The Executive Director of Centre for National Distance Learning and Open Schooling (CENDLOS) Nana Gyamfi Adwabour says CENDLOS is adopting edtech innovations to create sustained transitional pathways in digitizing TVET and Complimentary Education Agency (CEA) learning content.
This initiative firmly fits strategically in the bold agenda of the sector Minister Hon.Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum to transform Education using robust and innovative Edtech solutions.
The Executive Director speaking during his opening remarks at a three-day workshop organized by CENDLOS in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning (CoL), Canada, alluded that the agency is adopting sustained Edtech innovations to digitize some TVET and Complimentary Education Agency learning content to host them on offline and online learning management systems.
“it is expected that 50 percent of all activities in our everyday life will be done online by the end of this decade, whether formal or informal”.
Therefore, this calls for the introduction of “Edtech solutions into these important areas of the educational sector”, he remarked.
The workshop organized in Aburi seeks to review and develop strategies for the expansion of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and Complimentary Education through digitization.
Mr. Adwabour added that CENDLOS, an agency under the Ministry of Education in charge of implementing technological solutions across pre-tertiary educational institutions in Ghana, will focus on five key areas of engagement with GTVET and CEA.
“The key areas are policy, infrastructure, practical content, capacity building, and assessment,” he stated.
The Director of CEA Mr. Francis Asumadu, applauded the initiative, adding that it will bring the needed equity and access to the non-formal educational sector.
On his part, Mr. Okran a representative from Commission for Technical and Vocational Training (CTVET) embraced this initiative and said CTVET has always been ready for a such technological move to help transform the TVET sector.
Mr Adwabour called on stakeholders in the virtual learning space to come on board to support CENDLOS in implementing its initiatives to aid technology-mediated learning in Ghana.
CENDLOS is leading the Open schooling and distance education agenda in Ghana. Innovations such as the Learning Passport (LP), iBox, icampus and have been introduced to facilitate virtual learning.
The Learning Passport is an online and offline mobile modality learning platform designed for Basic School and Junior High School students to bridge the learning poverty gap in Ghana. The innovation is powered by Microsoft and supported by UNICEF, explicitly implemented by CENDLOS.
The iBox is an offline learning platform designed for learners in underserved communities where access to the internet is a big challenge.
The icampus on the other hand is the online version of the ibox that has been developed to ensure students continue to access educational materials away from school or on vacation using their index numbers and their unique password. It has closed to one million three hundred students enrolled and over three hundred thousand wooping active users utilizing the system which has duly contributed to the recent rise in the passing rates of our SHS students.
These learning platforms allows learners to access educational materials without the internet. Educational materials can be accessed in the form of text, audio-visual and interactive questions.