In what can best be described as a visionary move, Education Minister, Dr Henry Jeffrey, revealed last week that the ministry was conducting a limited pilot project in distance education and in-service teacher training using the internet.

Neither distance education nor in-service training is new in Guyana. The Ministry of Education has long had an in-service teacher training programme in force. The Institute of Distance and Continuing Education of the University of Guyana has been successfully conducting distance education for a number of years. However, using the internet as a tool for such training has previously been unheard of here. In fact, it is not very widely practiced, even in developed countries where the necessary infrastructure is in place.

The best known example of online teaching is at the University of Phoenix, the largest private university in the United States which caters mostly for working adults and was founded in 1976, to answer the unique educational needs of professionals who already possess a wealth of practical knowledge. It offers both undergraduate and masters degrees in about ten areas and its students have access to its online research libraries as well as whatever is available on the entire information superhighway. Its lecturers are successful professionals, over 3,000 in all, it says, who hold down jobs as CEOs, supervisors, managers, executives or own their own businesses. Its students are expected to be mature enough to complete assignments without supervision. In fact, most distance education programmes tend to target the mature student.

The result of a distance education programme pilot using the internet in Guyana, however limited, would be pretty predictable. One assumes that such a programme would target rural/hinterland students, who would spend many fruitless hours just dialing-up (trying to get online) and when they finally got online they might find that the programmes are not compatible. They could also spend just as many hours waiting for access to an internet computer.

If the Ministry of Education is determined to use technology to train teachers, it would be much better advised to spend the money on purchasing sound computer equipment and developing software teaching programmes. That way, it would just be a matter of students inserting a disk or a CD-ROM into the computer to access their courses.

If it is serious about expanding its in-service training, it could also follow the example of the Ministry of Health, which has for years successfully run its Community Health Worker training programme at Moruca in Region One (Barima/Waini), taking trainees from all ten administrative regions into Moruca, in order for them to experience in the sort of environment in which they would ultimately be expected to perform.

And Minister Jeffrey would be the best proponent of developing such a programme, having previously held the Health Ministry portfolio.