(pas de francais, mes amis. Jean-Claude est au yoga!)
The second part of my Cuso International assignment began
January 7, 2013. I moved from downtown
Georgetown to the University of Guyana’s campus, about a 20-minute taxi ride
from my house. Barbara Deodat, the Head
of the Distance Education Department of IDCE (Institute of Distance &
Continuing Education) has spent the last 6 months overhauling the space for her
department. She had the 4 rooms cleared
out of all the junk, painted, new computers and new Internet installed. She had a window put into the one room with
AC, got a lovely desk & a new chair AND lucky me, she lets me use this room
until I leave in June. It’s bright and
airy.
Santosh and Donna are the two adm assistants who are doing a
valiant job re-typing the mathematic texts.
No electronic versions were found!
What a job! Jean-Claude will help
them to use the newly installed scanner to see if that will facilitate their
work. One is Afro-Guyanese, the other
Indo-Guyanese, both very open and friendly.
I much prefer the campus to downtown, even if the taxi now
costs me $5.00CDN instead of $1.50CDN. Like
most university campuses it has lots of open space, green fields, flowering
trees, lots of benches to sit in the shade.
It is quiet and there is NO garbage.
So I am happy in my new digs.
My project is to revise and update the content and layout
for their self-instructional print-based course Supervisory Management. The
material dates from 1998 and no electronic version exists. Four different
university lecturers wrote the content, each taking a certain number of
units. The result is a lot of overlap,
duplication and theory that is not “put into practice”. The exercises and “tests” are all knowledge-based
with no higher order skills (application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation). The focus is on the traditional roles of the
supervisor: planning, organizing,
controlling with only some mention of leadership and team-building. Current thinking gives much more space to the
role of supervisor as team leader. So I have a wonderful challenge!! I will be working with the 3 tutors who have
used the course. The project is right up
my alley and should take me to end of April.
Have a look at my new colleagues and office……
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| my new colleagues: Santosh, Barbara, Donna in the adm office |
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| Welcome into my new office (note the new window!) |
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| Patricia hard at work!! |
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| View from my office on a cloudy day of the campus |
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| other side of the view - we're on the second floor! |
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