Campus Life :
Professor Dr.Syed Humayun Akhter, Vice-Chancellor, Bangladesh Open University (BOU) attended the 21st Advisory Council Meeting of Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), Delhi, a counterpart of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Canada virtually held on 9 December 2021.
The meeting was presided over by Asa Kanwar, President and CEO of COL who put emphasis on the use of more educational videos and inclusion of climate change aspects in curriculum at her brief on 6-year Strategic Plan of CEMCA. Professor Madhu Parhar, CEMCA Director, presented the CEMCA’s Annual Report 2020-21 and future plan of actions. Members of the CEMCA Council are of Vice-Chancellors of open universities and education ministry officials fromthe Commonwealth Asia. BOU VC, Prof. Akter and IGNOU VC Professor Nageshwar Rao, Vice-Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and other members appreciated CEMCA’s work on skills development, MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), virtual lab, and TEL (Technology-Enabled Learning) in the member countries.
It is reported that CEMCA provided BOU with the support for using MOODLE – a Learning Management System (LMS) -, OER (Open Educational Resources) Repository, and TEL-based skills development programmes during the past years. In addition, CEMCA worked with the University Grant Commission (UGC) of Bangladesh and trained considerable number of faculties from 20 universities on TEL-based higher educationduring Covid-19 pandemic. Professor Akhter identified three areas for CEMCA’s intervention for BOU; they are -transform text-content into video content in the form of concept video for using in the smartphones; International collaborations with other open universities in Commonwealth Asia; and iii) conducting more micro-credential courses for developing MOOCs.
Asa Kanwar COL President – appreciated Prof. Akhter, and said everything is doable and CEMCA shall support in the coming years. Finally, the CEMCA six year Strategic Plan was approved in the meeting.
