Faculty, administrative staff and students at University Quisqueya (UniQ), located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, are benefiting from training in the use of the open source learning management system (LMS), Moodle, for distance education. The training is being provided through the UNESCO/UWI Caribbean Universities Project for Integrated Distance Education (CUPIDE) – a collaborative project among five universities in the region, designed to develop the human resource capacity in each of the universities to provide electronically enhanced teaching, administration and material distribution. The project is funded by the Japanese Funds-in-Trust for the Capacity Building of Human Resources. The other four universities participating in CUPIDE are: Anton de Kom University of Suriname (AdeKUS), University of Guyana (UG), University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) and The University of the West Indies (UWI), which is responsible for the management of the project, under the guidance of a Project Advisory Committee, chaired by CARICOM.

The two-week training programme began on April 23, facilitated by consultant Professor Ahmed Almakari, from the Université Ibn Zohr, in Morocco. He holds a doctorate in linguistics and in 2004 earned a master’s degree in the use of new information and communication technologies in the field of education and training from the Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France. He undertook a similar training exercise in Haiti in November 2006 on behalf of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), an association of Francophone universities throughout the world.

The other CUPIDE universities received similar training in 2006. UniQ’s participation had been delayed by security concerns.

CUPIDE was launched in January 2003 with the objective of building the human resource capacity in the universities through provision of training, in addition to providing hardware, software and technical assistance. The human resources of the participating countries will also be strengthened through the delivery of programmes developed under the project. The project is slated for completion by the end of 2007.

For further information contact: Dr. Christine Marrett, Project Operations Manager, cupide@uwimona.edu.jm, or tel: (876) 927-2831