OEC Board Announces Executive Director Position

European Humanitarian Roundtable 2016

So I have moved roles slightly and am now beginning to work more specifically within the Humanitarian sector, although I still continue to work for the Open University in development I am focussing the majority of my time with the HumanitarianLeadership Academy  which has brought about this post around the build up to the first ever World Humanitarian Summit (WHS)

Day 2 at the Royal Irish Academy - Image from @eu_echo

As the summit draws closer (May 2016), a series of roundtable debates (4 in total across Europe) organised by the European Commission and the Network on Humanitarian Action  (NOHA) are taking place in order to inform the European Union’s Policy position towards the WHS. I took part in the final event in Dublin this past week, running across 2 days (30^th – 31^st March) the event saw participants from Government, NGO’s, Academia, Funders and Responders engaging in debates which proved to be both interesting (as I continue to develop my knowledge and understanding) and highly productive.  Day 1 was a closed event developing the recommendations across 4 themes:

• Access and Subsidiarity
• Gender based violence and Resilience
• Protection in Urban settings
• Current challenges: forced and protracted displacement

I worked specifically with the group looking at recommendations relating to ‘Access and Subsidiarity ‘with much discussion around the meaning of subsidiarity as it relates to humanitarianism and access, outlined in the recommendations as:

‘Crisis-affected populations must be seen as actors in humanitarian assistance rather than as beneficiaries of aid. There is a need for inclusivity of all sections of crisis-affected population. In this respect, subsidiarity needs to be considered to include empowerment, solidarity and accountability.’


Day 2 was an open event that saw the developed recommendations presented and debated to further refine the final submission. The recommendations from this 4^th event will be published on the NOHAsite soon but you will be able to find the recommendations from events 1-3 already available.

Trying to pick highlights from any event like this, especially within a sector that has many complex interdependencies, is always difficult but there were two themes that did seem to be slightly louder than most and that was around the need to ensure gender is represented across all of the recommendations as part of an inclusive approach; and that with the changing face of crisis in terms of the increasing protracted nature means that a closer alignment of both humanitarian and development work is needed in order to achieve lasting success. This was echoed at the Bond conference earlier in the year.

NOHA live streamed day 2 of the debate which you can view on the their YouTube channel  
To see what others were saying about the debate via twitter see the Storify below:

Mobile Learning Week 2016 #MLW2016 (Day 3)

Mobile Learning Week #MLW2016 (Day 2)

Day 2 - BOND Conference 2016

Let's go MOOC again

The second iteration of the TESS-India MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), ‘Enhancing Teacher Education through OER’, opened yesterday (23rd November 2015). Again we have again seen a significant number of registrations from all over the globe, with almost 50% of participants coming from India as is the focus of the project. This global perspective of the educational landscape has proved a positive experience for learners, which we hope to see repeated.

“I would like to state the fact that despite being so far away from one country to another, India’s teaching –learning experience is so similar to Honduras’ experience or probably so universal that I love revisiting and learning about your experience”

MOOC participant, Honduras (from the first version of the MOOC)

The MOOC is being run in an ‘open boundary’ style format, meaning that, in addition to the online interactions in which the majority of participants engage, there are regular face-to-face sessions  for a selected group of participants nominated in each of the 7 states the project is focusing on.

So what is different this time?

In terms of the content of the MOOC there have been some minor changes to the assessment and the language of instruction has been slightly tweaked based on feedback from the first iteration. It is of course too early to really comment on the differences of the learner experience but you might like to have a look at some of the statistical information in the form of an infographic from the first iteration of the MOOC.

MOOC infographic

I will posting an update on our progress soon and if you are interested in participating in the MOOC it is not too late to register https://www.edx.org/course/enhancing-teacher-education-through-oer-oecx-tess101x-0 

Digital Teachers – Opportunities for Development

This week the Open University and the British Council jointly run an event in Delhi looking at the role of technology in teachers professional development, highlighting the work of the British Council, The Open University and the TESS-India project. Rob Lynes (Director of the British Council India) opened the event to a packed auditorium, followed by a background on the Open University and its part in educational technology from Edith Prak (Director of Development, The Open University).

Rob Lynes opening Digital Teachers event in Delhi 

Tom Power (Senior Lecturer at the Open University and Director of English in Action programme) provided a thought provoking presentation on the 'opportunities, challenges and evidence for improving the quality of teaching and learning through educational technology, in International Development contexts'. Highlighting a number of interesting projects that had made significant impact in this area including English in Action http://www.eiabd.com/ using mobile technology to deliver video based materials via Micro SD card and the TESS-India project http://www.TESS-India.edu.in that has developed flexible OER (Open Educational Resources) that can be accessed in multiple formats across digital devices as well as an OER based MOOC on 'Enhancing Teacher Education through OER' https://www.edx.org/course/enhancing-teacher-education-through-oer-oecx-tess101x-0 . Over all Tom highlighted the need to provide the conditions by which teachers can be enabled to engage and realise the benefits of educational technology but the challenge is in finding appropriate ways to create these enabling conditions.

British Council team launching ICT across South Asia report

The launch of the British Council report into recent research on the access teachers across South Asia have to ICT followed,

“This report highlights the findings from a study into English language teachers’ attitudes and preferences for using technology for professional development in South Asia.”

(British Council, publications website)

You can download the report here http://www.britishcouncil.in/continuing-professional-development 

Tom Power chairing panel discussion 

Tom Power finished the event by chairing a panel discussion on the opportunities, challenges and evidence in the use of technology for teachers professional development. The panel members were Ms Preet Verma – COO Tech Mahindra Foundation, Chris Cavey – Open Learning Manager, British Council UK, Rashmi Menon – Research Manager, Central Square Foundation and Dr Atanu Bhattacharya – Chairperson, Centre for English Studies, Central University of Gujarat. The event was recorded so I will post a link once it is available, there was also a tag to follow the event #digitalteachers with a storify following it available here https://storify.com/Tim10101/digital-teachers-event. The main themes that were coming out from the discussion were along the lines of technology cannot be used in isolation, that quality resources are vital and developing appropriate pedagogies that look at bridging the gap between theory and practice are key.