What Makes Education Partnerships Effective?
This manual helps practitioners evaluate education partnerships.
World Links Arab Region Program in Yemen
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 in Yemen
- Al –Awn foundation for development
- dot.EDU Consortium
- Al Nama’ Foundation/ SEDCO
- World Links Arab Region
Partnership Background and Justification
In 2004 a partnership involving World Links Arab Region (WLAR), Al –Awn foundation for development and the Ministry of Education (MOE) launched a 3 Pilot professional-development project designed to engage teachers in schools and enhance their use of computers and internet to support collaborative learning and active learning pedagogies during the period (2004-2011)
The program aimed to actively foster new teaching skills and learning strategies. Students’ collaborative learning and project based activities are being implemented as well as a variety of learning strategies and aim at enhancing higher-order thinking skills, creative and critical thinking. Teachers are empowered to develop their knowledge and skills actively and experientially.
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 Yemen 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 1,969 teachers, 89 educational supervisors and school-principals, in 52 schools, thus reaching about 76,000 students.
The program has had a profound impact in Yemeni 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) Yemen Project was very effectively implemented and has made a strong contribution to the transformation of teaching and learning in Yemeni 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 Yemen. And that will positively affected the use of internet at schools.
Lessons Learnt and Recommendations
The recommendations that follow begin with targeted approaches to improving students’ skills, progressing to more holistic approaches to the IT curriculum.
- Roughly 40 percent of WLAR teachers engaged their classes in collaborative learning with moderate frequency.
- World links classes focused most frequently on collaboration within a class or school, instead of Tele-collaboration with other schools in Yemen or in other countries.
- Teachers (mistakenly) state that they fully understand collaborative and student –centered learning, while citing poor internet connectivity or technology skills as barriers to collaborative and student-centered learning.
- Enthusiasm for collaborative learning is high among both teachers and students.
- Half of WLAR teachers engaged their classes on one or more kinds of students –centered learning.
- Student use of computers and the internet in WLAR schools is moderate, with higher emphasis placed on student –centered activities, however intensive use is rare.
Students improved skills in areas that include to using technology (96 percent) , understanding schools subjects (96 percent), searching for an organizing information (85 percent )learning collaboratively (84percent) and using knowledge to solve problems (76percent)
Tools and Methodology
- For the World Links Project, initially a local coordinator is selected who is responsible for coordinating the project with the project manager at the World Links headquarters. Schools, teachers, master trainers and core trainers were selected in for the implementation of the TPD program.
- A Regional trainer from the World Links Arab Region headquarters trained 5 Yemeni Core trainers, who subsequently trained 120 Master trainers. These Masters trainers went on to training approximately 1,400 teachers on 4 training modules.
- The 4 Modules of the TPD program include: educational and training materials, including print, CD-ROMs, web sites and multimedia distance learning methodologies; face-to-face training of trainers’ workshops; on-going local technical and pedagogical support; and on-line support.
- Specifically, the WLAR Yemen TPD program consists of over 160 hours of training in four Modules designed to enable teachers to develop technology skills in combination with new approaches to teaching and learning. The four Modules are as follows:
- 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
Adaptability and applicability are two important factors taken into consideration when designing the program. To implement WLAR program in Yemen, adequate infrastructure was needed (both computer labs & connectivity), in Hadhramout, WLAR in cooperation with Al Nama’ Foundation/ SEDCO launched a twofold program involving both infrastructure and teacher professional development. Objectives included securing computer labs in 20 schools, ICT training and the four phases of WLAR training program. Moreover, 432 refurbished computers were provided to the Ministry of Education for schools throughout Yemen.
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