Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has plunged the world into an unprecedented health, economic and societal crisis.This pandemic poses a major threat (dropout, failure, poor learning outcomes, quality) to the stability and efficiency of education systems. It has, among other things, highlighted the weaknesses of different aspects of education systems, particularly those relating to pedagogy and school administration. Most of the education systems have not succeeded in the wager of distance learning continuity. It appears from the above that distance education, including e-Learning, presents major opportunities for the various actors in education systems, and especially for teachers, who play a fundamental role.
Launch of the course
Aware of this situation, UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) has partnered with UNESCO IITE and UNESCO INRULED to develop a course for African education stakeholders, mainly teachers, to train them in the effective and contextualized use of distance teaching/learning and assessment techniques and approaches. The first Online and Distance Learning for Teachers in Africa (ODLTA) course also provides teachers with three learning modules:
Module 1: What is distance learning and how to implement it in African countries?
Module 2: Effective promotion of distance learning by means of ICTs
Module 3: Tools for distance learning
The course consists of 14 units and the learning guide and tools that encompass issues from readiness for distance learning to real tools how to organize and conduct it online. It is worth to mention that there are 4 modes available to join the course: online course mode, voice mode (audio only), e-book mode (PDF) and courseware mode (PPT). At the end of the course the participants can get an ODLTA certificate signed by UNESCO IICBA, UNESCO IITE and UNESCO INRULED.
The recording of the launch of the course