COL has responded to a request from Zambia’s Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) to build the capacity of TVET educators in online learning. In partnership with the Technical and Vocational Teachers College (TVTC), a cascading train-the-trainers model has been implemented. A small number of TVTC and Ministry staff have been trained by COL and are now teaching facilitators from the country’s 27 public institutes using COL’s Open Educational Resources (OER) for “Facilitating Online Courses”. These facilitators will then train 840 TVET teachers across Zambia in “Flexible Skills Development,”also OER developed by COL.

“The Ministry appreciates this partnership with COL to enable Zambian TVET lecturers to teach remotely as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Gabriel Konayuma, MoHE Senior Vocational Education and Training Officer.

COL has been working with TVTC for 10 years building the college’s capacity in distance and online learning. TVTC now has its own learning management system and trained staff.

“With existing capability and COL’s OER designed to build the range of skills for online learning, both the Ministry and college could quickly scale up capacity building, and position Zambia to be able to continue training more TVET teachers on their own,” said Terry Neal, COL Education Specialist: Technical and Vocational Skills Development.