Bevil Wood­ing

The de­mands of to­day's tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven world present a chal­lenge to the Caribbean to in­vest in rel­e­vant de­vel­op­ment of its hu­man re­sources. The Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC), in re­sponse to this chal­lenge, is launch­ing the first CAPE Dig­i­tal Me­dia Syl­labus to give stu­dents across the re­gion the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op skillsets nec­es­sary to cre­ate dig­i­tal con­tent and mas­ter dig­i­tal me­dia.

The Dig­i­tal Rev­o­lu­tion

We live in a world in­creas­ing­ly dom­i­nat­ed by dig­i­tal con­tent. Tele­vi­sion broad­casts are giv­ing way to on­line videos. The pub­lish­ing in­dus­try is be­ing re­de­fined by elec­tron­ic books and web­sites. Mo­bile apps have trans­formed how peo­ple in­ter­act with their phones. The me­dia, en­ter­tain­ment and cre­ative arts in­dus­tries have been to­tal­ly rev­o­lu­tionised by the In­ter­net, dig­i­tal mu­sic, pho­tog­ra­phy, videos, graph­ics and an­i­ma­tion. The glob­al pub­lic's ap­petite for dig­i­tal con­tent seems in­sa­tiable. As a re­gion, the Caribbean's ap­petite is no less vo­ra­cious.

All in­di­ca­tors point to con­tin­ued ex­plo­sive growth of dig­i­tal con­tent, fu­elled by more pow­er­ful and in­creas­ing­ly af­ford­able gad­gets and tech­nolo­gies. Sup­port­ing this re­quires armies of dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ators; dig­i­tal work­ers armed with an un­der­stand­ing of the new me­dia and skilled with the com­pe­ten­cies to pro­duce new dig­i­tal prod­ucts and ser­vices. These are the ar­ti­sans of the tech­nol­o­gy era. They must be de­lib­er­ate­ly nur­tured, trained and de­vel­oped to take part in the con­stant­ly evolv­ing dig­i­tal land­scape.

The seem­ing­ly end­less buf­fet of dig­i­tal con­tent is cre­at­ing re­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es, in­no­va­tors and en­tre­pre­neurs. Af­ter all, some­one has to cre­ate � and ben­e­fit � from the mo­bile apps, elec­tron­ic books, an­i­ma­tions, web­sites and oth­er dig­i­tal me­dia. But the ca­pac­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly seize these op­por­tu­ni­ties, must be de­lib­er­ate­ly nur­tured. In this re­gard, ed­u­ca­tion is key.

CXC Re­spond­ing to the Chal­lenge

The Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) is the re­gion­al body that pro­vides pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and post-sec­ondary ex­am­i­na­tions and oth­er ed­u­ca­tion ser­vices for Caribbean coun­tries. The or­ga­ni­za­tion has pub­licly ac­knowl­edged that the re­gion's ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem needs to re­spond with alacrity to pro­duce grad­u­ates with the req­ui­site skills in dig­i­tal me­dia. Re­fresh­ing­ly, the Coun­cil has gone be­yond just words.

Fol­low­ing a re­gion-wide, mul­ti-stake­hold­er process, the Coun­cil cre­at­ed his­to­ry with its de­ci­sion on 18th April 2013 to ap­prove a new CAPE-lev­el Dig­i­tal Me­dia Syl­labus for im­ple­men­ta­tion in schools in Sep­tem­ber 2013 and first ex­am­i­na­tion in May/June 2014.

Ac­cord­ing to the Coun­cil's Reg­is­trar and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Dr. Di­da­cus Jules, the syl­labus will pro­vide stu­dents with skills and com­pe­ten­cies that al­low for im­me­di­ate en­try in­to the world of work. He ex­plained that the knowl­edge pack­aged in­to the pro­gram is in­tend­ed to em­pow­er grad­u­ates to mar­ket their skills lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

"The new Dig­i­tal Me­dia Syl­labus of­fers a blend of tech­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and arts, and is spe­cial­ly de­signed to ap­peal to stu­dents pur­su­ing any cog­nate stream. Em­pha­sis will be placed on project work and ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion to en­sure that stu­dents have op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op both prac­ti­cal skills and a sol­id un­der­stand­ing of how dig­i­tal me­dia is ap­plied in re­al-world sce­nar­ios."

The goal is to in­crease the cadre of dig­i­tal me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers, such as con­tent cre­ators, an­i­ma­tors, web de­vel­op­ers, graph­ic artists and mo­bile app de­vel­op­ers, and se­cure the skillsets and knowl­edge base to sup­port the emerg­ing Caribbean dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

Break­ing New Ground

The CAPE Dig­i­tal Me­dia Syl­labus con­sists of two Units, Unit 1, Dig­i­tal Me­dia Fun­da­men­tals and Unit 2, Ap­plied Dig­i­tal Me­dia. The syl­labus breaks new dig­i­tal ground for the Coun­cil as stu­dents will be al­lowed to share knowl­edge, re­view case stud­ies; and cre­ate so­lu­tions; all us­ing dig­i­tal me­dia. This re­quires the Coun­cil to take an in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach to us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to fa­cil­i­tate in­ter­ac­tions and to re­ceive stu­dent sub­mis­sions. The CXC Ex­ter­nal As­sess­ment will al­so be de­liv­ered elec­tron­i­cal­ly for both the mul­ti­ple choice and prac­ti­cal tasks com­po­nents of the pa­per. This is an­oth­er first for the Coun­cil.

In­no­v­a­tive De­ploy­ment Strat­e­gy

Dr. Jules in­di­cat­ed that the Coun­cil is ful­ly con­scious of the lim­it­ed teach­ing ex­per­tise in the sub­ject mat­ter. How­ev­er, giv­en the broad in­ter­est in the syl­labus and the lim­it­ed time avail­able the Coun­cil is em­bark­ing on a new, in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach that lever­ages the same dig­i­tal me­dia the syl­labus pro­motes.

A spe­cial Ac­cel­er­at­ed CAPE Dig­i­tal Me­dia Im­ple­men­ta­tion Strat­e­gy has been de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the CXC's civ­il-so­ci­ety part­ner Con­gress WBN. In 2012 CXC signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with Con­gress WBN, a Trinidad-based in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tion. Un­der the terms of the MOU the or­ga­ni­za­tions have been col­lab­o­rat­ing on the ap­pli­ca­tion of in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove the de­liv­ery of ed­u­ca­tion in the Caribbean. The ac­cel­er­at­ed im­ple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy is a di­rect prod­uct of this col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Pres­i­dent of Con­gress WBN, Dr. Noel Woodroffe, ex­plained that the strat­e­gy seeks to pro­vide teach­ers and stu­dents with ac­cess to the un­der­ly­ing phi­los­o­phy, ob­jec­tives and learn­ing out­comes of the CAPE Dig­i­tal Me­dia syl­labus. "We want­ed to en­sure the same prin­ci­ples, tools and meth­ods high­light­ed in the Dig­i­tal Me­dia syl­labus were re­flect­ed in the ap­proach to im­ple­men­ta­tion."

The strat­e­gy en­tails de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean-cen­tric ref­er­ence texts, dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal teach­ing aids and a spe­cial­ly staged ori­en­ta­tion video. To­geth­er, these re­sources will con­sti­tute a CAPE Dig­i­tal Me­dia Syl­labus Re­source Toolk­it.

Pos­i­tive Mod­els

The de­vel­op­ment of the CAPE Dig­i­tal Me­dia syl­labus ini­tia­tive is cer­tain­ly a ma­jor ad­vance for the Caribbean. The Dig­i­tal Me­dia Syl­labus Re­source Toolk­it is al­ready be­ing viewed as a mod­el for syl­labus ori­en­ta­tion and re­sourc­ing that can be repli­cat­ed across oth­er sub­ject ar­eas. The col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween acad­e­mia, pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il so­ci­ety, not on­ly in craft­ing the syl­labus but al­so in shap­ing its im­ple­men­ta­tion, is note­wor­thy. Now the onus will be on CXC's mem­ber coun­tries, schools, teach­ers and stu­dents to take full ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Still, we can cel­e­brate the pi­o­neer­ing de­vel­op­ment of a sig­nif­i­cant ed­u­ca­tion­al re­source through tru­ly re­gion-wide col­lab­o­ra­tion. We can al­so re­mind our­selves that we are still very ca­pa­ble of pro­vid­ing pos­i­tive pat­terns for our youth, for the re­gion and for the world.

Bevil Wood­ing is the Chief Knowl­edge Of­fice of Con­gress WBN (www.con­gress­wbn.org), a val­ues-based in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it. He is al­so Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an ed­u­ca­tion-tech­nol­o­gy non-prof­it (www.bright­path­foun­da­tion.org). Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing or at: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing or con­tact via email at tech­nol­o­gy­mat­ters@bright­path­foun­da­tion.org