THE SASAKAWA PEACE FOUNDATION

Enhancing Distance Education for the Pacific Island Community

5,600,000 yen [Grant Project]
Tokai University (Japan)

Distance learning has been acknowledged as an effective means of education in the Pacific islands, showing successes in higher education, and systems for distance learning have been constructed in the area of medical education in major cities. But isolated islands have little access to distance learning, and new approaches will be necessary to achieve effective distance learning in isolated islands. This project plans to develop new distance learning systems that can work even in the case of unexpected disasters in isolated islands. For this purpose, Tokai University will prepare teaching materials and invite individuals who are in charge of distance learning from isolated islands, and provide them with training at Tokai University. Additionally, content for self-study will be created. Activities and experience will be shared through conferences and internet forums. The following activities are planned this year.

Training Program for Distance Learning Administrators in Isolated Islands
(1) In order to have e-Health service, medical information provision harnessing the Internet, accepted in local communities, two administrators of such systems from the Pacific Islands will be invited to Japan to go through a three-month training program at Tokai University. The content includes: Internet Access (Intermediate), HTML Programming, Web-based consultation for medical purposes, Wireless LAN (Basic), etc.
(2) Creation of Self-Study Content: Study materials for distance learning program vis-?-vis will be developed taking specific local needs into account.
On-site Consultation
Experts will be dispatched to Fiji for consultation so that the remote information management system, which matches geographical and epidemiological information utilizing the Internet, will be more fully accepted by the local user community.

(Second year of a 3-year project)