Supporting Teachers Moving Online, Using a MOOC, during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Abstract

Following campus closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many Ministries of Education around the world requested teachers to move their teaching online. This case study reflects on how the Commonwealth of Learning responded to requests from two countries to provide support in pedagogical and curricular change for online learning in this process. A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform was used to upskill 11,568 teachers in two regions of the Commonwealth. Analytics from within the course, together with pre-, mid-and end-course surveys of participants’ perceptions indicated that while there was, and is, scope for improvement, the short course largely reached its objective of providing immediate support on an introductory level and that the approach adopted was largely appropriate for the purpose.