Central to the expansion of open and innovative schooling provision is to empower staff with the skills to work in new ways. The above photograph was taken during a training workshop conducted by COL for the College of Open Schooling at the Botswana Open University. Typically, such training involves an initial one-week face-to-face workshop followed by online support over several subsequent months in areas such as curriculum-based OER content development, quality assurance, blended learning pedagogy, centre management and monitoring and evaluation of pilot projects.

Dr Tony Mays, COL’s Education Specialist for Open Schooling observes:

We work with existing open schools, as well as other formal institutions involved in supporting out-of-school youths. For example, over the past year we have:

• Assisted in developing revised strategy documents for the Emlalatini Development Centre in Eswatini, Malawi College of Distance Education and Zambia College of Distance Education.
• Supported the Namibian College of Open Learning and Malawi College of Distance Education by creating open textbooks and vocational courses.
• Supported course and content development for the Institute of Adult Education in Tanzania, Adult Education Association in Guyana and Emlalatini Development Centre in Eswatini.