#LearningConnects: Vocational teachers coping with COVID-19 the Western Balkans
To help the countries where we work deal with learning under lockdown, we've been having conversations with people dealing day-to-day with keeping education and training going despite social distancing to cope with the COVID-19 crisis.
On 7 April we talked to teachers from the Western Balkans working hard to deliver online and distance learning following the school closures which came into force on March 9 in Albania, March 11 in North Macedonia and March 15 in Serbia.
Inclusion is a challenge, especially for vocational schools. Not all students, teachers and trainers have access to equipment, connectivity and effective platforms, or the skills to use them. The focus has been on getting general education up and running, and VET schools have been very much left to their own devices. They are struggling to build on existing pilot initiatives, and get teachers and students up to speed, sharing experience and resources. Assessment is a big challenge, especially for the practical component of curricula. But creative solutions are emerging. Pioneers of digital and online learning see the crisis as a catalyst for modernisation across the education system.
Adriana Prenga, a teacher of hospitality and tourism from Albania, explained that the situation had caught them off guard. Some students live in rural areas and face problems of equipment and connectivity and teachers are making use of whatever means available to keep in touch with students and keep learning going.
In vocational education, theory lessons are going ahead using Zoom, Whatsapp, Google Forms and FaceBook, as well as a dedicated platform called mesovet.al developed as part of the Skills for Jobs project, which involves most VET schools in the country. General education is available on akademi.al and on television.
Adrian stressed the importance of flexibility in scheduling online study so students are able to take their online lessons at an appropriate time.
“During these times it is hard” she said “people are worried about the health situation, they are worried about studying, about many things. It’s important to work on motivation, as well as time management and technical issues.”
Adriana highlighted the need to have effective platforms for online learning, otherwise it’s hard to reach all the students at the same time, and teachers have to repeat the same lesson over and over again. It’s vital to have standard materials for the different subject, and to be able to share them with other teachers, as well as with students. The government in Albania has developed online materials for general subjects, but vocational teachers have greater challenges as they don’t have standard text books and have to prepare their own materials.
Assessment is a particular challenge for VET schools. Adriana and her colleagues have been giving students practical assignments which they can do at home, such as preparing a recipe. They then film themselves and the video is shared with teachers, and also the partner businesses where the students do their practical training. That way the assessment of the module can be done in collaboration between teachers and workplace mentors.
On the positive side, Adriana said “The students’ motivation is increasing. They are the protagonists and play an important role in this process.” She noticed an increase in their ability to accept responsibility and their physical and emotional commitment to perform tasks and work as a team.
“When I ask them to do homework,” she said, “they do absolutely everything they can to achieve it.”
Goce Nedelkoski, an ICT teacher from North Macedonia, also reported that the crisis had found the country’s schools completely unprepared. “Before, no one imagined we would need to transition to completely online teaching overnight” he said. Initially, the government gave some broad recommendations to teachers, but they were left on their own to decide how to proceed. The Education Ministry subsequently started to get organised and started providing training to teachers, however it is not yet clear what the official platform for online learning will be. In the meantime, some teachers are using social media, but in Mr Nedelkoski’s view these are not very effective for professional use. Not all teachers are using online training due to lack of computer knowledge, particularly among the older teachers, lack of training on using digital platforms, or lack of motivation. However, some are using digital platforms to their full potential.
Goce explained he was lucky to have been involved in an ETF project which trained over 100 teachers in his region on digital and online learning. They used a Moodle-based platform and taught teachers how to upload materials and enroll students. After the training, few teachers continued using the platform, but the crisis has brought many of them back onto the platform again.
North Macedonia has good internet connections allowing focus on online training for those who are connected. The mobile network coverage is also good, so students that don’t have PCs or laptops can access digital content using smartphone, and every student in the country has a smart phone.
Goce highlighted that teachers have more work now, as they are learning a new way of working while providing teaching online. He stressed the importance of cooperation by sharing materials, for example, so help with the workload. The biggest contribution that ministries can make is to provide a good online teaching platform and training teachers in how to use it.
“These times have changed the mindset of teachers” he said. “There was resistance to digital and online learning before, but now they are starting to realise they have to develop their digital skills if they want to do their jobs.”
Snežana Marković, a computer science teacher from Serbia, explained that digitalisation of education in Serbia had begun in 2013. The Ministry of Education and Ministry of Communication had invested a lot in equipment for schools and training teachers in the use of ICT for teaching. This was the foundation of Serbia’s response to COVID-19 crisis. TV lessons were being delivered on national television for all primary and secondary schools for general education subjects. There is a dedicated website for ICT teaching petlja.org. All programmes are covered by testing on the Education Ministry’s Moodle platform by a large number of volunteer teachers. The main challenge is the discrepancy between the digital skills of teachers and students. The most used platforms are Google Classroom, followed by Edmodo and Microsoft Teams. Moodle is also used for the complexity offered and for administration.
“We have some teachers who didn’t get started with digitalisation at the right time” she said. “They are trying to get by with the use of e-mail and Viber and they are having a hard time.”
She has been using Moodle for 11 years, and her students are used to blended learning so the shift to online classes was very easy. Some 1,000 students are engaged and 11 courses are ongoing for which Moodle is used to coordinate the teachers in her school and share teaching materials. Like Goce Nedelkoski, much of her time goes into helping other teachers who striving to get up to speed with online teaching.
Teachers in Serbia received guidance from the ministry to do formative assessments using a national web-based platform for school information. She noticed that students became more engaged when feedback from teachers was communicated to their parents.
“In a lot of cases” she said “the parents are for the first time very aware of what their children are doing in school.”
“I am highly motivated,” said Snežana, “because I have been engaged in online learning more than 10 years, and I’m thrilled to be able to share all that I do and all that I know.”
Teachers who are less confident in using technology are being pushed to get on board because they can’t do their job without it. Her message to them is: don’t just put your experience from the classroom online, you need to adapt to the new medium and use all the resources available. On the positive side, teachers in Serbia are sharing their experience, advice and materials online, and seeing the benefits of doing so.
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