Adelaide - Dec 2011

I presented a paper "Extending higher educational opportunities through e-Learning: a case study from Sri Lanka" authored by myself and my supervisors at the 1st International Australasian Conference on Enabling Access to Higher Education in Sri Lanka, held at the University of South Australia - Adelaide. It was a great opportunity to meet people having similar interests and networking. The conference had 5 sessions in parallel making it difficult to select which sessions to attend as all topics were interesting. We had presenters from all continents making it a truly international experience.

The paper was about a total online distance education programme offered by Orange Valley University (pseudonymous) in Sri Lanka. Why students have opted for total online programme and how ready they were for eLearning as well as challenges in implementing eLearning in Sri Lanka were discussed in the paper. This paper presented some of our early findings from a larger project which employed multiple case studies with an ethnographic approach to examine the impact of ICTs on distance education in Sri Lanka.

During the time I was in Adelaide, I visited Wang Wang and Funi - the only Giant Pandas living in the Southern hemisphere - in the Adelaide Zoo. I also manged to visit the beautiful Glenelg beach and do a bit of shopping. The transport system in Adelaide was good and easy to find your way around the city. I did not get the chance to visit Haigh's chocolate factory but their chocolates were yummy, especially the ones with Hazel nuts.