07. Pan-Commonwealth Forum 7 (PCF7), 2013
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Browsing 07. Pan-Commonwealth Forum 7 (PCF7), 2013 by Subject "Access"
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PublicationEconomic and Socio-Cultural Constraints that Engender Legal Education in Northern Nigeria and the Use of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) to Effectively Address this Trend( 2013-11)Nigeria is dynamic and pluralistic in terms of its traditions and cultural values. This has significantly impacted the trend of educational development with respect to gender in the legal profession especially in the northern part of Nigeria. This paper intends to examine the traditions and cultural values in Northern Nigeria and its contribution to engendering and sustaining gender disparities in the pursuit of a legal career. This paper will be divided into three sections. The first will examine the economic challenges encountered within the family unit, the community and the region and how its effect has served to create and sustain disparity in the legal profession. The second section focuses on strong traditions, religious influence and cultural factors their spoken and unspoken norms, which sometimes emasculate the female desire to pursue legal career. These strongly entrenched views often times co-operate with the conservative colonial heritage and nature of the legal profession to sustain gender disparities that are today evident in the highly disproportionate male-female ratio in the legal profession in the north. The third section discusses the traditional mode of learning and obtaining a law degree and juxtaposes it with the ODL system highlighting the use of ODL as an effective tool to combat the constraints highlighted above. Finally the advantages of ODL in creating accessibility, convenience and economic efficiency in delivering legal education equitably will be explored. Also the use of ODL will be advocated as a desirable and inevitable change agent to address misconceptions, gender imbalance and promote necessary equality in representations at the Bar, on the Bench and in all facets of the legal profession and to ensure equity in the dispensation of justice for all men irrespective of their gender in a system where the female is still regarded as subservient, her education secondary and her role as merely complementary. // Paper ID: 456 -
PublicationNIOS OER: Promoting Access to Quality Education( 2013-11)National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), India, is an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India, set up in November 1989. NIOS offers Secondary and Sr.Secondary courses in the academic stream through open and distance education mode. It also offers a variety of vocational and life enrichment courses. The cumulative enrolment of NIOS is more than 2.02 million learners with annual enrolment of about 500 thousands making it as the largest open schooling system providing alternative education at school level.It also offers Elementary level Courses through its Open Basic Education Programmes (OBE). // The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) initiated Open Educational Resources (OER) specifically for Vocational programmes offered at Secondary and Sr. Secondary (+2) levels, including stand alone programmes, in partnership with state level institutions and organizations. // Paper ID: 109
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PublicationOERScout: Widening Access to OER through Faceted Search( 2013-11)In recent years, the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has achieved considerable success within the academic community with respect to advocacy of the concept. As a result, many organisations such as the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), UNESCO and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), in partnership with academic institutions, have produced large volumes of OER. However, due to the disconnected nature and the constant expansion of volume, many repositories hosting these resources are less frequented or completely ignored by OER users. i.e. only the more popular OER repositories such as Connexions and WikiEducator are frequent stops in the search for academically useful resources. This limitation, in turn, reduces the access to high quality resources hidden away in isolated repositories hosted by lesser known sources. Furthermore, the time and labour required to trawl these repositories with a view of identifying the most suitable OER is tantamount to creating ones’ own material from scratch. As a solution to these issues, this paper discusses how the OERScout search engine uses a “faceted search” approach to locate the most desirable OER from sources spread throughout the globe. It also highlights how focused searching can greatly improve access to OER readily useable in teaching and learning. // Paper ID: 60
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PublicationOpen Educational Resources (OER): A Leading Force in Enhancing Access to Quality Education and Training( 2013-11)Education institutions world over have turned to the Internet and other digital technologies to develop and enhance teaching and learning. Recently, Open Educational Resources (OER) has gained accelerated focus for their potential to transcend geographic, socio-cultural, economic and educational boundaries and to promote life-long learning. The rapid expansion of OER provides new and great opportunities, but at the same time, they challenge existing views on teaching and learning practices. There are many critical issues surrounding access, quality and costs of information and knowledge over the Internet as well as on provision of content and learning material. As the world acknowledges that the growth of Internet brings real opportunities for improving access and transfer of knowledge and information to a wide range of users, there is an urgent need to clarify these issues with special focus on Open Educational Resources initiatives. This paper examines the concept of Open Education Resources and its interplay with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) with a view to encouraging their production and use. The author also shares experience from Mombasa Technical Training Institute, Kenya, in developing open online courses. // Paper ID: 373
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PublicationOpen Educational Resources and Driving Access to Knowledge: Action for Libraries in Nigeria( 2013-11)In the world of exponential growth of information and the influx of technologies in diverse formats, access to information and knowledge is a critical issue. Information and knowledge are worthless if access cannot be adequately provided. Knowledge is as important as the level of access provided. Open Educational Resources (OERs) provide strategic channel to access knowledge. They are important where access to information and knowledge is limited. This paper discusses the lead actions libraries in Nigeria can take to drive access to knowledge. The landscape of library operations has changed and is still changing; similarly action points for libraries must also continue to change to adapt and develop new models of operations. It discusses the challenges facing most libraries in Nigeria in harnessing the OERs as tools to improve lives and livelihoods in the march towards the information society. In driving access to knowledge, libraries in Nigeria must strive to bridge the digital divide, explore the potentialities of OERs, create a network of digital libraries, explore the possibilities and potentialities of ICT and make individual local resources accessible over networks. // Paper ID: 294
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PublicationSocial Exclusion in Education in India: Access to education for nomads through ODL( 2013-11)India passed the Right to Education Act in 2009 and committed the state to ensure that all children from 6-14 years of age have access to basic education. Though most primary school age children in India do enroll in school; as many as half fail to complete the elementary cycle successfully. This paper explores the issues that surround access to education for nomads. More focused research on specific kinds of nomads, especially non-pastoral nomads, is severely lacking. With relation to education, in the present time, national and international bodies are in anticipation of the deadline of achieving Millennium Development Goal No. 2 that promises Education for All by 2015. However, even if we simply look at the yardstick of enrolment in school, governments are slowly realizing that nomadic groups — often grouped with migratory labourers and classified as ‘migrants’— challenge the possibility of success in achieving MDG 2. This is over and above the fact that even today many nomadic communities are not even part of the census and remain surprisingly invisible and un-enumerated as citizens. The problem of educating nomads remains a challenge for South Asian states and developers, as for much of the world. Educating nomadic children challenging for many reasons, among which is the need to cater to their mobility. This calls for portable strategies and flexible courses that will retain the interest and attention of the children. // The present paper attempts to explore some of these critical issue related to social exclusion in education and the policies and actions required to making educational expansion more equitable. // Paper ID: 300
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PublicationStudy on Open School Learners’ Access to Electronic Media and their Use( 2013-11)The Open School of Bangladesh Open University (BOU-OS) uses both the conventional face-to-face (f2f) tutorial system based on the print module and electronic technologies such as CDs, audiovisual cassettes, and radio and TV broadcasts for the delivery of the programmes. It means that the use of ICTs in the delivery of academic program at BOU is still minimal. In Bangladesh concept of technology-enabled open schooling was initiated in 1956 with ‘School Broadcasting Program (SBP)’ and still that is academically controlled by the BOU-OS. Therefore, the BOU came into existence through using electronic media. Finally, BOU adopted m-Learning because of the increasing popularity of the mobile phone and that it has provided an additional medium for the operation of distance. Still no comprehensive study is conducted how the learners get accessed to these media and what extend they use them to complete their learning? Therefore, the aim of the current research is to determine the relationship between OS learner use of electronic media and reading proficiency in the BOU-OS; it also investigates to what extend the TV programmes impacts on the OS’s learners’ learning activities; to find out how effectively the learners are being benefited through listening the radio programmes; to examine the computer communication and/or SMS is useful for learning activities. The predictor variables are viewing television programmes, listening radio programmes, using a computer for communication, and text messaging. Subjects included 300 SSC students. Regression analysis is used to statistically measure the effects years in the open school has on electronic media variables. The current research has wonderful implication in both national and BOU policy formation. This study has huge implications to the policy developers. This will also have implications for policy in the BOU. At a wider level, it will have implications for the entire education sector as the second chance education is performing the major role of the educational provision. // Paper ID: 102
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PublicationTechnological Educational Net: Exploring Access, Equity, Innovation and Pitfalls( 2013-11)A nation that encourages incessant, affordable, and accessible educational development progressively grows and on the contrary a nation that dispels the latter mentioned remains inert. Bloom (n.d) noted that “education is recognized as a basic human right, and better education improves peoples’ welfare” (p.2). Hannum and Buchmann (2006) also explained that “as an instrument of development, education fosters and enhances work skills and life skills such as confidence and sociability” (p. 2). The skills learned in education help to promote economic growth on a societal level via productivity and potentially, better governance” (Hannum & Buchmann, pg. 2). Notably, many attempts have been made by educationalist world-wide to make education more attractive, creative, impartial, reachable and inexpensive by developing online programs; however illiteracy rates are still significantly high in developing countries. The latter mentioned thus leads to the need to better understand factors that continue to limit technological education access for populations around the world. This paper is threefold; firstly it explores the innovative technological educational advancements that can propel a society to economic and social upward mobility, whilst making education accessible to individuals regardless of their gender, race and socio-economic status. The paper underpins the new modalities in technology that can aid in making education less challenging and more rewarding in developing - diverse countries. The study also emphasizes the disparity in gender equality as it relates to educational access for women in developing nations and factors that affect women from accessing and completing online education. Since the technological education web is expansive a Qualitative Approach was most applicable. The study employed the use of archival data, focus groups and a questionnaire to collect the needed data. Educational empowerment by any means aids in a more operative civilization. // Paper ID: 195
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PublicationWomen and girls access to education through Open and Distance Learning( 2013-11)Education is an important aspect of life for every individual. With education one can maximize his or her potentials. In some parts of the world a right to education has been created and recognized, this right has enabled more people to have access to education through the support of governments. The development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has further accelerated the growth of education enabling more people to have access, and is making education more flexible and accessible in any medium, whether it is accessed through the ICT platforms or through the conventional modes. While access is not an issue in those countries, in many less developed countries like Papua New Guinea (PNG) access to education is every government’s nightmare. // PNG's universal basic education (UBE) Plan endeavors to address the key pillars of access and retention, especially amongst girls who are often excluded from attending school. While the conventional system of education has excluded many women and girls from attending school or having access to school due to social, economical and cultural barriers, Open and Distance Learning Programs are giving this less fortunate group of people a chance to achieve their dreams. // This paper reports on a study of women and girls access to education in four main open campuses of the University Of Papua New Guinea Open College (UPNGOC). Although general perception holds that more male students are able to access education than female students, the data gathered from the four open campuses will prove whether this perception is true or not. The paper will look at socio, economic and cultural factors that are associated with access to education and how Open and Distance Learning is breaking new grounds to provide an alternative to education for women and girls in PNG. // Paper ID: 59