Innovation in tertiary education in the Caribbean: Distance teaching in the Faculty of Education at the University of the West Indies
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Date
1990
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Publisher
CESO
Abstract
The University of the West Indies Teaching Experiment (UWIDITE) is an example of a conventional institution with a distance teaching department. UWI is one of two regional universities serving a region covering 17 countries, some of which are fairly prosperous while others are suffering severe economic difficulties. All the territories are culturally diverse, but their continuous political and economic ties with Britain have left the mark of the British on their educational systems. Governments have been critical of UWI's failure to respond to the needs of the various territories. UWIDITE enabled UWI to respond to the challenge of making education accessible. The system consisted of a telephone link-up among seven countries. Each UWIDITE Centre had a teleconferencing room equipped with microphones, loudspeakers, slow-scan television, a telewriter, a scrambler, and a microcomputer. A priority of distance teaching has been teacher training, and a programme leading to a Certificate in Education has been offered since 1983. The same lecturers who taught the conventional courses taught the UWIDITE courses and developed the materials. The programme did not attract as many students as expected. Student performance was not as high as that of students in conventional programmes. Hardware maintenance, material development, and student feedback needed to be improved