Acting Vice-Chancellor opens PEDAL Online Training Workshop

The Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, on Monday, September 6, 2021, opened the Partnership for Pedagogical Leadership in Africa (PedaL) Online Training Workshop being organised by the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR), Nairobi, Kenya.

Delivering the keynote address, the Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, recounted the importance of online teaching and learning in the 21st century. She reiterated how the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has placed prominence on the delivery of services, such as education, through the use of technology. Prof. Amfo shared the University of Ghana’s experience in its implementation of the online teaching and learning programme via the SAKAI Learning Management System (LMS) over the past one and half years, noting how training in the LMS had equipped faculty and students with the requisite skills to explore their full potential. She was confident that the PASGR workshop would assist in consolidating the skills that every university teacher needs in modern times.

 “This course is expected to enhance the capacity, confidence, values and attitudes of academics to adapt innovative pedagogy online, and in the blended mode. It will motivate and sustain active and inclusive online communities of academics who will promote continuous learning in and outside the classroom walls”, she stated.  

The Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning, Prof. Samuel Agyei-Mensah, in a goodwill message, expressed the University’s appreciation for the opportunity to be part of the training programme, and indicated that 40 faculty members drawn from the University’s four Colleges were taking part in the Workshop. Other goodwill messages came from the representatives of the University of Ibadan, University of Pretoria, University of Lagos, and Makerere University.  

In brief remarks, the Secretary of the African Research Universities Alliance and Adviser to PedaL, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, who is also a former Vice-Chancellor of the University, stressed the need for participating universities to ensure that the competencies and skills acquired from the workshop are transferred to other faculty members who did not have the opportunity to attend the workshop.

 PedaL Online is a technology intensive variant of the PedaL face-to-face training, and covers fundamental concepts in the practical application of a variety of toolsets, digital resources and strategies for course planning, as well as creative facilitation and innovative assessment. It espouses the values of gender awareness and inclusion and participatory procedures such as peer-to-peer,  peer-to-tools and peer-to-print/digital resources.

Additionally, it uses a range of teaching tools such as case studies, simulations, concept maps, and authentic tasks to lead participants to uncover opportunities for experience sharing, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and reflection in a flexible manner. The three-week training programme is being attended by over 170 participants drawn from African universities including the University of Ghana.  

Participants from the University of Ghana included Prof. Esther Sakyi-Dawson, a member of the PedaL training team; Prof. Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi of the Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation and Prof. Daniel Twerefou, Director, Academic Quality Assurance Unit.