VUSSC/Agenda Jul06/Day1 notes
Hello all
Discussions, feedback & questions are welcome. Please use our discussion forum for this purpose.
Greetings from Vancouver
The buzz word is out....
!! "3rd Generation Open Courseware" !!
Yes folks we're out to change the world
Here's all what happened on Day 1:
We started off with an introduction of everyone present; Going round the table there was Paul West (who introduced us to the VUSSC initiatives and giving us a glimpse into the future and our roles for creating History!!), Tatiana Anestik (who gladly showed us to our working spaces and got us our individual logins and passwords), John Lesperance (from Seychelles, who's involved with Curriculum Development and lots of exciting projects at the Ministry of Education in Seychelles), Elia Grant-Fraser Instructional Designer from Trinidad and Tobago, representative from the ministry of Education there and who had also been to the 2nd VUSSC meeting in Singapore in April 2006) Wayne Mackintosh (who introduced us to the 'joys' of open source educational software and a few interesting [websites] in the afternoon), then there was Patricia Schlicht who has been our guardian angel guiding us safely to our destination. Then Samuelu Faalafi Senior Lecturer in Accounting from Samoa who works at the National University of Samoa Institute of Technology and who's been involved in the Learning about Small Business Programme by COL, and myself, Sandhya Gunness, Instructional designer and part-time lecturer for Computer-mediated Communications and Pedagogies at the University of Mauritius. Stanslaus Modesto from Botswana is also expected to join us..
Below the map above gives an indication of the various issues that we'll have to tackle during this Team Leader meeting in Vancouver, and which will also set the pace for the meeting in August (Mauritius).
The concept map describes the brainstorming session we had where each of us identified the needs of each of respective countries. The contents to be developed should be readapted from existing material and we also discussed about contacting copyright owners to ask for permission to re-use the contents. We should also enable delivery in various formats that allow for easy printing, which is why we won't be going onto eXe quite at this moment.
The target group we're looking at are mostly pre-university students, unemployed people as well as people who are either already entrepreneurs or working in the tourist industry and who need to acquire certain particular skills. We're looking at making the contents as open and specific as possible- a lot like lego bricks- so that learners can freely access and adapt to their own requirements.
Questions arising from discussions on Day 1
These are a list of pertinent questions relating to our discussions. While we don't necessarily have answers for these questions, you are free to add your own questions to the list:
- How should the VUSSC content development initiative interface with local qualifications framework requirements?
- With particular reference to tourism, what are the best ways to provide opportunities for localising content (e.g. tour guide's knowledge of local flora and fauna)?
Decisions
- Mauritius will provide additional human resources such as graphic artists and desktop publishers
- Various formats will be used such as print, PowerPoint, graphics, etc. However, there
must be a version available that is in an editable format.
