Collaborate to compete Teresa Connolly, Teaching Fellow, Support Centre for Open Resources in Education
OER movement involves lots of groups and organisations around the world • OER are explicitly funded by: – Foundations – Governments – Institutions – Individual donations • OER are being supported via – International and national consortia – Commercial activities and organizations – Infrastructure activities and organizations
JISC/Higher Education Academy UK
• Phase 1 OER projects – Individual – Institutional – Subject based • Phase 2 OER projects – Release – Discovery – Cascade – Use – Open Materials for Accredited Courses OMAC Collaboration between 120+ HE institutions
(Remember) For educational institutions OER offers up opportunities to: • Showcase their teaching and research programmes to new audiences; • Widen the pool of applicants for their courses and programmes; • Lower the lifetime costs of developing effective self study rich media educational resources; • Collaborate with public and commercial organisations, including educational publishers, in new ways; • Extend their outreach activities to community groups • In order to … • Collaborate for a common purpose but retain own identity
So how do you go about openly collaborating for mutual benefit?
Sub Saharan Africa: The challenges for teacher education • Estimated 4 million additional teachers to meet EFA Goals • Substantial proportion of existing teachers are under qualified or unqualified • Concern over quality of current teacher education • Limited capacity and resources in existing institutions and systems • Poor working and learning conditions for teachers • Multitude of languages • Issues of status, morale and HIV/ AIDS
French Arabic
Kiswahili
TESSA in Use Some examples: • National Teachers Institute (Nigeria): Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) – In-service (distance) 102,000 students • Kyambogo University (Uganda): Diploma in Education Primary External (distance) 1,500 students • Open University of Tanzania (Tanzania): Diploma in Primary Education 700 students • Open University of Sudan (Sudan): B Ed ( distance) 45,000 students • Kigali Institute of Education (Rwanda): National Retraining Programme for Primary School Teachers – endorsed by Ministry for Education (Apr-08) 12,000 teachers ‘To train quality teachers who can impact positively on pupils’/students’ learning.’
Emerging Findings • Evidence of improved teaching practices • More reflective thinking after lessons • Teacher and pupil enjoyment • Flexibility of OER allowed use in range of programmes ‘I have enjoyed using the materials because they make classroom activities simple and easy. Pupils are now improving in their performance and it has helped me to improve my teaching skills.’ Student Teacher, Nigeria
TESSA Model of intervention • Starting point = classroom • Practical, activity based teacher learning • Valuing of school practitioner agency • Implementation dispersed and decentralised • Alignment and interaction with existing communities of practice • Local autonomy: importance TESSA coordinators
The TESSA Resources • • • •
Highly structured study units - template Core set of 75 study units Teachers’ learning located in their own classrooms Developing the professional knowledge (both subject and pedagogic) and practices of teachers • Contextualised to reflect the environment of the teacher
Materials creation and adaptation 4 1
Sharing in the Tessa OER resource bank
Creation of original study units by consortium partners
3
6
Quality Assurance, Editing and User Testing
Localisation of study units by consortium partners
2
Quality Assurance and Editing and User Testing
5