20 teachers, education directors received training on open distance and technology-enabled learning

About 20 selected teachers and education directors at the Basic Education level have been trained in Open, Distance Learning (ODL) and Technology- Enabled Learning (TEL) to help sharpen their skills in the usage of available IT tools in teaching and learning activities.

Organised by the Tamale College of Education (TACE) with funding support from the Commonwealth of Learning (CoL), the five-day training held from June 5 to 9 2023, sought to strengthen the capacity of the beneficiary teachers and the directors to be able to use Open Educational Resources (OERs) and other IT Tools in their classroom works and academic trails.

The participants were made up of classroom teachers, head teachers, regional, metro, municipal, and district directors of education, and School Improvement Support Officers (SISOs) and were drawn from the Tamale Metro, Sagnerigu Municipal, Savelugu Municipal, Kumbungu District and Yendi Municipal.

They were taken through topics such as benefits and challenges of ODL and TEL, effective teaching strategies for ODL and TEL, overview of learning management System and their roles in ODL/TEL.

Other topics were: Introduction to Open Educational Resources (OERs) and their benefits, Strategies for finding and evaluating OERs, and principles of assessment and evaluation in ODL/TEL, tools, and techniques for online assessment.

Speaking at the opening ceremony on Monday, June 5, 2023, the Principal of the college, Dr. Sulemana Iddrisu, indicated that the training sought to gather inputs and feedback from stakeholders for the development of a framework for ODL and enabled learning at the college.

He used the opportunity to encourage teachers and management of educational institutions to embrace the use of ODL and TEL as it would increase their productivity and also ease their workloads.

The principal also pledged the support of the TACE to the holistic development of teachers to help improve educational outcomes both at the basic and secondary level, and encourage the participants to pay attention to what would be taught at the workshop and also contribute meaningfully to the success of the training.

The lead-facilitator and consultant to the project, Harry Barton Essel (Ph.D.) on his part called on lecturers to take advantage of the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it came to increase their speed at work and also improve upon their productivity.

He denied the thinking by many that the emergence of etchnology in the field of education was to promote laziness among current and future generations, arguing that technology-enabled learning mechanisms such as increased usage of AI would rather lessen the burden of both educators and learners thereby promoting positive learning outcomes.

“I do not believe in the fact that AI will make us lazy, though I do not have any empirical evidence, I have done research in cognitive abilities and AI, it is yet to be published but the outcome of the research is telling us that there is no way AI can kill cognitive of people,” he said.

“What I believed as an I-tech person is that these tools are there to make us 10 times more productive and then help us bring our ideas to live, so it is just a matter of teaching our students and incoming teachers how to ethically use these tools to their benefits” he added.

He thought the teachers and the directors were not direct beneficiaries of the project, soliciting inputs and feedback from them was an integral part of the development of the ODL/TEL framework for the College.

“We are training them as evangelists or propagators of this project to go out there and tell the in-service teachers what they should expect so that when it rollout, they would be encouraged to participate” Professor Essel stated.

For his part, the Vice-Principal of the college, Nuhu Imoro Alhassan, thanked the consultant and the Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) for making the training workshop possible.

He also thanked the participants and the Ghana Education Service (GES) for making the teachers available for the training and urged them to share the knowledge they gained with their colleague Teachers for it to benefit the larger community.

In his submissions, a Lecturer at the Tamale College of Education and Co-Facilitator, Dr. Osei Yaw, assured the participants that their inputs made at the workshop would be added to the development of the TACE ODL/TEL framework, adding that the college would call on them and other stakeholders for further inputs when the ODL/TEL framework has been developed before implementation begins.

In his remarks during the closing ceremony on Friday, June 9, 2023, the Tamale Metro Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES) Mr. Nelson Konlan, urged Teachers to make constant learning habits as education kept changing daily.

He also called on stakeholders to support the GES in organizing In-Service Training for Teachers to make them more productive and efficient at work.

He further assured the organizers that the knowledge gained would be used appropriately because they (participants) would share what they have learned with their colleagues who could not get the opportunity to attend.

The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Northern Regional Directorate of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Owusu Frederick, on behalf of the Regional Education Director, lauded TACE and CoL for their efforts to improve education in Ghana.

He also said the GES was in full support of the training because it resonated well with their mandate, and appealed to other stakeholders to support the GES in making teaching easy and interesting for teachers and other educators.

In an interview with the media, some of the teachers expressed their gratitude to the Tamale College of Education and CoL for training them and appealed for more similar workshops to help make Teachers holistic-21st Century educators.

“This workshop is an eye-opener it has exposed us to so many resources we can use as Teachers to make our work in the classroom faster and easier” Ernestina A Samari, a teacher at the Kanvili R/C JHS in Tamale and a participant stated.

“This Workshop has opened my eyes beyond what I knew already as a Teacher” Yussif Nurideen Musah, a participant and a teacher from Zogbeli M/A JHS ‘C’, told the media.