To empower teaching and administrative staff from CRED4TEACH partner institutions in Albania, Montenegro, and Ukraine to design, develop, and validate MOOC-based micro-credentials for teacher professional development, European partners will design and deliver training sessions to selected staff members. Two different training activities are envisaged:
- Training Towards Becoming a MOOC Designer: Developed by the lead partner, Anadolu University, this training will be delivered in a blended mode to at least 24 educators from partner higher education institutions. It aims to enable teachers to design and develop open courses, as well as integrate open pedagogies into formal courses.
- Training in the Design and Validation of Micro-Credentials: Led by partner Universidade Aberta, this 3-day face-to-face training will empower relevant decision-makers from partner institutions (such as Rectors, Vice-Rectors for Quality and Research, Heads of Quality Departments) to develop institutional and national frameworks for introducing micro-credentials. At least 22 individuals are expected to attend this activity.
Towards Becoming a MOOC Designer Blended-Training
Within the scope of the second work package (WP2) of the CRED4TEACH Project, “Towards Becoming a MOOC Designer” blended training was conducted successfully between November 13, 2023, and February 2, 2024 as a 10 weeks long training. It was designed and implemented by Anadolu University (P4) for faculty members of eight higher education institutions (HEIs) from Albania, Montenegro, and Ukraine. It was targeted to upskill at least 24 educators from partner higher education institutions, and the main goal was to help the participating teachers acquire theoretical and practical knowledge and skills to design and develop a MOOC or MOOC-based course for formal learning and test its effectiveness, efficiency, and attractiveness. At the end of the training, the participants were able to
- Develop a deep understanding about online learning and teaching,
- Discuss the potentials and challenges of integrate technology based and enhanced learning and assessment into their formal learning
- Design a MOOC, or MOOC-based formal learning course
- Produce course content and resources for the MOOC they designed
- Generate plans about integrating MOOC-based micro-credentials into their services
- Share their experiences in the design, development, and implementation of MOOCs in their formal curricula.
The training was designed as a blended MOOC-based training. During the training, the participants completed the first six modules online and came together in class for the 7th module in Eskisehir, Turkiye between 10th and 12th of January 2024. Subsequently, the participants completed three more online modules to complete the training.
Since the targeted teaching staff spread out eight HEIs in three countries, and a large majority of these institutions were located in Ukraine, where the teachers have travel limitations, a blended learning mode was considered as the best alternative to eliminate the limitations of complete online training. MOOC-based training is an instructional delivery strategy in which participants are asked to complete one or more MOOCs with other activities and interactions with the trainer. Since the CRED4TEACH project intended to train the teaching staff on MOOC-based micro-credentials, employing the same strategy in the training to be a model about how to use this strategy in teachers’ professional development was considered an appropriate decision. “MOOC Design and Delivery” is an artifact of an Erasmus+ project (2019-1-DE01-KA203-005051) “Curricular modernization by implementing MOOCs model (MODE IT)” an another MOOC entitled as “Online Proctoring Manager – Self Paced Course” as a part of Erasmus+ project (2020-1-DE01-KA226-HE-005765) “Online Proctoring Manager – Further education program for supporting digital transformation at Higher Education Institutions (PROWIDE)” were used in this blended MOOC-based training.
A total of 59 teachers from different universities participated in the training, and 28 of them participated in face-to-face sessions. They also had the opportunity to visit Anadolu University’s facilities and staff related to the online learning offerings of the university. At the end of the training, 11 MOOCs were created by teams from 8 institutions as a requirement of the training. A total of 48 participants completed all the activities and projects, and received certificates worth three ECTS (90 hours workload). Now, they are expected to create 11 micro-credentials for teachers’ professional development in their countries.
