What Makes Education Partnerships Effective?
This manual helps practitioners evaluate education partnerships.
New Teaching Skills and Learning Strategies
Programme and Partnership Objective
The recommendations that follow begin with targeted approaches to improving students’ skills, progressing to more holistic approaches to the IT curriculum.
- Increase support of summer IT “intensives” for students
- Revise the hands-on portion of the IT curriculum to include more useful skills
- Provide additional re-service professional development to IT teachers
Revise the IT curriculum and the role of IT teachers
Partners
- Ministry of Education of the Government of Syria
- Syria Trust for Development[1]
- Fund for Integrated Rural Development of Syria (FIRDOS)
World Links Arab Region
[1] The Syria Trust for Development is a non-governmental, non-profit organization, established in Syria in 2007. The governance of the Syria Trust for Development is through a Board of Trustees chaired by Syria’s First Lady Her Excellency Mrs. Asma Al Assad.
Partnership Background and Justification
With less than 20% of the 20 million populations in Syria being illiterate, it comes as no surprise that ICT illiteracy and lack of e-readiness rates are even higher. Although Syria annually spends 3.9% of its GPD on developing and improving education, it still stands that only 39% of the population continue their secondary education. The education system in Syria is divided into 3 sections: primary first, primary second, and secondary. The total number of students in all three sectors is approximately 3 million. The educational system in Syria is regarded as one of the strongest systems in the Arab region, which brings light to the importance of supporting the education initiative with a qualified education labor force. WLAR has recognized the importance and need to bridge the digital divide between the academia and work market requirements as well as the power of knowledge economies in fighting unemployment and poverty. Supporting ICT literacy and e-learning is believed to narrow gaps between educational and vocational outcomes, as well as the working market, which is important for a region with such a high illiteracy and unemployment rate. If Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) is instilled as a part of education in line with the existing local Arab Systems along with supporting fundamental skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and employing research, the Arab regimes will be indirectly enhancing the e-readiness of future generations, which will lead to knowledge economies and help sustain life-long learning. |
Implementation Steps
In line with policy advice, training, mentoring, coordination and several forms of educational support, the WLAR Syria Teacher’s Professional Development (TPD) program goes through different work plans scenarios and working steps, composed of the following:
- Memorandum of Understanding (MoU): WLAR sings an MoU with its implementing and funding partners, to launch and implement the program in a country
- Needs Assessment: All parties cooperate to assess basic needs in relevance to project implementation and meeting aspired and mutual goals.
- Project Concept Document: to finalize a document that outlines the program details and implementation methodologies, after which, a detailed budget and work plan are produced.
- Budget and Work Plan: a detailed budget shows and links the time frame with resources and all sequential program activities, based on which, a work plans produced to carry on the entire 2 years implementation of the project.
- Program Application: The program application differentiates between the logistics operations on one hand and the content, training, mentoring and quality control on the other. Logistics are responsible to avail ICT training centres and equipment availed by the implementing partners, such as Ministries of Education. In some cases, donors provide or equip few labs. They are also responsible for attendance, reports, feedback, etc.... while the content team are responsible for quality of training, content details and mentoring.
- Program Guide and Training Manual: containing detailed steps of program application and all relevant reference documents, such as terms of reference and scopes of work.
- Policy Advice: often countries seek policy or strategy advice before, during or after the project has been concluded. WLAR provides policy advice.
- Content: Customization and localization give consideration to local languages and cultures
- Training: capacity is build in countries by training in-country Core Trainers, by World Links Regional Trainers, who train Master Trainers. The Master Trainers train the teachers.
- Mentoring: a special scheme is set for ongoing support and mentoring during training and classroom application.
- Assessment Survey and Evaluation: Use qualitative and quantitative metrics to measure project impact. We are designing a new survey to measure educational training outcome relative to market needs.
- Testing & Teachers’ Portfolios: all teachers have to submit their 2 years achievements portfolios done by them and their students, and to pass the final test, after completing the four modules.
- Activities & Certification: Projects Awards Competitions nominations and awards. Certification and final ceremony.
- Documentation: of all project outputs. In some countries, a documentary video is recorded.
- Networking and outreach, via an elaborate e-portal and outreach strategy.
Programme Outcomes
The program has trained 1,366 teachers, 559 educational supervisors and school-principals, in 292 schools, thus reaching about 320,776 students.
The program has had a profound impact in Syrian schools. Key areas of impact in relation to students’ learning-related attitudes, behaviours and competencies likely include: increased enthusiasm for school, increased ability to learn collaboratively and independently, increased ability to organize and apply knowledge gained in school to real-world and academic problems, improved conceptual understanding of information and skills related to school subjects.
The World Links Arab Region (WLAR) Syria Project was very effectively implemented and has made a strong contribution to the transformation of teaching and learning in Syrian Schools. In general:
- Training: The training was effective. Students cooperated with each other and with teachers throughout the program.
- Content: The material used through the training helped in building new methodologies that became a teaching tactic and the Internet activities helped the teachers effectively.
- Skills: Enhanced educational behaviour. Effective Communication.
Educational System: TPD program supported the schools. Wider use of information technologies. The assessment insured the role of teacher professional development program in creating a healthy and active educational environment in Syria. And that will positively affected the use of internet at schools.
Lessons Learnt and Recommendations
The World Links Arab Region (WLAR) Syria Project was very effectively implemented and has made a strong contribution to the transformation of teaching and learning in Syrian Schools. The program has created a dynamic healthy situation in Syrian education. Moreover, it will have a high potential to increase schools’ use of the Internet.
Tools and Methodology
The recommendations that follow begin with targeted approaches to improving students’ skills, progressing to more holistic approaches to the IT curriculum.
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- Module 1: Introduction to the Internet for Teaching & Learning Introduce fundamental concepts, technologies, and skills necessary for introducing networked technology and the Internet to teaching and learning; initiate discussion of new possibilities, generate basic email projects. - Module 2: Tele-collaborative Learning Project Introduction to educational tele-collaboration: from activity structures to the creation, design, implementation and dissemination of original projects. - Module 3: Curriculum & Technology Integration Develop skills and understanding of how to create, incorporate and facilitate innovative classroom practices that integrate networked technology and curricula. - Module 4: Innovations: Pedagogy, Technology & Professional Development Develop skills and understanding of how to evaluate and diffuse innovative classroom practices that integrate networked technology and curricula while addressing social and ethical concerns. |
Replicability and Sustainability
WLAR in partnerships with UNDP Syria has concluded a report on “Strategic Plan for ICT Community Outreach in Syria”. This joint effort with the MOE and the Ministry of ICT has set the framework for the establishment of School-Based Tele-centers. This approach typically involves setting up a computer lab in a school that is accessible by the local population; the tele-center can benefit the school by having Internet connectivity without the burden of paying the full cost and can also be used to attract students and teachers by providing cutting-edge technology as part of its teaching.
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