Saint Lucia ConnectEd Activity: Strategies for Ensuring Long-Term Impact of ICT-Teacher Training, Youth Digital Skills Development, and OER Creation

• In Event: Shiny, New, and Sustainable EdTech? Diverse ICT Initiatives Invest in Codesign, Local Capacity and Leadership to Ensure Long-Term Impact

Proposal

In Saint Lucia, a country challenged by high youth unemployment and limited access to quality technological infrastructure, the mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic for online instruction exposed deficiencies within the education system. Most notable are the inability to provide quality instruction and meaningful learning experiences within a virtual space and the need to develop students’ digital literacy, a skill necessary for employability and workforce readiness as well as “digital resilience” - or the ability to adapt to new technologies - of individuals and education systems (The author et, al 2020). The USAID-funded Saint Lucia ConnectEd Activity, codesigned and implemented by World Education and the Ministry of Education in Saint Lucia, aims to develop youth digital skills, foster positive youth development, and improve the quality of teaching and learning by equipping secondary school teachers and students to become digital literacy leaders within their respective schools and communities. ConnectED has generated significant buy-in and enthusiasm from Saint Lucian school principals, educators, and the youth with and for whom the project is designed. The panel will explore the way ConnectED has intentionally built long-term sustainability into operationalizing its goals as well as reflect on what strategies have been most effective, challenges confronted, and learnings that will guide future work.

From the beginning, ConnectEd has ensured that it directly meets the top goals of the Ministry and other key stakeholders by aligning with the Ministry’s ICT in Education Policy and Strategy and implementing a Consultative 360 and CoDesign process that set up local advisory boardsof key stakeholders such as employers and youth. A goal of fostering a strong partnership between education and the workplace was achieved by using surveys and focus groups to develop a national digital skill competency framework that helps ensure all interventions - from teacher training to youth internships- reflect local digital skill needs. The Ministry and other stakeholders also prioritized embedding Positive Youth Development (PYD) approaches into digital skills instruction, youth internships, and a youth-led research process for measuring the impact of teacher professional development. PYD will help ensure sustainability for when digital transformation is no longer the top priority.

Direct partnership with Ministry curriculum officers and Saint Lucia’s Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and its eLearning Academy to design and lead online and in-person teacher training, coupled with badging, has also been critical for ensuring the program will continue now as an embedded program. World Education’s EdTech Center provided targeted training and capacity development to eLearning Academy instructors on (1) designing and leading EdTech Integration Action Planning, developing sequenced activities around prioritizing digital skill focus areas to improve instruction in five subject areas; and (2) EdTech Makerspaces, a professional development model focused on co-creation, adaptation, or curation of Open Educational Resources (OER) in a service learning model. The OERs, designed by seon educators, are contextualized to Saint Lucia. By embedding courses into the local community college’s existing eLearning Academy and its Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), the training will be continued by college instructors and have an impact for years to come.

Authors

• Royston Emmanuel, World Education Inc.

• Ben Vorspan, World Education

• Alison Ascher Ascher Webber, World Education, Inc.