The UWI/UNESCO Caribbean Universities Project for Integrated Distance Education, (CUPIDE) has engaged the services of Ronald Nicholas, a consultant with the US-based company, HGM Management & Technologies Inc. for a period of five months. Mr. Nicholas will seek to establish base-line data on distance education programme needs common to the five universities participating in the project, the learning styles of Caribbean tertiary level students, and the human resource requirements at each of the universities for the delivery of electronically enhanced distance education programmes. He will also be collecting data on similar on-going or planned projects involving the development or enhancement of electronically-based distance education.
The five universities involved in the CUPIDE Project are the University of Technology, Jamaica, University of Guyana, University of Surinam, University Quisqueya [Haiti] and the University of the West Indies. Funded through the Japanese funds-in-trust and managed by UWI, CUPIDE is intended to enhance and develop the human resource and technical capacity at each of the universities. This will enable the use of information communication technologies for human resource development in the region through the development of quality distance education programmes.