The College of Distance Education (CoDE) of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), would from next year begin an Easter School to provide the platform for dialogue on issues of quality educational.
The Acting Provost of the college, Professor George Oduro, who announced this at the weekend, said the Easter school would also create a forum for stakeholders to contribute towards the sustainable development of the country.
Prof Oduro said this at the launch of a Magazine for the College dubbed: ?CoDE Digest? in Cape Coast. The Easter school would be similar to the Summer school and New Year schools run by the University of Ghana.
The 20-page Magazine, is to tell the story of UCC Distance Education via the lenses of practitioners, create a platform where staff and students could share their experiences with the rest of the world, and learn from other and also to clarify issues relating to the operations of distance education and inform policy.
It has a six ?member editorial board with Prof Oduro as the Editor In-Chief. The first edition of the magazine has19 articles.
Prof Oduro said the launch of the magazine was a dream come true, noting that within a competitive environment, information flow played a key role in giving one competitor an advantage over the other competitors.
He pointed out that though the UCC Distance Education programme operated within a challenging competitive context, maintaining its role as a pacesetter in Ghana?s distance education required that the college projected its worth through mass communication.
?It is in this light that CoDE initiated the newsletter venture and it is hoped through the CoDE Digest we would be able to encourage both staff and students on the UCC distance mode, share best practices on course facilitation and learning among themselves, make experiential contribution towards national debates on distance education and also make UCC distance education programme more visible nationally and internationally?.
Prof Oduro underscored the Importance of the Distance Education programme to teachers and thanked the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) for clarifying issues relating to the recruitment of holders of Diploma from the Distance Education Programmes from the UCC into the teaching service.
He, however, appealed to the GES authorities to intervene in situations where some directors of education, particularly in the Ashanti Region, continued to discriminate against graduates who obtained Diplomas and Degrees through the distance education mode.
According to him, information reaching the College suggested that some directors in the Ashanti Region insisted that the Ghana Education Service did not recognize Diplomas through the distance mode.
This, Prof Oduro stressed, was affecting the patronage of distance programmes and if unchecked, was likely to adversely affect the Ministry of Education?s agenda towards promoting open and distance learning in the country.
Prof John Nelson Buah Pro-Vice Chancellor of UCC, who launched the magazine, commended the Provost and staff of the College for the innovative intellectual-based public image enhancement initiative and asked that space be created in the magazine for staff of the college and other colleges of the university of Cape Coast to publish their academic work.
He also asked that some of the articles published in the magazine be posted on the College?s website for a wider readership and urged the management of the college to liaise with other colleges of education within and outside the country to share and learn from them.
