Regional consultative meeting on Teacher Education using open and distance learning (ODL) in Asia
REGIONAL CONSULTATIVE MEETING ON TEACHER EDUCATION USING OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) IN ASIA
New Delhi, 13/05/2015: The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and Commonwealth of Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) are mandated to help governments, institutions and organizations expand the scale, efficiency and quality of learning by using appropriate open, distance and technology-enabled learning. The current COL and CEMCA three-year strategic plan (2012–2015) is coming to an end in June 2015. To effectively prepare for the next strategic plan (2015-2021), a baseline survey on the status of teacher education using Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in Asia was commissioned under the Teacher Education initiative at COL. This regard a consultative meeting was organised on 11-12 May 2015 at New Delhi to provide a forum for the sharing the findings of baseline survey and the COL-CEMCA’s 2015 – 2021 Teacher Education Strategic Plan. The objectives of this meeting were to: share experiences on teacher training using Open and Distance Learning (ODL); discuss the COL and CEMCAs 2015 – 2021 Teacher Education Strategic Plan; Discuss the Status of Teacher Education by ODL Baseline survey report; Identify possible COL-CEMCA supported projects for the next three years 2015/16 – 2017/18; and Network with other teacher educators and teacher education institutions. A total of 11 teacher educators were from teacher education institutions in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Maldives, and Sri Lanka participated in the meeting.
The meeting began with an introductory by Dr. Manas Ranjan Panigrahi, Programme Officer, CEMCA. Dr. Ramesh Sharma, Director, CEMCA in his opening remarks explained the role of CEMCA in teacher education initiatives in the Commonwealth Asian region. Dr. Jessica Aguti, Educational Specialist, COL explained the objectives of the meeting. Deliberating the Commonwealth Asia perspective, Prof Mohan Menon (Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic) of Wawasan Open University, Penang, Malaysia highlighted the Best Practices in Teacher Education in Asia & Teacher Training for the 21st Century. Prof Chandra Gunawardena, Open University of Sri Lanka presented the Status of Teacher Education as based on the ODL Baseline survey report. Dr. Aguti and Dr. Panigrahi spoke about the COL-CEMCA 2015 – 2021 Teacher Education Strategic Plan in the meeting.
Further to discussions on the baseline survey, recommendations were made to identify projects to be implemented over the next three years 2015/16 – 2017/18. Participants discussed in groups and identified need based projects on teacher education which COL and CEMCA can support leading to achieving the goal “Learning for Sustainable Development”. By the end of this consultative meeting eight project proposals were formulated to be implemented for the next three years. The meeting was concluded with summarising of the discussions by Dr Jessica Aguti.
