Browsing by Region "Global"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 619
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    Open Access
    The 2016 Kuala Lumpur Declaration (30 November 2016)
    (2016-11-30)
    The Kuala Lumpur Declaration was presented on November 30, 2016 at the Closing Ceremony of the Eighth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning, Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. With the Charter of the Commonwealth 2013, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UNESCO’s Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action, Education 2030, and the 2012 UNESCO-COL Paris Declaration on Open Educational Resources (OER) in mind, it presents a set of recommendations. It also proposes that the set of recommendations be brought to the next Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) for further consideration and implementation.
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    A Systematic Study of the Literature on Career Guidance Expert Systems for Students: Implications for ODL
    (2022-11-21) Gunwant, Shilpa; Panda, Santosh
    The continual evolution of employment opportunities in the present industrial era has raised the need for career-long expert advice. Similar to other fields, thankfully technology has come to our rescue in the area of career guidance also. This paper presents a systematic review of Expert Systems (ES) developed for career guidance, course selection and evaluation of students in the past ten years. The popular research databases Google Scholar and Science Direct were used for obtaining the relevant research papers through broad keywords. The keywords were refined to identify the articles related to rule-based, case-based and fuzzy logic-based ES used for career guidance. A total of twenty-five peer-reviewed relevant articles with full-text available online was selected for the final study. In order to avoid duplicity, technical reports and unreferenced literature were excluded. The review identifies the relatively high weight given by the researchers to rule-based systems owing to their simplicity and broad applicability. However, the relative merits and demerits of rule-based, case-based and fuzzy logic-based ES are highly dependent on the field of application. Nevertheless, ES find wide applications in the area of career guidance and have the potential to enhance the career guidance accessibility of the most remote students.
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    Open Access
    Accelerating Gender Parity
    (2016-03-08) Kanwar, Asha
    Video message delivered for International Women's Day 2016, 8 March 2016 by Professor Asha Kanwar, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning.
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    Access and Quality in Self Organized Learning Environments
    (2010-11) Kulkarni, Suneeta; Mitra, Sugata
    Learning Environments in remote areas: // Almost no one in the world will deny that children need to have access to meaningful learning experiences if they are to truly gain from these experiences and go beyond rote memorization for the sake of passing an examination without understanding the concepts involved. This concern becomes even more critical in disadvantaged and remote settings, where it is even harder to find ‘good’ teachers and schools. // Typically, remoteness is understood in geographical terms. The focus is often on distances from city and urban centres with the corollary assumption that these settings are far from the resources, services, facilities that one has come to associate with urban life. However, in the context of the current effort of Self Organized Learning Environments [SOLEs] and its basis, the Hole in the Wall [HiW] the concept of remoteness and thence access, goes way beyond simple geographical distance from an urban setting. Remoteness is understood to exist in resource poor, underprivileged, economically and socially deprived sections of society. Many of these exist within the heart of the city, in slums, or other areas where freedom of movement, of interaction, of choice, of thought, and therefore access, is often dictated by stringent social norms. All these aspects have implications for the quality of educational facilities available to children as well as the manner of participation in learning that is possible on part of the children. Even in these locations in the midst of the city, ‘good’, trained teachers are hard to come by, since neither the salary that can be given to them, nor the setting in which they would have to work, make this an appealing proposition. The quality of education naturally suffers. [Mitra, Dangwal, Thadani 2008] // Yet the need to provide children with quality education remains a prime concern.
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    Access to Education: A Guarantee of a Less Divided World?
    (2001-07-02) Macdonald, H Ian
    Access to Education: A Guarantee of a Less Divided World? The Sixth G. Ram Reddy Memorial Lecture, Gyan Darshan Educational Channel of Doodarshan, Indira Gandhi National Open University, The Commonwealth of Learning, New Delhi, India 2 July 2001 by Dr. H. Ian Macdonald, Chairman, The Commonwealth of Learning // I hope that Ram Reddy would have approved of the title of my Lecture- Access to Education: A Guarantee of a Less Divided World? I am sure that he would. During the all too brief period when I was privileged to work with him on the Board of Governors of The Commonwealth of Learning, I became instantly aware of two qualities: first, he insisted on knowing the objective of any course of action; second, he was in every sense a citizen of the world. And so, although he was a pioneer in the methodologies of distance education and open learning, he was forceful in forever raising the issue of the basic purpose of education. That purpose was no narrow or self-serving end; rather, it had a relationship to the concept of making the world a better place, both locally and globally. That is the task with which I wish to wrestle in my reflective monologue today. // For many years and in most places, philosophers have argued about the purpose of education: is it for individual betterment as an end in itself, or should it be for occupational preparation? In his famous discourses in 1852, Cardinal John Henry Newman argued: "Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward." And yet, at that very time, the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge were also designed for occupational preparation: to produce teachers, lawyers, ministers, doctors and public servants.
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    Open Access
    Access to Equality in Education for Children with Disability through Inclusive Education
    (2010-11) Singh, Vandana
    This paper will attempt to analyze the origin, concept and practices of inclusive education; also it focuses on a critical element of the inclusive education as a challenge towards achievement of equity for students with disabilities. It will also explain the nature of barriers will be confronted to inclusive education and suggest the approach for successful its implementation.
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    Accessibility Strategies for Making MOOCs for People with Visual impairments: A Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Perspective
    (2016-11) Ngubane-Mokiwa, Sindile A
    Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were designed to enhance access to education to all that desire it. The open access drive seeks to promote free and equitable access to basic, higher, formal and informal education. The main aim of MOOCs is to de-institutionalize education moving it from the formalized class to the open platform where there are no admission requirements. The second aim of MOOCs is to provide access to lifelong learning for those who want to learn for the sake of knowing and developing their competencies. The objective of this document analysis based paper is to analyze primary qualitative-research academic sources dealing with strategies to make MOOCs accessible to people with visual impairments. This paper uses Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles as a lens through which accessibility of MOOCs to people with visual impairments is examined. The document analysis involved a careful examination of research methodologies that had been used to gather data. Fifteen academic sources were sought through formidable search engines. Specified inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to select the articles that were analyzed to answer the research question: What accessibility strategies can be employed to make MOOCs accessible to people with visual impairments? Lastly, recommendations are made towards making MOOCs more accessible for people with visual impairments. // Paper ID 174
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    Accommodating Learners with Specific Learning Difficulties in Educational Settings: Problems and Solutions
    (2019-09) Indrarathne, Bimali
    Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLDs) such as dyslexia and ADHD are very common: it is estimated that 10% of the world population has some kind of learning difficulty. Due to the challenges learners with SpLDs face in the teaching-learning process, such learners may not achieve the expected educational goals. Therefore, it is important to make necessary changes in the teaching-learning process to accommodate those learners. For this, education systems should recognise the importance of inclusive practices at policy level and teacher educators and teachers should have thorough understanding of inclusive practices. However, teachers’ lack of knowledge on SpLDs, lack of teacher training programmes which address the issue and lack of sustainable policy on inclusive practices are some key issues that education systems face in accommodating learners with SpLDs. Recently a teacher-training programme on SpLDs and inclusive practices was conducted in Sri Lanka. Questionnaire and interview responses collected in this programme also highlighted the above issues in addition to other issues such as teachers’ negative attitudes towards SpLDs, institutional barriers such as rigid examination systems and negative socio-cultural ideology towards SpLDs (Indrarathne, 2019). The same programme was then extended to India where similar findings were visible. In this presentation, I will discuss these findings in detail by highlighting the barriers to implementing inclusive practices and discuss possible solutions. During the presentation, I will do a short task to raise participants’ awareness on the features of different types of SpLDs. The participants will also be asked to share their experiences of inclusive practices in their contexts. They will then work in groups to discuss possible solutions before having a whole group discussion on possible future challenges in implementing inclusive practices. // Paper ID 72
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    Achieving Education for All
    (2010-01-22) Daniel, John
    She has asked me to talk about the book that I started writing a year ago as my New Year’s resolution for 2009. It is now in press and will be published by Routledge any day now.// Its title is Mega-Schools, Technology and Teachers: Achieving Education for All and its purpose is to support our work at COL with advocacy and proposals for new ways of tacking the educational challenges of the age.
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    Actors for Change – Reflections and Insights
    (2008-09) Jha, Chhaya; Parlevliet, Michelle
    PCF5 Sub-theme: Governance and social justice // This paper discusses an innovative distance learning course, Actors for Change, which positions human rights work as an integral part of conflict prevention. The four-month course, designed and implemented by UNSSC, OHCHR and Fahamu, builds the knowledge and skills of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) on why they should be involved in conflict prevention and how to mainstream this perspective in their responsibilities. The course has been structured to assist learning by reading, reflecting and doing. The course covers conflict, human rights and a 7-step model of conflict prevention. Since 2005, six courses on conflict prevention were delivered in three languages (English, French and Spanish) to staff of National Institutions in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. This paper is written by the course author and two-time tutor, and the tutor of three courses. // Paper ID 554
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    Adapting Quality Assurance to Innovative Programmes
    (2016-11) Uvalic-Trumbic, Stamenka; Daniel, John
    Promoting equity by opening up higher education has posed challenges to quality assurance and even to the definition of quality in higher education. However, certain fundamental principles underpin all forms of higher education, no matter what the curricula or delivery mode. // Quality assurance needs to find news ways to adapt to innovative providers and programmes of higher education. This paper reports on four developments that relate to this need. // Paper ID 411
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    Adding Global Value
    (2015-11-28) Kanwar, Asha
    Presented at CHOGM Malta 2015 at the Foreign Ministers’ Roundtable on 28 November 2015 by Professor Asha Kanwar, President & CEO.
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    Addressing the Successes and Failures of the Campaign for Universal Primary Education
    (2010) Daniel, John
    The report card of the global campaign to achieve universal primary education (UPE), which began at the Jomtien Conference in 1990 and was reinforced by the Dakar Forum in 2000, is a blend of success and failure. Both present new challenges. Getting 40 million additional children into primary school between 1999 and 2007 was a considerable success. It has created a growing surge of children now looking for secondary schooling. In many developing countries they will not find it. However, on current projections the 20-year campaign for UPE will still leave 50 million children out of primary school by the target date of 2015. The paper proposes responses to each challenge. 400 million children aged 12 to 17 are not in secondary school. All feasible methods must be used to expand secondary systems. Open schooling, the application of distance learning at the secondary level, is a cost-effective way of increasing access. A primary requisite for completing the UPE campaign is to recruit and train 2 million teachers. To expand secondary education and replace retiring teachers will require an additional 8 million teachers. Scaling up teacher education requires much wider use of distance learning, which also provides a mechanism for the desirable reform of moving the focus from pre-service to in-service training.
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    Addressing the Teacher Gap through Open and Distance Learning: the Work of the Commonwealth of Learning
    (2009-06-22) Uvalić-Trumbić, Stamenka; Umar, Abdurrahman; Daniel, John
    Meeting of the International Task Force on ‘Teachers for Education for All’, UNESCO HQ, Paris, 22 June 2009, Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić (UNESCO), Abdurrahman Umar & Sir John Daniel (COL) // In its Teacher Education work COL starts from the challenge of the desperate shortage of teachers in both developing and developed countries. Many millions of teachers need training or retraining. This is a challenge of scale that, in COL’s view, can only be addressed by using technology, particularly the technologies of open and distance learning, ODL.
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    Adventures of a Former Open University Vice-Chancellor in International Development
    (2009-12-05) Daniel, John
    Association of Open University Graduates, London, 5 December 2009, By Sir John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning // Thank you so much for this invitation. During my time as Vice-Chancellor I very much appreciated the existence and work of the AOUG. Those were the days when the OU put in place the University-run alumni operation. That serves an important purpose but it seemed to me important to encourage AOUG, as an independent association to continue its work, which has – or had in my day as VC – a stronger academic focus with a journal and meetings such as this. /// However, I am not going to give you an academic lecture. My title is Adventures of a former OU Vice-Chancellor in International Development and these remarks will be by turns autobiographical, anecdotal and analytical. // There is life after being Vice-Chancellor of the Open University! Looking back my eleven years at the OU were undoubtedly the high point of my career for both achievement and enjoyment. It was also my longest tenure in any job. The OU is an extraordinary institution and serving it was a huge privilege. Before I came to the OU I had been associated, either as student or staff member, with half a dozen universities in Canada, France and the UK. None of them came close to the OU in idealism, student centeredness and intellectual rigour in both teaching and administration. Nor did any give students such a large role in the running of the university. // Another very rewarding feature of the OU was the longevity of its students. In other universities students are there for three or four years. Some become active in student and university affairs in their second year but then focus on other things in their final year, so you are dealing with students who know little about how the committees work and have no institutional memory. Contrast this to the OU where OUSA has a better institutional memory than most of the staff! This not only gives more maturity and a greater sense of common purpose to debates in Senate and Council, but also allows OU staff to get to know well some of the student and graduate representatives on these bodies.
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    Android Programming: First Thrust Towards Android
    (2016-08)
    This course is intended for people who aspire to learn android programming and develop android applications. The learner needs to have basic knowledge of computers, the Internet and Java programming.
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    Architecture of a MOOC: Analytics
    (2014-09) Prabhakar, T V
    Week 2: Architecture of a MOOC, module 5 of the MOOC on MOOC course offered by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) & Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in September 2014. This resource contains a video link, slides as well as a document of the transcript. // MOOC on MOOC explores key concepts, methods and practices in the MOOC paradigms. It is meant for both a non-technical and technical audience.
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    Architecture of a MOOC: Assessment
    (2014-09) Prabhakar, T V
    Week 2: Architecture of a MOOC, module 4 of the MOOC on MOOC course offered by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) & Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in September 2014. This resource contains a video link, slides as well as a document of the transcript. // MOOC on MOOC explores key concepts, methods and practices in the MOOC paradigms. It is meant for both a non-technical and technical audience.
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    Architecture of a MOOC: Certification
    (2014-09) Prabhakar, T V
    Week 2: Architecture of a MOOC, module 6 of the MOOC on MOOC course offered by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) & Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in September 2014. This resource contains a video link, slides as well as a document of the transcript. // MOOC on MOOC explores key concepts, methods and practices in the MOOC paradigms. It is meant for both a non-technical and technical audience.
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    Architecture of a MOOC: Event Management
    (2014-09) Prabhakar, T V
    Week 2: Architecture of a MOOC, module 7 of the MOOC on MOOC course offered by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) & Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in September 2014. This resource contains a video link, slides as well as a document of the transcript. // MOOC on MOOC explores key concepts, methods and practices in the MOOC paradigms. It is meant for both a non-technical and technical audience.