The Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will host its first Capacity Building Workshop on the Big Data project from 29 to 30 June. The theme of the workshop, which will be hosted at CXC’s Headquarters in Barbados is “Cross-national Comparative Surveys in Education: Models and Methods.”
The workshop attendees include statisticians and Education Planning Officers from ministries of education around the region. Fourteen CXC Participating Countries will be represented at the two-day workshop. They are Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Turks and Caicos Islands.
The aim of the two-day workshop is to give participants an overview of undertaking studies with expansive quantities of structured and unstructured data.
Director of Operations and Examinations Services at CXC, Mr Stephen Savoury explained that the attendees will gain a better understanding of managing and using data through digital platforms. Among the topics to be discussed are data gathering, analyses and data mining.
Savoury stated at that at the end of the workshop, all the participants will go back to their individual territories better equipped to effectively manipulate the raw data provided to them by CXC.
The workshop will be facilitated by Mr Eugenio Gonzalez, Director of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)/ETS Research Institute in Germany. The institute facilitates activities such as development and implementation of large-scale assessments, professional development and training and dissemination of research findings and information gathered through large-scale assessments.
