A Professional Learning Community Approach for Teacher Development and OER creation - A toolkit/Institutionalizing the program

The practice of a teacher cannot be developed through quick-fix strategies and activities, without the development of an accompanying framework / theory on the process of learning and the aims of education.

- National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education, 2010 (NCFTE)

Integrating ICT into mainstream processes of the school

ICT program implementation in schools in India has usually through the BOOT (Build, Own, Operate and Transfer) model, where the implementation is outsourced to a business entity. In this situation the vendor provides basic ICT literacy to students, bypassing the regular teachers. Since the teachers are not a part of the ICT program, they have seldom evinced interest in learning ICTs for their professional development. This has meant that the digital capacities of teachers is usually poor.

Secondly, the regular subject teaching does not require the use of digital processes at all in most states, hence teachers do not need to become digitally literate. As a consequence, access to and creation of digital resources by teachers is rare in most states. The vendor does not have any incentive to renew the ICT infrastructure and at the end of the BOOT period, the assets transferred to the school are at the end of their lives. This makes the program non-sustaining.

However,there is an increasing move from the outsourced design of ICT programs in schools,to a greater role for regular subject teachers in delivering their subjects through the use of digital technologies. In this new approach, where the program is being implemented with the help of teachers, there is a need for teachers to become digitally literate. Education departments are also looking at how to develop locally relevant content, using the internal capabilities of the system, viz. their own school teachers, as suggested by the National ICT Policy on Education.

Adopting an in-house model, in which the ICT lab is part of school assets, owned by the school (similar to a Science or a Language Lab), can be the first step to integrating ICT into the schools own processes and institutionalizing it in school education. Once the school teachers 'own' the lab in the school, they can be expected to put in the efforts and invest the resources to keep the lab functional.

PLC as a continuing model of TPD

The PLC-OER approach for teacher education provides a model for a sustained 'content agnostic' program, meaning the program can focus on subject matter or pedagogy or philosophy of education or ICT or a combination of these, in any year. The program content would be available on the OER portal and be the subject of on-going discussions on the virtual forums. Hence it is possible to 'continue' as well as 'cumulate' such learning. Gradually the PLC approach would not be adopted for a specific teacher education program, but its principles (forming teacher learning communities, who have been part of the specific learning program/processes) could apply to all of the in-service teacher education program of the state. Since the STF is a generic program, focusing on learning ICTs for TPD, it can incorporate any formal content. For instance, a topic like CCE or Adolescent education or gender could be chosen and the methodology of accessing the web for available resources, creating text-audio-video-semantic map resources in a collaborative manner by participating teachers can help in building understanding of the topic, and support teachers peer learning, during the workshop and also subsequently in the mailing-list conversations. As more teachers become members of the mailing-lists, the program team organising the training, can share indicate program notes, containing aims, scope, contents and methodology of the program on the mailing-lists and invite comments from teachers, and use these to further refine the program design. For instance, in the Karnataka STF program, the teachers came for a second round of training after a couple of years. In the second round, formal OER creation using these tools was focused on.

By making the access to an ICT lab a necessary part of the teacher education program, it also has the incidental benefit of restricting the number of participants in any program to a reasonable number, allowing for greater participation of the teachers.

PLC - Participatory TPD model

Continuing / persistent communities of learning can support sustained TPD. Interactions / conversations can be based on the interests and needs of different members. Teachers can seek help for their TPD needs from their colleagues on the forums. Teachers can also share their experiences, ideas and resources on the forums for others to feedback or to use. Thus PLCs provide spaces where teachers can feel comfortable to participate freely.

These spaces should be retained as autonomous spaces (not under the control of the education department) to allow for such free participation and mutual learning.

OER - Participatory model of curricular resources development

The activity of OER creation, revision and sharing provides a powerful rationale for the PLCs. It is seen that teachers are eager to use the different digital methods that they have learnt, to create and revise OER and share in the forums. It is also seen that other teachers respond with their comments and approval to the resources shared.

In this model, any teacher who is a member of the PLC can create and share OER, there is no other prior condition for this. This open forum can encourage many teachers to contribute. Teachers also feel a sense of satisfaction in sharing OER that they have created and may used in their own practice and for their TPD.

Role of FOSS in program institutionalization and sustainability

FOSS has a critical role to play in program sustainability. Since FOSS can be freely shared by teachers, there are no constraints to its use. Upgrades can also be freely downloaded to avoid obsolescence (not possible with proprietary software).

In the Karnataka and Telangana STF programs, teachers were provided with a single DVD containing the Ubuntu GNU/Linux operating system with all the educational applications and generic resource editors 'bundled'. This made the required software resources easily accessible. Teachers also learnt to install the operating system on computers, which many subsequently put to use, on their school and home computers.

This creates a 'free and open' approach to software which encourages teachers to explore, experiment and learn software tools.

ICT lab maintenance and renewal as a continuous activity

This has been discussed in the chapter on 'ICT infrastructure'. Once schools and teachers own the ICT Labs, they can be expected to invest energies and resources for its upkeep and renewal. The education department needs to provide an annual ICT Lab maintenance budget for the purchase of spares and consumables.

Main streaming ICT integration - Development of student text books and teacher hand books

The PLC-OER model can support improvements in the current models of development of text books. Traditionally, text book preparation is a time consuming process and the and the final production of the books tends to be time and resource intensive. Consequently, text books are revised at infrequent intervals. Also the processes are usually managed by a small group of expert teachers and teacher educators.

The PLC-OER model can support the greater participation of the teachers in the text book design and development processes. Some of the advantages include:

1. Text books can have digital representation, in which image, audio, video resources can be embedded into the text resources to create richer learning materials, thus moving text books to multi-media books
2. The processes of refining the material can be continuous by allowing the editing of on-line 'beta' version of the books.
3. Translating the book into other languages can be more easily done on-line (this can enable the quicker creation of materials in the languages in which subjects are transacted in the state)
4. By allowing access to PLC teachers to refine/edit/improve (or make suggestions towards this process), the PLC-OER model can make the text book preparation much more participatory. Participation across space and time enabled by digital networks/forums can enable more teachers to contribute at their convenience and from their base locations. By licensing these materials as OER, the process can move from being point in time, centralized to being continuous, participatory.
5. Using a collaborative material development platform like MediaWiki can enable wider participation, continuous development and refinement/revision of materials. This can lead to a much greater availability of quality resources for diverse contexts, in local languages

Continuous learning through blended courses (e-learning)

VTC Course for student teachers - Technology Integrated Learning, offered in blended mode

Once the teachers have been enrolled into the PLC program and made comfortable using ICT, they can become candidates to offer blended learning or e-learning programs to. (Many institutions are offering MOOC, without preparing the entire teacher population to become digitally literate, such efforts are likely to be premature and hence fail. Once teachers become digitally literate, courses can be designed and offered to them by SCERT.

Blended courses could be a part of the in pre-service teacher education programs as well. This will enable teachers to begin their careers with capacities in ICT integration, to support their own continuous professional development, in their subject-teaching and in the creation of OER. One of the consequences of the Karnataka STF program was the development of courses by IT for Change team, in collaboration with Vijaya Teachers College, for the student teachers and teacher educators of their Bachelors of Education program. The course is offered using Moodle, a popular Learning Management System (LMS).

PLC for teacher educators / faculty of teacher education institutions

A PLC program for teacher educators succeeds than precedes program for teachers, since teacher educators are expected to design and conduct the program for teachers. However, in the case of ICT integration capacity building, it is preferable to design the program for teacher educators in the teacher education institutions, along with, or after the program for teachers.

In Karnataka, IT for Change implemented a program for the DIET faculty over a 3 year period, to build PLCs, with the help of CEMCA.

Challenges to institutionalization

1. Sustaining the program despite any changes to the senior officers in the department / government, given that the PLC-OER program has to be rolled out in a phased manner over several years.
2. Maintenance and renewal of ICT infrastructure, including having TSG in-house
3. Collaborative OER creation is an academic challenge
4. Designing and implementing robust quality assurance processes to review and revise the contributions of teachers towards material development can be difficult due to lack of familiarity with the medium and processes.