the the New Zealand Government, has put in place to give prisoners further opportunity for rehabilitation, and ultimately prepare them for re-entry into society, the workforce or further study.
Open Access
Bridging Fields at a Critical Time
(2014) Baggaley, Jon
The launch of the Journal of Learning for Development occurs at a critical time for the education and development field. The ‘massive open online course’ concept currently being implemented by Western educators is considered as a potential cost-saver in developing nations also. MOOCs based on reliable pedagogical principles can be useful vehicles for education and training. Others follow less orthodox guidelines: e.g., solving the problems of teaching and grading massive student numbers by dispensing with teachers and having the students grade each others’ work. Evaluation studies of MOOC impact do not confirm that these methods are universally viable, and indicate that MOOC courses and evaluations have not yet taken developing-country needs into account. In the debate about this new trend, a division has formed between the principles of online pedagogy in mainstream education and those developed over four decades in the distance education literature. Disciplinary sub-divisions are similarly noted in the learning and development literature as a whole. The new Journal, with its intended emphasis on the education and training needs of developing as well as developed regions, can provide assistance in the integration of knowledge about technological innovations, and advice about the educational directions that developing nations should take.
Open Access
Informal Learning and Non-Formal Education for Development
(2014) Latchem, Colin
The following article examines the issues of open, distance and technology-based informal learning and non-formal education for individual and community development. It argues that these two modes of education, which are estimated to constitute 70-90% of lifelong learning, are insufficiently represented in the literature of open and distance learning and development. To ensure that these forms of provision take their rightful place alongside the mainstream systems of formal education, it is posited that far more research and evaluation is needed in order to demonstrate their potential and evince quality in their outputs, outcomes and impacts.
Open Access
Innovations in Learning and Development: A Case from the Arab World
(2014) Al-Khatib, Hyat
The twenty-first century is witnessing innovative practices in the advancement of learning in the developed world as a consequence of the technological revolution of the period and the increased demand for higher education (Bax, 2011; Barab, King and Gray, 2004; Roman, 2001). Education is perceived as the cornerstone for development, sustainability and modernisation (Fitzpatrick and Davies, 2003).

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