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

• 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

JISC/Higher Education Academy UK

(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?

• 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

Sub Saharan Africa: The challenges for teacher education

French

Arabic

Kiswahili

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.’

TESSA in Use

• 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

Emerging Findings

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

Localisation of study units by consortium

partners

Sharing in the Tessa OER

resource bank

Quality Assurance and Editing and

User Testing

Creation of original study units by

consortium partners

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Quality Assurance, Editing and

User Testing

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