UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

12/11/2023 | News release | Distributed by Public on 12/11/2023 12:26

UNESCO’s Global Teachers Campus to increase access to learning opportunities for teachers

Self-paced learning courses from the platform, launched by the Global Education Coalition in 2022 to provide access to educational resources for teachers and learners in five countries in Anglophone West Africa, will soon be available globally through the GTC digital platform.

The development of the platform, which has already reached thousands of teaching professionals in West Africa, aligns with the global demand for enhancing teaching skills through digital methods. There is an urgent need for 44 million primary and secondary teachers worldwide by 2023, and many of those who are at work, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, lack the basic qualifications and training to keep pace with changes in education.

Borhene Chakroun, Director of Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems Division at UNESCO Headquarters, said "Building on the success of the Imaginelearning.africa platform in the five countries in West Africa, we are excited to see its evolution and that more teachers and learners will benefit from its quality resources and self-paced trainings."

The GTC digital platform

The Global Teacher Campus (GTC) - one of the Coalition's three flagship missions - offers no-cost further learning opportunities for teacher professional development. Its digital platform includes globally sourced courses and those owned and managed by the GEC, all facilitated through the GTC learning management system and course creator studio.

The complete source code for what was the Imaginelearning.africa platform, along with the custom content validation workflow, community engagement guidelines, and comprehensive GTC platform administration documentation, will be made available for Member States. These materials will provide guidance on contextual implementation steps, feasibility, and potential enhancements to ensure the platform's long-term sustainability to the ministries responsible for course creation and validation on their national platform.

"What makes the initiative unique is that participating countries will have ownership over the content, as well as the national data governance and co-design, meaning that each country involved in the project can control and adapt the educational material to fit their own cultural and educational needs," said Mr Chakroun. "There will continue to be a strong focus on seamless integration, open-source support, and the incorporation of distance learning materials in accordance with best pedagogical practices."

Demonstrations on the screen user interface systems were conducted earlier this year with national bodies to ensure adoption and co-ownership processes. This process involved updating the platform to the latest open-source code of Open EdX, customizing it to enhance user management and user experience, content creation, content validation, and stakeholder analytics.

Building on the success of Imaginelearning.africa

Since its launch in 2022, the Imaginelearning.africa platform has provided self-paced trainings across The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. There have been over 21,000 registered teachers as learners with over 9,800 certificates issued upon completion on the ImagineLearning.Africa (ILA) Platform. Teachers could access educational content on a variety of topics -including chemistry, mathematics, physics, history, and English - and available in five languages: French, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. As part of the updated GTC digital platform, these trainings and resources are now expected to reach an additional 100,000 teachers or trainers.

The Global Teacher Campus was established in 2020 to support teachers in the development of digital skills and pedagogical competencies for online, remote and hybrid education, and to address learning losses. It mobilizes its members to provide teachers, teacher educators, and teacher training institutions a curated online catalogue of self-paced and facilitated courses.