Just back from a two day visit to the University of the South Pacific in Fiji on 6-7 June 2007. At the invitation of the USP School of Law, the UNU was asked to give some advice on a new online masters programme in Environmental Law. I had a meeting with Yoli Tom’tavala in Suva to discuss the programme in detail and we talked about possible links with the Asia Pacific Initiative.
The next day, 7 June 2007, I visited the Media Centre, the Distance and Flexible Learning Group and the Information Technology Systems Group on the Laucala Campus. Finished the day with a visit to the Pacific Centre for Environment and Development.
I was very fortunate to get an overview of the work of the USP Media Centre from Melanie Guiney, Director. She kindly explained her plans for the future and we talked a lot about video documentary production.
I was most impressed to learn from Val Hazelman, online instructional designer, about USP’s efforts to shift all their courses from WebCT to Moodle. There was a lot of work involved in researching different open source learning management systems before committing to Moodle. In addition, the transition has been rather time consuming but the end result is a major cost saving for USP. I think this is an interesting case study for other universities to learn from.