Suchergebnisse

You have given me an interesting and challenging title: Global Perspectives on University Policies and Management for Distance Education. I shall stick closely to that title but keep it simple.// First, I shall attempt a global perspective on the aims of distance education. Today there is a lot of talk about the convergence of distance education and education on campus. Conventional universities are making more and more use of modern technologies in their teaching. Many of them are putting in place policies for eLearning. But we must not be misled by this convergence over methods into thinking that there is a convergence of aims. I shall argue that distance education should have a fundamentally different set of aims from campus education. If distance education institutions like open universities forget that they are doomed.// Second, I shall talk about the means of distance education. Technology is evolving daily and we have a wonderful set of tools at our disposal. This should allow us to do an even better job of pursuing the aims of distance education.// Third, I shall move to the question of policy. The title that you have given me refers to university policy, and I shall address that. But it is also necessary to talk about government policies. Universities exist within a national context and the policies of governments have a considerable impact on their effectiveness. Having suggested the policies that governments should adopt I shall look at policies for distance education from the perspectives of both open universities and campus universities. // Finally, policies are necessary but not sufficient conditions for success. For success you need good management and I shall draw on my own experience of three decades of managing universities and distance education to make some suggestions.

Your Excellency, we are greatly honoured by your presence with us and I ask you to pass on to your colleagues in the Government of Malaysia the warm thanks of the Commonwealth of Learning for your generous support of this meeting of our Focal Points from the Asia-Pacific region.

Today I want to give you a brief update on what you have done through the VUSSC to date. Then I shall challenge you and your governments to renew your vision of what you want the VUSSC to become so that I can become a major thrust in COL's Three-Year Plan for 2009-12 in the Caribbean region.

TAMIL NADU OPEN UNIVERSITY, Convocation 11 January 2007, Address by the Chief Guest, Sir John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning, What is an Open University? // At the moment some 24% of the ten million Indians engaged in higher education are learning at a distance: in the Indira Gandhi National Open University; in 12 State open universities like this one; and in the many dual-mode providers. The Government wants to raise this figure to 40%. Moreover, India's commitment to distance learning extends beyond the university level. The National Institute for Open Schooling is the world's largest open school and India is now creating state open schools analogous to its state open universities. // There is intense international interest in open schooling, particularly in Africa. Those countries that are struggling to get all children into primary school cannot aspire to universal secondary schooling in the foreseeable future using conventional methods. They must seek alternatives like open schools. COL often works as an intermediary between India and Africa; helping to share Indian expertise on alternative schooling with African governments. // This is the convocation of the Tamil Nadu Open University, so I shall narrow my focus to a simple question: what is an Open University? I once had the inestimable privilege of serving for eleven years as Vice-Chancellor of the British Open University, the institution that pioneered, and continues to lead, the implementation of the concept of the open university.

Presentation to the Academic Board of the University of Ghana of the Report of the Visitation Panel*, (* Passages in italics are direct quotations from the Report with formal recommendations in bold ), Sir John Daniel, 20 December 2007 // Members of the Academic Board, Colleagues: // It is a pleasure to be in Ghana once again and to present you with a summary of the Report of the Visitation Panel which I have had the honour to chair. Some of you heard my presentation to the University Council this morning. You will hear some of what you heard then again, but I shall take a bit more time with you and say more about our recommendations concerning Academic Operations and Infrastructure. // This Visitation Panel, which the Vice-Chancellor set up on behalf of Council almost a year ago, was a remarkable group of Ghanaian and international specialists whose collective expertise ranged over all aspects of higher education. Let me begin by naming them for you. // I have had the honour to chair the Panel. The Commonwealth of Learning, of which I am president, has donated my time for this task and supported the Panel's work in other ways.

American Association of State Colleges and Universities, Summer Conference 2007, Vancouver, 26-28 July 2007, Does American Higher Education have a Global Future? Sir John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning // Introduction // It is an honour to address this Academic Affairs Summer Meeting of the American Association of States Colleges and Universities which has the theme "From Student-Centred to Learning Centred". That is a brave title and I wish you well in your deliberations. // My title today is: Does American Higher Education have a Global Future? I shall heavily draw on a paper that I published last year in Change Magazine with my colleagues Asha Kanwar at the Commonwealth of Learning and Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić at UNESCO (Daniel, Kanwar & Uvalić-Trumbić, 2006). I begin, therefore, by thanking these two esteemed colleagues. // We argued there that while Europeans lament that their universities lag behind those in the US and Americans worry that complacency threatens their academic leadership, both groups are missing the tectonic shift that will transform the map of higher education worldwide. That shift is the growth of universities in the developing world. // Spreading connectivity, allied with the accelerating creation of open educational resources based on open-source technology, may soon allow the radical reduction in costs necessary for higher education to serve the four billion poor people at the bottom of the world economic pyramid. // For two decades enrollment growth in higher education has exceeded the most optimistic forecasts. We passed the milestone of 100 million enrollments some years ago and the earlier forecast of 120 million students by 2020 looks likely to be reached by 2010. There are already 130 million tertiary students if we count part-timers. Growth is actually accelerating as more developing country governments see expanding higher education as the key to attaining developed country status.

UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, Visitation Panel, Organising for the Future, Remarks of the Chairman Sir John Daniel, at the Opening Ceremony, 30 April 2007 // We, the members of the Visitation Panel, are both deeply honoured by the invitation to undertake this important task and acutely conscious of the heavy responsibility that we bear. In recent years Ghana's premier university has been rocked by failures of organisation which, by undermining the credibility of its examinations, have sapped the institution's reputation. // The Panel's immediate task is to help the University of Ghana restore its academic integrity and regain its traditional credibility. But if that were all the Vice-Chancellor would not have brought together such a diverse and distinguished group of people. I have the privilege of leading an enormously eminent team. Our Vice-Chairman is your distinguished former Vice-Chancellor, Professor Aki Sawyerr, who is currently Secretary-General of the Association of African Universities. The Panel includes well-known Ghanaians and academics, experts and institutional leaders from five other countries: India, Jamaica, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the USA who are serving in a personal capacity. UNESCO is assisting the process by assigning Ms Stamenka Uvaliæ-Trumbiæ of its Higher Education Division to the Panel and the Commonwealth of Learning is expressing its support through my own participation. // Our wider task is to help the University organise itself for the future. Although that future will present an ever-changing environment, the University's mission expresses aspirations that are valid for any future. According to the Strategic Plan the mission of the University of Ghana is to 'develop world-class human resources and capabilities to meet national development needs and global challenges through quality teaching, learning, research and knowledge dissemination'.

The India, China, America Institute, Education for Innovation in India, China and America, Atlanta, Georgia, 2 March 2007, Innovation for Human Development: Redesigning Higher Education, Sir John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning // The paper explores how connectivity and open educational resources could be combined in conducting postsecondary education at scale with lower costs and consistent quality. It also asks how governments will regulate and assure the quality of these very large postsecondary systems in the interests of protecting their citizens as consumers.

CHEA INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION CONFERENCE 2007, 1 February 2007, Washington, DC, The Expansion of Higher Education in the Developing World: What can Distance Learning Contribute? Sir John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning // One of UNESCO's functions is to develop what are called, somewhat grandly, 'global public goods'. For all countries an important public good is a higher education system in which students, parents, employers and governments can have confidence. In that context globalisation presents new challenges. It is accelerating the expansion of higher education and driving it to greater diversity of provision. // I am going to explore the processes of expansion and diversification of higher education in the developing world. The effect of these will be to make it harder for students to make wise choices and avoid fraudulent providers. Stamenka will explain what UNESCO is doing to help them by describing a series of tools that already exist or are in preparation. // This is the International Commission so I shall focus particularly on the developing world and most especially, for starters, on India, the world's largest democracy. My title is The Expansion of Higher Education in the Developing World: What can Distance Learning Contribute? // In an article that we published in Change Magazine last summer (Daniel, Kanwar and Uvalić-Trumbić, 2006) with our colleague Asha Kanwar, Stamenka and I argued that the growth of higher education in the developing world is a tectonic shift that will break up the old order. In a decade or two most university and college students will be in the developing world, which will, by definition, redefine the norms in higher education globally.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, Peace and Conflict Resolution in a Globalised World: Issues of Culturalism, Can Higher Education Make a Difference?, Sir John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, 6 January 2007 // This Commission, which met for the first time last month, has a practical focus. It is charged to explore initiatives to promote mutual understanding and respect among all faiths and communities in the Commonwealth. It will look at the communities that work well in the Commonwealth - those that really manage 'respect and understanding' - and suggest how to replicate these successes across the Commonwealth's 53 member states and beyond. // So there are my caveats; there are my health warnings. I am a latecomer to your event; I am not versed in peace studies; and I wonder what I can say that India has not already thought.

Transcript of Congregation speech at the University of Education Winneba, Ghana, 2006. Remarks by Sir John Daniel.

I shall start by asking what we mean by development. We use the word often, but what do we imagine when we pronounce it? I shall suggest that development simply means increasing freedom. There are many sorts of freedom and many sorts of development. I shall suggest that three important sets of development aims for PNG are to be found in three sets of goals. // First there are the eight Millennium Development Goals that were proclaimed by the world's Heads of Government when they met at the United Nations in the year 2000. Second there are the six goals for education that were agreed at the World Forum on Education for All, also in the Millennium Year. Third, there are the goals espoused by the Commonwealth, the free association of 53 countries of which Papua New Guinea is a proud member. I shall then show you how COL simplifies these goals and groups them in its Plan of work for 2006-09. // Many things are needed for development to happen, but one common factor that unites efforts to achieve development goals is the need for learning - learning on a massive scale. But the challenge of learning is so huge that traditional methods of teaching are not sufficient to address it. Technology has helped us to improve the quantity and quality of products and services in other areas of human life so we must now apply technology to learning. That is the only way we can meet the learning challenge. The technology of open and distance learning has proved particularly successful. // I shall conclude my talk by showing how educational technology and distance learning is being used by COL to promote learning for development in various areas. I shall focus particularly on identifying models for using technology, models that allow us to scale up learning in such a sustainable way that they are widely adopted - what I shall call self replication. A key element of sustainability and self replication is for people to be able to do it themselves, with minimal outside involvement. The aim is for people to take charge of their own development - to aim for development without donors.

Namibian Conference on Open Learning, Windhoek, Namibia, 30 August 2005, Towards Education for All: The Critical Role of Open and Distance Learning in National Development By: Sir John Daniel, President and CEO, Commonwealth of Learning // In this address I shall place COL's work in the context of national and world development. Let me begin by asking what development is. We use the word often without always stopping to ask what we mean by it. This will lead me to describe the framework in which the international community is trying to promote development, in particular the Millennium Development Goals agreed by the United Nations. // As we examine these goals, familiarly referred to as the MDGs, we shall find that they call for action on a variety of fronts. But what they all have in common is that their achievement will require a massive increase in human learning. This is self-evident in the case of the goals related to education, but it is equally true for the health goals, the poverty goals, the hunger goals and all the others. This is a major challenge, because conventional approaches to education, training, teaching and learning simply cannot cope with the scale of the challenge. So what can we do? // In nearly all other areas of human endeavour technology has revolutionised the way we do things over the last three centuries. It has done so at an accelerating pace, with the result that today ordinary people in the industrialised countries have access, at low cost, to an abundance of quality goods and services that previous generations could hardly have dreamt of. It is now time to spread the benefits of this revolution to education, which has historically resisted it. Indeed, in education an insidious link between quality and exclusivity has gained currency. Quality education is often defined by the numbers excluded from it. // In today's world this is nonsense. I shall argue that new approaches, based on technology, have created a revolution in education by making it possible to expand access, improve quality and cut costs - and all at the same time. // But even these early efforts are not enough. Our four billion fellow human beings at the bottom of the economic pyramid do not enjoy most of the comforts of modern life that a minority take for granted. They have been ignored by the multi-national corporations that produce and deliver many of the goods and services that richer people enjoy. They have also, if they live in rural areas, been largely ignored by government services and providers of higher education. // Can we change this bad situation? Can we bring the majority of our fellow inhabitants of the planet into the mainstream? I shall suggest tools for this purpose and show how the Commonwealth of Learning is making a modest contribution to this transformation.

Orientation and Planning Meeting for Government Representatives of Small States of the Commonwealth held at the National Institute of Education, Singapore, 12 September 2005, VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY, FLEXIBLE LEARNING, Why a Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth? By: Sir John Daniel, President and CEO, Commonwealth of Learning // It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this unique meeting. You have come from all parts of the Commonwealth. I hope you have travelled comfortably to this extraordinary city state of Singapore. // You all come from the small states that make up two-thirds of the 53 countries in membership of the Commonwealth. Small, in this context, refers either to population or to geographical size - or to both. Most of the small states of the Commonwealth are small islands with small populations located in the Caribbean, in the Pacific and in the Indian Ocean. But there are also landlocked states with small populations such as Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana - although Botswana is not small geographically. There are also coastal states with small populations such as The Gambia and Belize, which are geographically small, and Guyana and Namibia, which are rather large. // Despite their diversity small states face common challenges. Commonwealth small states, as well as constituting two-thirds of Commonwealth membership, account for three-quarters of all the world's small states. This means that the Commonwealth intergovernmental organisations, that is to say the Commonwealth of Learning, the Commonwealth Foundation and the Commonwealth Secretariat, must lead the international community by the special attention that they give to these states in their work. // What can we say about the general needs of small states? You all come from small states and know much more about the opportunities and the threats that they face than I do. Seen in a world perspective through the lens of the Millennium Development Goals small states do face special challenges.

Commonwealth Ministers of Education, MID-TERM REVIEW FOR CARIBBEAN/CANADA REGION OF COMMONWEALTH EDUCATION MINISTERS, Nassau, Bahamas, 28 July 2005, The Commonwealth of Education in the Caribbean: Past, Present and Future By: Sir John Daniel, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning // The programme for this Mid-Term Review gives me two opportunities to speak to you. This morning I shall talk about COL's work for you in general terms and go into more detail about our work in relation to the CCEM Action Plans this afternoon. // During the coming 2006-09 triennium COL will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its creation by the Commonwealth Heads of Government in 1987. Although this is a respectable age, the world moves on and Ministers change, so it is worth recalling COL's basic purpose. To do so I will use common interrogative pronouns.