The OU: working with partners overseas

Where: Library Seminar Rooms 1-2, Open University Library, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes

When: 10.00 - 12.45,  7 February 2012

This event brought together people working on some of the exciting projects involving partnerships across the world. Some like HEAT and TESSA are well established and others, like India One Million, are in their infancy.

This event was recorded and is available to OU staff on Stadium: please note, due to a technical glitch, the HEAT presentation was not recorded.  

• HEAT (Health Education and Training) programme - Basiro Davey and Ali Wyllie (Health and Social Care)

HEAT is a comprehensive education and training programme aimed at upgrading the skills of potentially 33,000 community health workers in local communities in rural Ethiopia.nbsp; It is a blend of theoretical and practical training, developed in collaboration with Ethiopian health experts, delivered through the Ethiopian Ministry of Health’s Upgrading Programme and funded by our programme partners. The theoretical training materials are available both in print and online as Open Educational Resources, making HEAT accessible for use anywhere in the world.

• TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa) - Jane Cullen (Faculty of Education and Language Studies)

The TESSA programme covers a portfolio of projects with a community of HEIs and other teacher-educator partners in Africa. The TESSA community initially came together to develop a ‘toolkit’ of open educational resources (OERs) to help improve the quality of primary school teaching and classroom practices among  teachers engaged in initial or in-service teacher training. Since the original OER toolkit was created, it has been versioned in different languages and for local national contexts, and is currently being used across HEIs and organisations in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zambia. Current work in TESSA focuses on extending the creation of OERs to include resources for lower secondary school teachers and for primary school teaching assistants. Future plans include extending TESSA to include early years education.

My talk will focus on the TESSA OER toolkit, how the OERs are being used differently with different TESSA partners in Africa and some of the advantages, ambitions and challenges for elearning in Africa. If participants could bring laptops to make the session really hands-on, that would be really helpful.

• English in Action - Tom Power (FELS)
• India One Million - Steve Hutchinson (FELS)

Existing teacher training institutions in India are unable to meet the demand of a rapidly expanding education system. The Open University in the UK will work in partnership with those who offer teacher education in India to improve the quality, and increase the quantity, of trained teachers in order to improve the life chances of millions of children. We will do this by developing high quality, freely available, multi-media, school-based, Open Educational Resources for teacher educators, significantly enhancing their capacity to train more teachers.

Our work will focus on ten States in India and will include those States where literacy levels are at their lowest, where there is the greatest need for teachers, and where poverty is at its highest. The network will operate at scale, providing cost effective support for those whose work focuses on the critical point of school improvement – the classroom practice of teachers.

• CPD options in technology policy and innovation research for East Africa - Becky Hanlin (Mathematics, Computing and Technology)

This presentation will introduce a project that ran from 2009 to 2011 which developed a set of OERs around technology policy and innovation research for access to audiences around the world, with a specific focus on working with partner organisations in Kenya. The project was developed collaboratively with the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) in Nairobi, Kenya along with other stakeholders from the region.  The OERs were made available from September 2011 and have since been used in one face to face workshop ran by ACTS in November 2011.  This presentation will outline the issues faced with moving this project forward to ensure continued use of the OERs now that the project has officially finished building on continuing links with the main African partner organisation.

• Teaching Partnerships Models with BDU International  - Neil Herrington (Business Development Unit)

The Partnerships Team within the BDU seeks to form partnerships with diverse institutions in the UK and internationally using a variety of models to assist them in offering educational programmes based on The Open University's module materials and methodology. We aim to develop partnerships that are of benefit to both the partner institution and The Open University.  We have supported the development of distance learning institutions around the world and also provided solutions for established universities and corporate education providers. A team of partnership managers provides on-going support and guidance, currently managing partnerships for more than 45,000 students studying with 15 partners in more than 25 countries.

Queries: Please email Graham Healing.