Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for Professional Teacher and Teacher Educator Development: A Case of TESSA MOOC in Kenya

Patriciah W Wambugu

doi:10.13189/ujer.2018.060604

Abstract

This study intends to present a bespoke teacher professional development MOOC designed by Teacher Education for Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) team that allows MOOCs to become a viable means offering cost-effective, quality professional teacher development. TESSA is a network of teachers and teacher educators, working to improve classroom teaching in Africa. TESSA MOOC is an innovative approach to capacity building for teacher educators and teachers across Africa. The study presents outputs of an evaluation of TESSA MOOC course undertaken by Kenyan teachers and teacher educators. The experiences of the participants were that the TESSA MOOC was a new but interesting, appealing and flexible course. In addition, the participants were able to learn from one another and what they learnt may impact on their pedagogical skills. Key challenges identified include difficulties in downloading of materials due to lack of internet connectivity and use of ICT phobia for learning. MOOCs represent an untapped potential for teacher professional development that can be a cost and resource effective means to deliver quality education to teachers and teacher educators. Therefore, the teachers and teacher educators may need to exploit this learner based TESSA MOOC to build capacity for teaching.

Highlights

Teacher professional development is the process of constantly strengthening professional attainment, broadening academic knowledge, enhancing the professional skills, and improving teaching ability
This can be associated with the fact that the facilitator met the teams and after sensitization they agreed to form a Teacher Education for Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) MOOC WhatsApp group
The MOOC significantly improved the ability of the participants in the teacher education in their institutions and changed their perspective to plan and enact activities that promote teacher professional learning and pedagogy, the teacher educators

Summary

Introduction

Teacher professional development is the process of constantly strengthening professional attainment, broadening academic knowledge, enhancing the professional skills, and improving teaching ability. The traditional professional development courses where teachers go out of school to attend formal lectures, capacity building workshops and in-service courses are not addressing this need. This is due to the costs associated with professional teacher development, such as time, training and coaching, materials, equipment, and facilities, travel and university tuition and conference fees among others. There is need to have a more cost-effective way of training teachers and teacher educators for continued professional development

Methods

Results

Conclusion