Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal. Tuesday, March 31, 2020. As part of its outreach thrust and giving back to the region in light of the COVID-19 Pandemic, The University of the West Indies (UWI) Open Campus has been assisting regional education stakeholders to identify alternative ways of providing continuing education for their students.

The Campus is leading six hours of professional development training for stakeholders in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Saint Lucia, the British Virgin Islands, St Kitts and Nevis, Barbados and Anguilla. Three webinars are being conducted during the week of March 30 to April 3 focusing on topics such as: using a web conferencing tool to facilitate online delivery of content; basics for use of the Moodle Learning Management System; and, how to engage students in the online environment.

Among the groups participating in the training are community college academic staff, primary and secondary school teachers, principals and education and curriculum officers from ministries of education.

Dr Denise Gaspard-Richards, Director of the Academic Programming and Delivery Division (APAD) at the Open Campus said the objective of the training is to assist staff in educational institutions to quickly move to online modes for continuity of teaching and learning activities in the current school year.

The Open Campus response followed a joint meeting among regional education stakeholders, including the Open Campus and the Eastern Caribbean Joint Board of Teacher Education (ECJBTE) last week.

Professor Joel Warrican, Director of the School of Education at The UWI Cave Hill Campus, and Chair of the ECJBTE, said it was a strategic decision to call on the Open Campus to provide the training. “It is the only entity in the Anglophone Caribbean space with its core business being that of online education,” Professor Warrican explained. “The UWI Open Campus is equipped with a cadre of experts in online education and has the capacity to respond rapidly and with agility to this emerging need.”

“It is expected that approximately 600 participants will benefit from this professional development opportunity that the Open Campus has collaborated on with the ECJBTE to offer the East Caribbean region, at no cost to our stakeholders,” Dr Gaspard-Richards stated.

Professor Warrican expressed that “the alliance formed between the ECJBTE and The UWI Open Campus is an excellent demonstration of rapid response in a time of international crisis that is having an impact on education in the region.”

Hear from some of the Open Campus staff involved in delivering the training programme for regional educators by viewing this video: https://youtu.be/Swkiv5Lnds8