VUSSC Panel Session

Paul West, Commonwealth of Learning

Abstract
Members of the Virtual University for the Small States of the Commonwealth will showcase their ground-breaking work in content creation using online communities of practice. This project clearly demonstrates the power of free content to overcome the traditional challenges associated with international collaborations.

Educators from 13 Commonwealth small states met in Mauritius from 7 to 25 August 2006. Participants in the workshop developed online skills to enable them to continue to work together after the workshop through the use of ICTs. The educators posted, collaborated and developed learning content on a COL-hosted community website, www.wikieducator.org. A “wiki” is a simple medium for online collaboration that requires minimal technical knowledge. The popular wikipedia.org is the best-known “wiki” environment.
Part of the show casing will involve the presentation of the open education resources “Practitioner Research and Evaluation Skills Training” (PREST) materials. These materials provide practitioners working in open and distance learning (ODL) with convenient access to basic knowledge on how to conduct research and evaluation in their everyday work. The second stage of the COL PREST project is preparing two open source on-line courses (Introduction to research skills and researching tutoring and learning support) http://www.col.org/prest

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