The potential of mobile phones to transform teacher professional development

Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English language teacher professional development (TPD) project, used futures thinking to author possible, probable and preferable future scenarios to solve the project’s greatest technological challenge: how to deliver audio-visual TPD materials and hundreds of classroom audio resources to 75,000 teachers by 2017. Authoring future scenarios and engaging in possibility thinking (PT) provided us with a taxonomy of question-posing and question-responding that assisted the project team in being creative. This process informed the successful pilot testing of a mobile phone-based technology kit to deliver TPD resources within an open distance learning (ODL) platform. Taking the risk and having the foresight to trial mobile phones in remote rural areas with teachers and students led to unforeseen innovation. As a result EIA is currently using a mobile phone-based technology kit with 12,500 teachers to improve the English language proficiency of 700,000 students. As the project scales up in its third and final phase, we are using the new technology kit—known as the ‘trainer in your pocket’—to foster a ‘quiet revolution’ in the provision of teacher professional development at scale to an additional 67,500 teachers and 10 million students

How to design for persistence and retention in MOOCs?

Design of educational interventions is typically carried out following a design cycle involving phases of investigation, conceptualization, prototyping, implementation, execution and evaluation. This cycle can be applied at different levels of granularity e.g. learning activity, module, course or programme. In this paper we consider an aspect of learner behavior that can be critical to the success of many MOOCs i.e. their persistence to study, and the related theme of learner retention. We reflect on the impact that consideration of these can have on design decisions at different stages in the design cycle with the aim of en-hancing MOOC design in relation to learner persistence and retention, with particular attention to the European context

Policy and practice in Asian distance education

Foreword by Tan Sri Emeritus Professor Gajaraj DhanarajanCo-published with Sage PublicationsProduced by the members of the Pan Asia Distance Resources Access (PANdora) Network (2005-08) representing institutions in 14 Asian countriesThis book was created to help in the development of distance education (DE) in Asia. Its modular contents can be downloaded from www.pandora-asia.org/guidebook/ for translation into local languages, in keeping with the PANdora (Pan Asia Distance Resources Access) network’s Open Resources philosophy. The book is one of the outputs of the collaborative PANdora research and development initiative including 24 open and distance learning (ODL) institutions, government departments, and non-governmental organisations in 13 Asian countries. The book is a valuable resource in open and distance learning

A Social Constructivist Approach for an Online Civic Education Tutorial

This study addressed the reforming of an online civic education tutorial at the Indonesia Open University or Universitas Terbuka (UT). Several contemporary literatures were reviewed to determine best practices, including social constructivism and a democratic form of teaching. Constructed from the review of literature, the paper proposed a new model of pedagogical approach to the existing practice of the online civic education tutorial. The proposed model for the online civic education tutorial in this study was based on the Community of Inquiry framework from Garrison, Anderson & Archer (2000) that promoted a social constructivist approach, and a democratic form of teaching. The learning of the tutorial in the model was theorized to occur within the community through the interaction of social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. In social and cognitive presence, students would form an online community where they would have collaborative discussions among students and between students and tutors, as well as would be expected to practice critical thinking. Teaching presence would occur when tutors promoted a democratic environment in the class, where they would model civic dispositions throughout their teaching. Tutors would show their respect and tolerance to students while facilitating discussion activities and giving direct instructions. Students would also be expected to be tolerant and respectful when they have discussions with other students and tutors. Through this model, students would be expected to gain civic knowledge, civic skills and civic dispositions, as well as experience with a democratic interaction that mirrors the interactions in a democratic society

Concept Mapping Strategy For Academic Writing Tutorial In Open And Distant Learning Higher Institution

Universitas Terbuka (UT) an open and distant higher education institution of Indonesia conducts the in-service teacher education program. In order to complete the program, the students – mostly teachers - have to submit the final academic paper. In fact, most of the UT students have difficulty to write this academic paper. UT offers an academic writing course to solve this writing program. Most of the student view academic writing still as a difficult assignment. Most of the students view academic writing as a difficult assignment to complete. UT has to find an appropriate instructional strategy that can facilitate student to write the academic writing assignment. One of the instructional strategy that can be selected to solve the academic writing problems is concept mapping. The aim of this study is to elaborate the implementation of concept map as an instructional strategy to facilitate the open and distance learning students io complete academic writing assignments. A design based research was applied to measure the effectiveness of using concept mapping strategy in helping students to gain academic writing skills. The steps of research and development model from Borg, Gall and Gall which consist of instructional design and development phases were implemented in this study. The result of this study indicated that students were facilitated and enjoyed the process of academic writing used the concept map strategy

The Quality Of Saudi Accreditation Standards For Distance Learning: Benchmarking And Expert Validation

The quality of distance learning is a concern among different stakeholders. An online learning degree is recognized in some countries while it is not accredited in others. Saudi Arabia is one of these countries that have skepticism in the quality of distance learning. It also has specific conditions for accrediting distance learning programs. Saudi Arabia recently has developed accreditation standards to ensure the quality of this learning mode but Saudi universities have not adopted the standards yet. Thus, the quality of these standards has not been tested yet. Therefore, this study investigates the quality of these standards by applying the methodology of benchmarking to compare their quality to frequently cited quality models for online learning and to aspirational countries in the West (US, UK, and Australia) and to peer countries in Asia (South Korea, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka) and Arabic Region (Jordan and United Arab Emirates (UAE)). It also explores the differences and similarities in the regulations of distance learning accreditation between these 8 countries and Saudi Arabia. The study also validates the standards in a survey design using experts’ rating to the relevance and importance of the Saudi standards for quality distance learning. The findings revealed an overall quality of the Saudi standards based on benchmarking and experts’ rating. Suggestions have been made to improve or change very few quality indicators. The regulations and rules for accrediting distance learning in Saudi Arabia are found to be strict in comparison to other countries. Therefore, the study also recommended policy makers in Saudi Arabia to adopt some of the regulations and standards of distance learning accreditation available in some of the aspirational and peer countries. Other recommendations have been suggested to different stakeholders including higher education institutions, instructional designers, and program directors

National report on the development and state of the art of adult learning and education

행사명 : 6th International Conference on Adult Educatio