Enhancing Teacher Capacity for Implementation of Blended Learning in Teacher Education – A Case of Odisha, India

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused for closing of all institutions imparting face-to-face teaching globally. In India, the University Grants Commission (UGC) instructed all its institutions running regular courses to opt blended mode of teaching. In this connection, implementation of Blended teaching and assessment was a new challenge for the teacher education institutions. The teacher education institutions offering Elementary and Secondary teacher education courses started working as guided by the UGC. CEMCA, New Delhi and Ravenshaw University, Cuttack collaboratively empowered teacher educators from Odisha to implement Blended Learning in their pre-service teacher education classrooms. The objectives of this paper was to identify blended learning skill sets needed by teacher educators in Odisha and to design, organise and evaluate blended learning training programs for teacher educators of Odisha. Through a baseline study, the training needs of the teacher educators, their perception towards different components of blended learning and the skill level of ICT integrated online teaching was identified. Based on the baseline study, a series of capacity building programs were designed and conducted through online at three phases during September to October 2021. These programs dealt with areas of Integration of ICT Tools in Teaching Learning; OER, Techno-pedagogy and Online Assessment; and Design and Development of Lessons for Blended Learning. 105 teacher educators participated in the workshop. Participants of the capacity building program found the program useful to enhance their technological – pedagogical and content skills – with the workshops / demonstrations and hands-on experience. The teacher educators further reported that the skill set learned during the training was useful to design courses that implemented blended learning. A major theme that emerged from this study was the need for institutional policy on blended learning so as to empower teacher educators to implement blended learning.