User:Okuboni

Introducing myself
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I am Olabisi Kuboni, citizen of Trinidad and Tobago and employed with the University of the West Indies. UWI is a 4-campus institution, the fourth and newest being the Open Campus (UWIOC), which is about to be launched. The other three geographic campuses are Mona, in Jamaica; Cave Hill, in Barbados; and St. Augustine, in Trinidad and Tobago. The Open Campus is an integration of 3 former units - the UWI Distance Education Centre (UWIDEC), the UWI School of Continuing Studies (UWISCS) and the TLIU - the Tertiary Level Institutions Unit. UWIOC has a mandate to increase the University's ODL offerings even further and to extend its reach throughout the Caribbean region and ultimately beyond.

My work
Because of this transition, I am now in limbo professionally, but that should change soon. In any event I am currently on sabbatical, until the end of the calendar year. For about three years prior to going on leave, I was the coordinator of the project to transform distance delivery in the University of the West Indies to a blended learning/asynchronous delivery mode. The main feature of that transformation has been the shift from face-to-face to online tutoring.

Other small-scale projects that I am involved in include a specialized online course on local e-governance in the Caribbean, initially offered in partnership with UNESCO; the online Certificate in drug abuse treatment and prevention, implemented in partnership with OAS/CICAD and a team of drug prevention professionals in the Caribbean.

My research and development interests
These include learner participation in online teaching and learning, the design and development of training programmes for ODL, and student support systems.

My current research project
I have just completed the first phase of a research project, the ultimate goal of which is the enhancement of UWIOC's student support systems for our online learners, given our limited ICT resources in the society as a whole as well as the very variable online competency level of the students themselves. There were two parts to the first phase, namely,
 * a survey of students to get a sense of their perception of their own capabilities as online learners
 * interviews with site coordinators to identify how their functions have evolved to accomodate the change from the conventional distance student to the online learner.

More on this later

My Learning4Content Tutorial Activities
Have a look inside my sandbox. I come here regularly when I need a refresher!!

/My sandbox/

My Teaching Resource
2008-05-06

This resource, which represents the final part of my learning contract of the Learning4Content tutorial, is taken from the materials for the pre-university course Improving Your Reading Skills (IYRS) that the University of the West Indies Distance Education Centre (UWIDEC)offers to incoming students. The materials were first developed in 2005, then revised in 2006. The writers of the 2006 edition are as follows:


 * Dr. Olabisi Kuboni
 * Dr. Paula Morgan
 * Mrs. Dianne Thurab-Nkhosi
 * Ms. Charmaine McKenzie
 * Mrs. Paulette Bell-Kerr

I did further revisions in 2007 and 2008. The resource included here is Unit 1, Session 3 of the 2008 version.

My curriculum vitae
[[media:My_CV.pdf|My CV, updated July 2008]]