User:Stewartmar

Today is: 27, August 2024

Introduction and professional background
Hi. I am Stewart Marshall.

Currently, I am the Director of Special Initiatives in the Office of the Principal at The University of the West Indies Open Campus and UNESCO Chair of Educational Technologies. Before coming to the Caribbean in 2004, I was the foundation Dean and a Professor of the Faculty of Informatics and Communication at Central Queensland University in Australia. Although originally an electrical engineer with the Central Electricity Generating Board in the UK, I have worked in higher education since 1973 in England, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Southern Africa and now in the Caribbean. I was the foundation Professor of Communication at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology, foundation Professor of Communication Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University, and foundation Coordinator of Academic Studies and Professor of Distance Education at the Institute of Distance Education at the University of Swaziland in Southern Africa.

My main research interests are in the area of communication studies, especially in the use of the new communication media for research, education, development and community benefit. Much of my research is of an applied nature and I am particularly interested in the alternative modes of delivery of education now made possible by the advances and convergence of modern communications technology.

A major current research interest of mine is the use of hypermedia in research, as a medium for “reading” and understanding data and also for presenting the results. This was the topic of my PhD – Exploring Change: The creation of a hypermedia ethnography for the presentation and ‘re-presentation’ of research on distance education in Swaziland – which was submitted on CD-ROM as a hypermedia document. I believe this to be the most appropriate post-modern medium to capture the complex social ecology of the change process.

A large part of my research is concerned with the alternative modes of delivery of education made possible by the advances and convergence of ICT. For example: The use of the Internet in teaching (Taylor, Dekkers &amp; Marshall, 2003; 2005) and in the organisation of education (Marshall &amp; Gregor, 2002; 2005).

I was the Project Director of Caribbean Universities Project for Integrated Distance Education CUPIDE – Japanese funding for human capacity building in five universities in the Caribbean, completion date December 2007. The overall goal of this collaborative project was to develop the human resources within the region through enabling each of the five participating universities (The University of the West Indies, the University of Technology, Jamaica, the University of Guyana, the Anton de Kom University of Suriname, and the University Quisqueya [Haiti]) to better develop and deliver quality distance education programmes using ICT.

My most recent publishing ventures are an open access e-journal The International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology and an Encyclopedia of Developing Regional Communities with ICT.

Please see fuller CV at my old UWIDEC personal page my fuller CV here