Full mobile syllabus ordered from DLA by partners
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DLA is pleased to announce a major step forward in mobile professional training for teachers. Following a successful pilot in 2019, we have been contracted to produce in 2020 a full scale mobile syllabus of classroom skills training for teachers. The setting is an interesting one: refugee camps in Ethiopia.
Expansion built on track record
DLA’s partners Plan International, UNHCR and Ethiopia’s Agency for Refugee and Returnee Affairs, are committed to improving education for refugees. Working through the British Council, the partners first commissioned DLA to make a trial mobile mini-course - 2 hours of training based on video loaded to teachers’ phones via SD cards. Now the partners have ordered an expanded digital course from DLA of around 20 hours of training with a full teaching skills curriculum. Digital Learning Associates will create the syllabus design, develop all the content, and supervise data collection /analysis.
From an initial test cohort of teachers in just 5 camps, the full course will be offered to the entire teacher body in the launch region of Benishangul-Gumuz where several hundred thousand refugees from Sudan and South Sudan are encamped. Delivery to Ethiopia’s other refugee-hosting regions will follow, reaching eventually the total refugee population of around 1 million.
Mobile and Digital for effective response in low-resource settings
An important asset supporting adult learning in refugee communities is the ownership of phones and the cultural habit of shared video viewing The DLA training solution leverages this with a learning design in which video content shows the best refugee community teachers using effective classroom techniques in the overcrowded multilingual schools in the camps. Each 15 minute video guides teachers to copy these skills, form discussion groups, and make observations of each others’ teaching to build a community of practice. Videos are distributed to teachers on SD cards. The new full-scale course will also have an accompanying printed book.
The refugee camp conditions rule out teacher enrollment to conventional college training courses or CPD sessions. For untrained volunteer community teachers in particular, video instruction on their phones offers a sustainable and agile way to improve class outcomes.
To view the pilot video courses made in 2019 go here. Digital Learning Associates develops and licenses learning content for global partners in ELT, K-12 and adult learning. The company is winner of the 2019 ELTons prize for innovative learner resources and a finalist in the Education Investor 2019 awards for Digital Publisher of the Year.