TEL4Educators

TEL4Educator project is an initiative of Kampala Virtual Education Institute (KAVEDIN) an Educational Technology consultancy.The project is intended to support educators in primary and secondary school adapt to utilizing technology improved pedagogies using formal and informal approaches to professional development. Empirical evidence shows that there is a technological gap between the Net generation and the educators across the education divide. Also, education interventions to empower learners with digital skills have not inclusively considered the educators on a required scale. TEL4Educators project is grounded on the assumption that the digital skills gap between the learners and the educators is a result of a lack of Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching (TEL&T) skills. The project is designed to empower the educators in primary and secondary schools with both digital and technology improved pedagogy skills to facilitate effective teaching of the 21st-century learner.

The COVID19 pandemic has exposed gaps in the knowledge and skills educators are missing to support learners away from a traditional classroom. Nine(9) out of ten(10) educators from the groups I interacted with during the pandemic could not facilitate learning electronically or online. Equally, educators are not familiar with the new methods of conducting teaching different from what they learned from school for their teaching qualification. Empirical evidence shows that there is a digital skills gap between the Net-generation learner and the educator across the education divide. A Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) project report in which Uganda was among the candidates noted that there is an existing challenge of preparing teachers in Africa to utilize different methods of teaching away from methods that keep the learner in a passive mode. Also, interventions to empower learners with digital skills have not inclusively considered the educators on a required scale. This challenge equally affected educators' ability to use technologies as an alternative to teaching during the COVID19 pandemic.

TEL4Eeducators intervention is intended to support educators with TEL skills as a professional development intervention aimed at equipping educators with the knowledge & skills that meet the learning requirement of the 21st-century.

TEL4Educator project is an initiative of Kampala Virtual Education Institute an Educational Technology consultancy. The project is designed to support educators through training and support using online and offline activities. Over 20 micro-credentials have been lined to be developed and uploaded for teachers to access and learn in a community. The project intends to drive the solution on 3 pillars including collaboration, communities, and social learning. 

1. The online initiative include;

• A website opencollege.ac.ug designed to act as a one-stop center for Micro-credentials, Open Education Resources(OERs), and Open Source(OS) tools and how they are applied. 
• The development of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) online social communities within and outside the school are intended to foster continuous learning and support within the communities of TEL.   

2. The offline initiative include;

•  School training outreach, intended to train educators from their posts of work but also create awareness of the available online support via  opencollege.ac.ug 
• Creation of school TEL4Educators support committees to drive the school initiative for educators' continuous professional development utilizing the affordances of TEL. The project intends to develop a self-sustained support initiative driven by educators with the potential to scale throughout the country.

TEL4Educators is targeting educators in primary and secondary schools in both public and private environments. According to national data, there are over 6000 teachers in primary and half the number in secondary schools in the central region. TEL4Educators intends to reach out to 20% of the teacher population purposefully categorizing the targets by the status of the schools. 

Since the start of 2019 Kampala Virtual Education Institute has been engaged in supporting educators to adopt TEL skills that can enable them to effectively conduct teaching and foster learning even remotely. I have trained and interacted with up to 70 educators. I have also put up opencollege.ac.ug as a platform to act as a resource center for educators. Currently, I am designing research with the question; What factors can be identified that hinder educators in central Uganda primary and secondary education in utilizing Open Education Resources, Open-Source tools, and MOOCs in their Professional Development?  I have a long-term plan to work with educators to uplift their skills to match the requirements of the times. 

The Impact of the solution

• Develop lifelong learners among educators
• The vulnerable learners will have an opportunity to access improved approaches to teaching. 
• Amplify the necessity of professional development through social learning
• Develop collaborations and communities of educators
• Acquire Technology Enhanced Learning skills to utilize improved pedagogies using technology affordances

TEL4Educators is responding to the challenge of knowledge and skills gap relevant to the 21st century needs of learners. The challenges, as well as the identified solution point at digital skills, improved teaching pedagogies, and communities of social learning as key elements to support a sustained educator professional development. The solution is targeting 20% of the teaching staff in primary and secondary schools, public and private schools running Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE) in the Central region of Uganda. The defined category of schools is responsible for most of the vulnerable learners in Uganda's education environment.  

The project idea is being developed as a result of experiences from the training I conducted during the COVID19 pandemic.

The solution introduces integrated informal learning methods through social learning, communities of practice, and collaboration to foster communal learning utilizing the affordances of technology. A learner-centered approach to educator's professional development is introduced to facilitate educator self-directed learning through communities of practice. Networking within and outside the community is facilitated and promoted. Educators learn from each other and share experiences. The online TEL micro-credentials are designed to encourage group participation for peer support. Social media is integrated as a tool for social learning, communication, and sharing.  

Currently, I am supporting MK publishers to training 30 educators from primary and secondary school who associate with the publisher as authors. An estimated number of teachers in primary and secondary schools in the central region stands at 10,000. TEL4Educators projects intends to reach out to 20% of the population. In 2019 to 2020 KAVEDIN reached out 70 educators. It is from this background that the idea of scaling the training of educators was adopted as result the enormous need.

TEL4Educators projects to reach out to 2,000 educators with 400 per year in 20 schools.  

• Number of educators impacted in 1 year
• The number of schools reached out in 1 year
• Number of active communities at the end of each year
• Number of educators involved in the training of educator
• Number of participants enrolling to take a course
• Percent course completion rate 
• Number of collaborations that took place in a year

• Fulltime staff  1
• Part-time        2
• Contract staff 2 

The team leader at Kampala Virtual Education Institute(KAVEDIN) and the project head of TEL4Educators is a postgraduate candidate of the Institute of Educational Technology at Open University, U.K as a commonwealth scholar. His first qualification is a bachelor of science in Applied Information Technology. 

He has experience in teaching and leading in an academic environment of over 10 years. He has been the team leader at KAVEDIN since 2016. Since then, he has provided technical support and advisory to schools at the primary, secondary levels, higher education, and workplace training organization. 

Since 2018, the team leader has participated in the training of educators and facilitators of learning. It is from this background that the need for scaling the empowerment of educators to meet the teaching and learning requirements of the 21st-century learner was highlighted.  

To better understand the barriers faced by educators the team leader is designing a study with the research question;

"What factors can be identified that hinder educators in central Uganda primary education in utilizing Open Education Resources, Open-Source tools, and MOOCs in their Professional Development?"

The philosophy of KAVEDIN on diversity is that fair representation can only mean equal representation and not 1 out of 9. About the project KAVEDIN has so far engaged lined up 2 ladies and 3 gentlemen as part of the team building and we pledge to see that our values are represented in the structures of leadership. 

It is my pleasure to apply for Solve from a prestigious institution where I expect to access technical support, networking, and training. Solve is well position to support the TE4Educators project identified staff acquire knowledge and skills needed to run and manage a project. 

Equally, Solve jumpstart the development  of micro-credential needed to facilitate educators training, 

• Human Capital: At present Uganda is not yet scaled on persons qualified to training or even facilitated the development and implementation of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) programs. TEL4Educators to thrive has to train trainers to be used to train others.
• Financing: This is the area where we shall need support with open arms, especially how to manage project funds, and learning how to pitch an investor.
• Monitoring and Evaluation: I have been involved in academic research but the area of monitoring and evaluation is one I am not comfortable with yet I regard it to be central to the smooth running of the project. 
• Technology: Whereas software-related components may not be an issue to some extent hardware components to support the project as desired should an issue for the project to navigate. 

• MIT Institute of Educational Technology for content and technical support
• Mentors in the area of managing project funds and monitoring and evaluation experts
• Fundraising trainer for support and coaching on pitching and getting organized,
• Hardware vendors/manufacturers for tablets and laptops for school-related provisions

Technology affordances are supporting education than ever before. By training and facilitating teachers online, no matter where the school is located teachers shall be able to access the opencollege.ac.ug and meet with fellow trainees. 

Also, the learning model TEL4Educators is promoting is one that exploits the affordances of social media to create communities of educators learning from experiences without the factor of boundaries. Equipped with a smartphone, an educator in a refugee camp at the border of Uganda and Congo can participate in sharing and learning with colleagues in Kampala. 

As a result, an educator will be able to cater to distance learners who are unable to access school for any reason and with the content stored on a school portal, the learner does not miss any lesson conducted while they were away.