Prof Francis Owusu Mensah
PROF. FRANCIS Owusu Mensah, Director of the Institute for Distance Education and e-Learning (IDeL) of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), says the institute will establish study centres in some selected West African countries.
This came to light at the opening of a three weeks workshop held in Kumasi for selected mentors for Supported Teaching in Schools (STS) drawn from schools within the forty (40) study centres of IDeL across the country. Such schools will accept student interns.
According to the Director, a good number of students from West Africa come to Ghana to access quality higher education, hence the need to internalise IDeL programmes.
“With COVID-19 and restrictions on physical movement of people, the college is preparing seriously to establish centres in neighbouring West African Countries,” he disclosed.
He added that students who wanted to access quality UEW programmes could remain in their home countries and benefit from it.
“We will put in place a tutorial system ‘Student Support System’ where selected academics, professionals will be trained in their various countries where the centres are and they will be recruited to offer in person training to support online training that will be offered,” he revealed.
Staff, from time to time, will travel to find out what is happening and to supervise some of the teaching and learning activities, he added.
Over the three weeks period, 450 participants will group in different schedules and take part in the workshop.
“The mentors are expected to train the students to become professional teachers and come out as competent 21st century basic school teachers,” Prof. Mensah said.
He said the institute would soon become a college, expand and roll out additional programmes.
The institute has brought together seasoned and experienced facilitators who are also lecturers of UEW and are at the forefront of the current Basic Education four-year curriculum being implemented by the Ghana Education Service.
Every year, it trains tutors on the use of UEW Learning Management System (LMS), ICT tutors on how to support their colleagues in teaching on the UEW Learning Management System, and coordinators on how to register students on ITS, a new system that the university has rolled out.