THE INFORMER PAGE 6

DECEMBER 17, 1991

Making Friends in Pakistan and Sri Lanka

It pays for the College to make friends with its
counterparts in other countries, says Jim Bizzocchi.

Jim, Media Resources Instructor and Distance Edu-
cation Liaison for the College, learned that recently

during a Commonwealth of Learning fellowship to Paki- — world.”

stan and Sri Lanka.

“I formed various degrees
of working relationships with
lots of educators,” he said,
leafing through dozens of
loose-leaf pages of names and
photocopied business cards.
“When you make international
contacts you never know what
will happen, but maybe some
programs will come out of it.”

In Sri Lanka Jim attended
a conference of the Asian
Association of Open Universi-
ties. There he met at least 35
college and university officials
from Southern Asia, Japan,
Australia and the Middle
East.

One of those people was
Professor Ram Reddy, the
newly appointed chair of the

University Grants Commission of India. “This man is in
charge of post-secondary education for 20 per cent of the

planet,” Jim said.

He had met Reddy earlier in
Vancouver, but said this time the
acquaintance solidified. “In Asia,
individual contact is very impor-
tant in business. You treat an
initial meeting as the beginning
of a more intensive relationship.
When you meet the person again
it makes it easier for things to
happen, to build partnerships.”

He also met the Chancellor of
Shahed University of Tehran,
who later wrote to him request-
ing information on Cap College
programs. “If he looks at our
catalogue and sees a program he
is interested in, he might seek
our expertise in designing a
program for Iran,” Jim said.

He said relationships like
this can bring funding and
prestige to the College and

From left: Mr. Abdus Subhan, chair of the National
Curriculum and Textbook Board of Bangladesh; Dr. Fazlul
Karim Chowdhury, chief of planning of the Ministry of
Education, Bangladesh; and Jim Bizzocchi. Taken at

Murree, in the hills near Islamabad, Pakistan.

attract other overseas institutions to form working part-
nerships with Cap. “Also, building contacts in other
countries makes me a better professional,” Jim said. “I
know more things, and I have a better sense of the

College President Doug
Jardine agreed on the value of
building international con-
tacts and said he would like to
see more faculty exchanges.
“It reminds the faculty that
we live in a global village.
They can take that into the
classroom so the students will
learn their world doesn’t end
on Vancouver Island.”

Jim had several specific
tasks as part of the fellowship.
He advised educators on the
use of media technology in
distance education and ana-
lyzed the audio visual require-
ments of the Open University
in Sri Lanka.

Jim had flown from Van-
couver to Hong Kong on Aug.
17. From there he went to

Islamabad and worked three weeks at Allama Iqubal
Open University, where his main task was to deliver a

workshop on the use of video and instructional design in

Seated is Lal Gunawardeena, chief video technician at the Open
University of Sri Lanka; standing is Ms. Gayani
Samarawickrema, media officer at OUSL. Other than lights and
camera, this small editing facility comprises the university's
video production unit. It is well maintained. People take their

shoes off when they enter.

distance education. Next
he went on to Colombo, Sri
Lanka, for two weeks at
the Open University,
where he performed the
needs analysis. Jim also
visited Murree, Taxila and
Rawalpindi in Pakistan;
Kandy, Kegalle and
Kurunegala in Sri Lanka;
Delhi and Agra in India;
and Singapore. He took
most of these side trips on
his own time, but along
with sightseeing he visited
a number of regional
centres to investigate their
media and distance educa-
tion systems.

Jim confirmed what he
had suspected, that British
Columbia is well ahead of