The Open Campus was established to improve services to the non-campus territories. It brought together several existing UWI units, namely the University of the West Indies Distance Education Centre, the School of Continuing Studies, the Tertiary Level Institutions Unit, and the Office of the Board for Non-Campus Countries & Distance Education. The Extra-Mural Department was first established in 1947 when UWI was still the University College of the West Indies. As it developed into the School of Continuing Studies, it eventually incorporated the Caribbean Child Development Centre, the Hugh Lawson Shearer Trade Union Education Institute, the Human Resources Development Unit, the Social WelfareTraining Centre and the Women and Development Unit. The University of the West Indies Distance Teaching Experiment was an initiative funded by a USD 600,000 grant from USAID. The telecommunications system was first used in St. Lucia, Dominica, Antigua and Grenada to provide access to courses in non-campus territories. At the same time, there was a Challenge Examinations scheme that allowed students to undertake initial studies in their home territories before joining one of the three campuses. The UWIDITE facilities were used to support the Challenge program. In 1996, UWIDEC, incorporating the UWIDITE and the Challenge Examinations scheme, was established. Further development of the UWIDEC was implemented in 2003. In 2007, the Open Campus was approved. This Campus was provided with additional financial, human, technology and administrative resources and a structure that was intended to better serve non-campus territories. Aside from the main campus in Barbados, UWIOC maintains presence in 17 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands.
Open Campus Country Sites
The Open Campus maintains physical sites in most contributing countries. The country sites conduct marketing and recruit new students, facilitate some face to face courses, provide spaces for studying, and some have UWI library branches.
Trinidad & Tobago - 13 sites plus the Open Learning Centre at the St. Augustine Campus
Bermuda does not currently have a Country Site.
Academic Programmes
The Open Campus offers a wide range of programmes in both distance mode and face-to-face mode at one of its many regional learning centres. At the undergraduate level, the Open Campus offers programmes at the certificate, diploma, associate and bachelor levels in fields such as education, business and public administration, sports, technology, humanities and social sciences. Similarly, at the graduate level, the Open Campus offers programmes at the advanced certificate, postgraduate diploma, masters and doctoral levels in similar areas. The Campus includes courses and certificates that would be considered part of continuing and professional education, prior learning assessment, and summer school courses. While the Open Campus is the main distance education unit of the University, some other units offer programmes by distance. For example, the UWI/FIFA/CIES Diploma in Sports Management is offered by distance and managed by UWI Mona. Similarly, the Department of Library and Information Studies offers several masters-level programmes in a blended learning format.
Accreditation
In 2019, UWI Open Campus was re-accredited by the Barbados Accreditation Council for the maximum term, ending in 2026. Subsequently, as the Open Campus operates across countries and territories, sought mutual recognition in contributing countries/territories.
Research and Development
The Open Campus, as with the landed UWI campus, has an active research and development environment. The main research unit is the . It units several units that were already established before the Open Campus amalgamated several existing units. The units with a significant research mandate include:
Other units are more developmental in nature, in the sense of improving access to education and training:
