How Comprehensive Learning Enhancement Programme is helping Andhra Pradesh school teachers continue learning despite the ongoing Pandemic chaos

With the Novel Coronavirus shutting doors of all educational institutions across the world, the entire education sector has made a shift from the conventional chalk-talk teaching model to digital learning.

Amid this, the Andhra Pradesh’s school education department came up with an initiative towards converting all the government schools to english medium instructions. The department wanted to prepare the teachers for this change and train them towards effective english instructions in classrooms.

With this purpose, the Department collaborated with ShikshaLokam to launch a self-learning program for teachers called the Comprehensive Learning Enhancement Programme (CLEP) . This program was designed for the capacity building of all teachers of government school, municipal and aided schools across the 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh.

CLEP was first introduced in February to the teachers and after an influx in demand, the second and third editions were launched. The training program included live webinar series, self-assessment tests, relevant learning materials (both online and offline) through the Abhyasa application, offline videos and
online tests. The program witnessed an involvement of over 1,84,000 teachers out of which around 1,03,000 were using the Abhyasa app..

THE PROGRAM

● The program spanned over 3 editions, and each edition saw the roll-out of a total of three detailed courses for the teachers created by the SCERT, AP. Overall 300 learning resources have been created on the platform throughout the program.

● As part of the program, Andhra Pradesh State Council of Educational Research and Training’s YouTube channel ‘SCERT-AP’ was used for conducting the webinar training series. After attending the webinar, teachers accessed the reading material and self-assessment in the Abhyasa app. To examine and certify their understanding, the teachers had to take up a grand quiz test through the platform.

● The online training sessions included topics such as ‘21st-century skills for global learners’, ‘ICT in the primary classroom’, ‘multilingualism as an approach in the teaching of English in primary classroom’, among others. The progress of each teacher was monitored by department officials as well as DIET officials at district level through the dashboards on ShikshaLokam platform.
Certificates were awarded to those who completed the course.

Citing the continuous progress of the training sessions, Pokuri Srinivasa Rao, Head of Technology, SCERT Andhra Pradesh said, “The journey that began three months ago with just 20,000 teachers now has attracted over a lakh teacher. The teachers found this as the best solution amid the ongoing situation
and challenges”.

At present, all the three editions have been completed and the response to the program has been remarkable. We saw an overall increase in teacher involvement as over 81,000 teachers participated in the Grand Quiz online assessment, marking the success of the initiative.

Going forward, the Department is now planning to set up a decentralized peer-mentoring model among teachers which will be led at the district level across the State.