Teachers’ initiatives in blended and distance learning in Oman analysed

Muscat: The first virtual educational forum ‘Toward A Sustainable Blended Education: Reality, Empowerment, and Ambition’ kicked off under the patronage of Majid Said Al Bahri, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education for Administrative and Financial Affairs on Tuesday.

Prof Dr Abdullah Khamis Ambosaidi, Undersecretary for Education attended the opening session of the forum with a number of Directors-General at the Ministry and with wide participation from different groups in the educational field.

The forum includes six discussion sessions (morning and evening) for  two consecutive days covering four different topics, which are: ‘Effective implementation of simultaneous lessons,’ ‘Effective implementation of the integration between simultaneous and asynchronous classes,’ ‘Effective application of electronic evaluation methods,’ and ‘Production and application of interactive lessons in educational platforms.’

This virtual educational forum comes with the aim of highlighting the efforts and the distinguished teachers’ initiatives from various government schools in the educational directorates in the governorates, which have had a positive impact on the continuation of distance learning.

The forum aims at defining the requirements for the implementation of these initiatives and their results to enable teachers to benefit from these initiatives in various educational levels.

The forum also seeks to motivate teachers to develop their teaching methods in line with the distance learning and blended learning, as well as to spread the culture of digital transformation in learning by employing information and communication technology (ICT) in the educational process.

The first day of the forum included an opening speech delivered by Prof. Dr. Ambosaidi, in which he said: “This virtual educational forum seeks, in its first round, to highlight teachers’ initiatives in blended learning and distance learning that is imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and requires special skills and attributes that teachers must possess in order to provide distance learning that is sustainable, interactive and attractive to students.”

“The great efforts that we have found from workers in the educational field, especially teachers who had the greatest merit in implementing this type of education and contributed to overcoming many of the challenges that faced them at the beginning of the implementation of this type of education; resulted in this forum,” he added.

“This forum came to highlight and honour these efforts and initiatives, and to strengthen teachers to provide the best, in addition to motivating other teachers to take the initiative, and make use of these experiences, which will be presented throughout the two days of this virtual forum in addressing learning loss,” he said.

He also explained, “This forum is a basis for future forums to strengthen the ministry’s approach with regard to e-learning. In this version, the focus is on teachers. In the coming years, there will be a tendency to attract other educational groups, such as supervisors and laboratory technicians, to present aspects of benefit of technology in other areas, with the involvement of parents on how to deal with technology and contribute to providing initiatives that contribute to enhancing the educational process, as e-learning will be one of the basic pillars on which education is built.”

Dr Maymouna bint Hamid Al Abriya, Director of Education Technologies Department at the Directorate-General for Curriculum Development, and Head of the Technical Committee of the Forum, gave a presentation.

She said that the most important tasks of the technical team of the forum, which was forming a team in cooperation with the relevant educational directorates (educational supervision, information technology, curriculum development, and the Centre for Educational Measurement and Evaluation).

The team will define the objectives of the forum, its most important topics and target groups, setting procedures, defining the topics of initiatives and the evaluation mechanism, and preparing electronic registration forms.

She also shed light on total number of participating initiatives. This amounted to 386 initiatives, in four different topics that were evaluated by 12 evaluators, according to 40 items for evaluation.

A total of 22 initiatives were qualified for blended and distance education, which are the initiatives participating in this virtual forum.

The first day also included a speech from the sponsoring company of the forum delivered by Tariq Medhat, Director of Products and Technology Solutions Department in the Education Sector of Bahwan Projects and Communications Company.
In his speech, he thanked the Ministry of Education for organising the first virtual educational forum, then confirmed the commitment of Bahwan Projects and Communications Company to provide full and continuous
support.

He praised the efforts of the Ministry of Education in developing the educational process by using the latest technological means to achieve the fourth goal of the Sustainable Development Goals, which emphasises the importance of ensuring education, in accordance with the pillars of Oman 2040 vision on education strategy and capacity building.

The programme of the first day included two sessions in the morning and one in the evening, where the two morning sessions focused on the topic: Effective implementation of simultaneous lessons.

The first session included three educational initiatives, the first was entitled ‘Distance Learning Tools in Mathematics,’ the second was titled ‘Initiator’s fingerprint,’ and the third was ‘Interactive Online Class - Online Sports.’

The Second session also included the presentation of three initiatives. The first one was titled ‘Learning for Oman,’ the second was titled ‘Saw my picture and increased my fortune,’ and the third initiative came under the title ‘Sigma Tech Balloon in Blended Learning.’

The evening session included the presentation of four initiatives under the topic ‘Effective application of electronic calendar methods.’

The first one was titled ‘Interactive activities for the musical skills curriculum,’ the second was titled ‘Smart assessment form for the musical skills course for grades 11-12 in blended education,’ the third was ‘Question and answer in plastic arts for grades 11 and 12,’ and the fourth initiative was titled ‘With my ideas I make change.’