UCJ Hosts Seminars On Distance Education Standards

The University Council of Jamaica (UCJ) will be staging a series of three seminars this month to disseminate its Distance Education Standards.

The sessions, which involve partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and the Ministry of Education and Youth, are scheduled for June 17 and 20.

They are targeted at practitioners of tertiary-level institutions to include administrators, heads of faculties and departments, and lecturers. Speaking with JIS News during a recent interview, Senior Standards Development Officer, UCJ, Karen Gayle, said that “over the two days, over 150 persons will be provided with the tools necessary to implement strategies to transition from face-to-face teaching and learning, to online”.

She noted that Distance Education was among standards developed in response to the transition to online teaching and learning due to the coronavirus (COVID-19 pandemic.

“The standards are used especially for the design, development and delivery of programmes UCJ offers,” she pointed out.

“The objective is to broaden and strengthen the impact of these standards and ensure that these institutions continue to improve the quality of their distance education programme,” she added.

The first seminar will take place on Friday, June 17 in hybrid format, beginning with a launch at 9:00 a.m. at the R Hotel in Kingston, and the other two sessions will be conducted virtually on Monday, June 20.

Over the two days, participants will be exposed to training in areas such as skills, competencies, governance, financial management and advertising.

Mrs. Gayle told JIS News that the sessions will be uploaded to the UCJ website, which will allow tertiary institutions to access them after the seminars.

She said that the UCJ is grateful for support from the COL, which is based in Vancouver, Canada.

The inter-governmental organisation helps countries of the Commonwealth to improve their citizens’ quality of learning through open, distance and technology-enabled learning. The UCJ is the national external quality assurance body for higher education in Jamaica. Its mandate is to ensure that the quality of higher education is of the highest standard and, therefore, comparable with the rest of the world.

For further information on the Distance Education Standards and how to register for the seminars, persons may send an email to info@ucj.org.jm or call (876) 929-7299/906-8012/920-1424/920-1165/618-4267.