Training Lecturers and Creating Texts

CREATIve will overcome the Caribbean’s current shortage of tertiary level coral instructors, not through the hiring of new teachers, but rather by building the skills of lecturers who already work in regional universities. CREATIve will strengthen the Caribbean’s human capacity in reef education by having the region’s lecturers train themselves and then their peers. Through this combination of bootstrapping and South-South pooling of expertise, CREATIve will enhance the academic quality of the institutions involved with minimal duplication of effort and at considerably lower cost. CREATIve self- and peer-trained lecturers will then create an affordable textbook and practical manual that will, for the first time, address coral reefs from a Caribbean perspective. The writing of the texts, and of the corresponding practical exercises, will be divided amongst lecturers based on their expertise, interests and local knowledge. Each lecturer will write a chapter on their area of expertise, and then compose at least one other chapter on an unfamiliar topic for which there is currently no instructor in the Caribbean. This CREATIve approach to text creation reinforces lecturer self-training by having instructors increase their knowledge-base, and become familiar enough with new topics, to a standard that is high enough to co-author a university level text.

Creating a New Course

CREATIve lecturers will develop the first region-wide, degree-level course on Coral Reef Biology and Management, and deliver the course to 75 students a year at three universities in five strategically located Caribbean countries (The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago). In time, CREATIve will also offer a less intense, diploma-level course to non-professionals, such as dive operators, who already work on reefs. Face-to-face course delivery will occur in small classroom environments that maximise lecturer-student interaction. Filmed lectures and simulated practical exercises will also be uploaded to the CREATIve website, ensuring course access anywhere, anytime. CREATIve’s virtual classroom will also eventually permit course delivery in the Caribbean’s lesser-developed islands, which do not have university campuses, but which also need the skilled reef personnel the course provides. Additionally, to ensure that students get as much applicable, hands-on experience as possible, CREATIve will upgrade the participating universities’ field stations so that they all have acceptable levels of equipment and materials.