Getting started

Welcome

Welcome to the Enhancing teacher education through OER MOOC!

This is a six-week, task-oriented MOOC that focuses on how to select, evaluate and use Open Educational Resources (OER) to help support quality in teacher education. Teacher development is a highly complex process and there are many different ideas about the best way to prepare and support quality teachers.

This MOOC was designed for teacher educators and was successfully run as an online course on another platform. It is now on OpenLearn Works so that you can work through the material at your own pace. You may be working in a university, teachers’ college, local resource centre or other teacher-education setting, or as a Headteacher or other senior member of staff supporting the teachers in your school. Whatever your circumstance, we hope that you will all find ideas and OER that you can use with teachers to improve classroom teaching and learning processes.

This MOOC is part of TESS-India. (You should open this link in a separate window.) It has an emphasis on the Indian context, including the TESS-India OER, but we welcome participants from other parts of the world.

Through engaging in the MOOC you will have opportunities to learn to:

• recognise and model active, learner-centred teaching approaches
• become familiar with the TESS-India OER and their potential to support teaching and teacher education
• use OER (including TESS-India OER) to plan and enact activities that promote teacher professional learning and pedagogic change 
• select and use OER to meet your own professional learning needs. 

To begin your study on the MOOC please spend a few minutes exploring the other sections in ‘Getting started’.

We are asking all participants to complete the pre-course survey to help us understand who is taking part in the MOOC, your motivations and your expectations of the MOOC. Thank you for completing this. We hope you enjoy the MOOC activities and find the ideas and OER useful in improving teaching and learning in the classroom.

Freda Wolfenden

Academic Director

1 How this course works

This is a six-week MOOC and we suggest you spend around four to six hours on the MOOC each week. Each week there are activities, readings, quizzes and reflection points, as well as prompts to engage in discussions with peers or colleagues. These discussions are an important part of the MOOC and we encourage you to share experiences and ideas with others whenever possible. You may find it useful to encourage colleagues or peers to study the MOOC alongside you.

For details about what is happening week by week, please download and print the ‘MOOC overview and study planner’. You can tick off each activity as you complete it.

You are asked to keep a study notebook (learning journal) for this MOOC. This will be personal to you, although you can share with colleagues if you wish. It can be in printed form or on a mobile device.

At various points in the course you will be prompted by the study notebook icon () to record your thoughts in your notebook. For more information on the study notebook, read the document ‘Your study notebook’.

If you want to return to the course homepage at any point during your study, you can do this by simply clicking on the course title in the banner at the top of the web page.

We’re always delighted to hear from our learners. We are particularly keen to hear about how this MOOC has changed your practice, or that of those you work with, support or teach. If you have any feedback or suggestions you would like to share, please email TESS-India@open.ac.uk.

2 Portfolio of participation

Assessment on this MOOC is through a ‘portfolio of participation’ – this comprises a number of activities spread out over six weeks:

• pre-course survey
• six assignment activities:
  • Week 1: Activity 1.7: Assignment 1 – Reviewing your learning
  • Week 2: Activity 2.6: Assignment 2 – Active learning quiz
  • Week 3: Activity 3.3: Assignment 3 – Presenting your ideas and giving feedback
  • Week 4: Activity 4.3: Assignment 4 – Using TESS-India OER with teachers
  • Week 5: Activity 5.4: Assignment 5 – Select OER and plan for use
  • Week 6: Activity 6.4: Assignment 6 – Course quiz

All of the activities in the portfolio of participation will be ticked off automatically on the course homepage as you do them. You must ensure that all of the items are ticked in order to access your statement of participation for the course. Alternatively, if you would prefer to track your own progress, a copy is available for you to print out.

As a first step we suggest you now complete the pre-course survey.

3 Meet the authors

1. Freda Wolfenden is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Development at The Open University, UK, and is the Academic Director of TESS-India. 
2. Kris Stutchbury is a Senior Lecturer in Education at The Open University, UK and is subject lead for Science for TESS-India and is contributing to the leadership strand of the project.
3. Sandra Amos is a Lecturer in Education at The Open University, UK and is contributing to the Science strand of the TESS-India project.
4. Fiona Henry is a Lecturer in Education at The Open University, UK focusing on the role technology can play in enhancing education outcomes.
5. Sandhya Paranjpe is an Academic Consultant for the TESS-India project and is working on various strands of the TESS-India project in India.

Now go to Week 1: Visions for teaching and learning.

Acknowledgements

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence.

Specific content from the TESS-India OER, including images from the TESS-India video resources, are made available under this licence unless otherwise stated.

The TESS-India project is led by The Open University, UK and is funded by UK AID from the UK government.