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FIFTY students, who received a substantial amount of their course material on CD-ROM and had to do on-line research on a range of agricultural developments, last week became the first batch of graduates under a distance learning project run by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture. IICA established its Agri-Distance Learning and Training Centre (at its Hope Gardens office in late 2000 and since then has developed a range of multimedia courses for delivery mainly by CD-ROM and via the Internet.
The programme got support from the Organisation of American States (OAS).
The agency said that the centre was seen as a way of providing learning opportunities more flexibly to a broad spectrum of people, with varied educational backgrounds and from different parts of the island.
The first set of courses, which ran for four months, were:
* an introduction to e-commerce farm management;
* health and occupational safety for entrepreneurs;
* information and extension methods in agriculture; and
* organic farming for entrepreneurs.
Most of the participants already were in agriculture.
"The students were given the multimedia CD-ROMs to work on their own but were required to attend tutorials," explained one participant.
Said IICA: " The teaching and learning methods employed by the ADLTC allow students a greater degree of flexibility in their studies and encourage them to grasp up-to-date knowledge in the specific area, while gaining valuable hands-on experience using modern, state-of-the-art technology."
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/Agriculture/html/20020807T180000-0500_30082_OBS_IICA_STARTS_DISTANCE_TRAINING_COURSE_IN_AGRICULTURE.asp |
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