Teachers are critical to any education system and if the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are to be achieved, then a lot will need to be done to address the many teacher education issues still facing education systems, particularly in the developing world.
Some of these issues include meeting the enormous need for teachers (1.7 million teachers still needed globally); ensuring quality of teacher educators and teachers; going beyond increasing numbers of children in school to achieving quality in education and integrating Information Communication Technologies (ICTs).
However, for teachers and teacher educators to successfully integrate ICTs into teaching and learning they all have to be well prepared and already many different strategies have been used to achieve this but a lot more still needs to be done.
The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is committed to exploring and using distance, open and technology-based methodologies to deal with these different issues. COL is therefore partnering with the African Virtual University (AVU) to mount a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for teachers and teacher educators on; ‘Using ICTs to enrich teaching and learning’.
Why a Massive Open Online Course?
MOOCs have the advantage of being capable of reaching many participants at once. Also, with changes in technology and in study and work demands, it is important that teachers keep up with these changes by updating their pedagogy and the study materials they use. MOOCs provide opportunity for teachers and teacher educators to do this through exposure. MOOCs also provide opportunity for teachers and teacher educators to interact and to learn from one another.
Target
This will be a Continuous Professional Development (CPD) course that will benefit teacher educators seeking to utilise ICTs to enrich their work and to improve their own knowledge and skills as teacher educators. This course will also benefit practicing teachers who would want to use ICTs to make teaching and learning in their classrooms innovative, exciting but yet relevant to the learners’ needs and to the demands of the curriculum.
School teachers, teacher trainees, teacher educators and any other educators should therefore benefit from this course:
Course Content
This course shall address three key questions:
- What is ICT?
- Why use ICTs in Teaching and Learning?
- How to use ICTs in Teaching and Learning
Duration
This will be a four-week course to be delivered by well experienced educators:
WEEK———-COURSE EDUCATORS
Week 1———-Lee-Anne Ragan
Week 2———-Janet Thomson
Week 3———-Brenda Mallinson
Week 4———-Andrew Moore
Dates:
The course is scheduled to start 16 February 2015 and will be freely and easily accessible on moocs.avu.org.
Registration dates and guidelines will be announced.
About
Commonwealth of Learning (COL) – The Commonwealth of Learning is an intergovernmental organisation promoting open, distance and e learning in Commonwealth states. Over the years, COL has supported many institutions and governments to start, develop and promote use of ODL to increase access to education, improve its quality and meet the needs of the different institutions and countries. In so doing COL has built up a large network of partners across and beyond the Commonwealth.
The African Virtual University (AVU) – The African Virtual University (AVU) is a Pan African Intergovernmental Organisation with a mandate to significantly increase access to quality higher education and training through the innovative use of Information and Communication Technologies. The AVU was established in 1997 when eLearning was still in its infancy in the West and it has since trained more than 43,000 students and established the largest network of Distance and eLearning institutions in 29 African Countries. The AVU works across language divide in Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone Africa.
Contact
African Virtual University
Ms. Sofia Alexandre
Tel: +254 20 2528333 | +254 722 205883
Email: salexandre@avu.org
Commonwealth of Learning
Dr. Jessica N. Aguti
Tel: +1 604 775 8231 (Direct) | +1 604 775 8200
Email: jaguti@col.org
