UNESCO/UWI

CARIBBEAN UNIVERSITIES PROJECT FOR INTEGRATED DISTANCE EDUCATION

FUNDED THROUGH THE JAPANESE FUNDS-IN-TRUST FOR CAPACITY BUILDING

Press Release

Caribbean distance education Web portal released

The Caribbean Universities Portal for Integrated Distance Education was released for beta testing on April 2, 2006. Developed under the UNESCO-UWI Caribbean Universities Project for Integrated Distance Education (CUPIDE), which is funded by the Japanese funds-in-trust for capacity building, this Web portal is intended to foster collaboration among the universities and other tertiary institutions in the Caribbean, and provides references and a meeting space for higher education management, faculty and staff involved in distance education.

Consultant, Pieter van der Hijden, of the Amsterdam-based company, Sofos Consultancy, developed the portal as part of a recently concluded assignment that also included provision of training in the open source learning management system, Moodle, especially for technical persons within the universities participating in the project: University Quisqueya (Haiti), Anton de Kom University of Suriname (AdeKUS), University of Guyana (UG), University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) and The University of the West Indies (UWI), which is responsible for the management of the project, under the guidance of a Project Advisory Committee, chaired by CARICOM.

Launched in January 2003, the objective of CUPIDE is to build the human resource capacity in the participating institutions through provision of training for academic, administrative and technical personnel at the institutions in the use of information and communication technologies for teaching, administration and the delivery of course materials. There is also provision of hardware, software and technical assistance. The human resources of the participating countries will also be strengthened through the delivery of programmes developed under the project. The project is slated for completion in December 2006.

The site is still in the testing phase and does not yet have many references in place. However, persons interested or involved in distance education in the Caribbean are invited to visit the portal at http://www.cupide.org/moodle/, register and send comments and suggestions to cupide@uwimona.edu.jm.