A Professional Learning Community Approach for Teacher Development and OER creation - A toolkit/Conclusions

“The PLC has grown over the project period; a steadily growing exchange of information and resources; and increasing attention to contribution of resources. There is evidence of these resources being used in classrooms. Participating teachers spend their own time, effort and money, clearly making its sustainability a function of its quality rather than cost. The quality of the resources are also a function of relevance as perceived by the teachers themselves…Overall, the program presents an interesting model of ICT mediated collaboration and OER exchange, suitable for most contexts, particularly in the developing world.”

- Case study of the STF-KOER program conducted by Prof. Rajaram Sharma, Joint Director, Central Institute of Education Technology, NCERT.

Implementing the PLC-OER model in government school systems would improve the teacher development and curricular resource development processes and thereby support the national goal of an equitable education system.

Reforming perspectives on curriculum design and material development

Similar to the NCFTE 2010 perspectives on TPD, of moving from being point in time, centralized to being continuous, participatory, the collaborative OER model can help the curriculum, syllabi design and material development processes to also move from from being point in time, centralized to being continuous and participatory. 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