The COVID-19 pandemic led to the shutdown of schools and teachers were asked to teach from home. However, teachers were surveyed and 60% of these teachers have never taught online before and lack the skills and knowledge of digital tools to engage their students during the lockdown. Therefore the Hub was created to support teachers with the right skills, tools, and methodology to foster learning.
With the use of a low-tech and accessible platform (WhatsApp), teachers are onboarded to a group on WhatsApp and taught how WhatsApp can be used for learning through an inquiry-based approach. The students’ school curriculum is then structured into bite-sizes (Pictures and videos), for easy accessibility on the platform, and teachers are taught on various topics, using the bite-sized student curriculum through an Inquiry-based method. At the end of each training, teachers cascade the same learning, content, and methodology to their students, also on a WhatsApp group.
Teachers are further taught on other digital tools, for content creation, content delivery, and student assessment and how they can apply them online, using an Inquiry approach on WhatsApp. A total of 127 teachers with 76% of the participants from Nigeria and 24% from Kenya, were taught and cascaded this learning to their students through WhatsApp during the lockdown period.
One month after the first cohort, we expanded to another cohort of 73 teachers to be taught using this same innovation, and currently, a partnership has been established with the Lagos state government in Nigeria, to adopt this innovation with 300 teachers in Lagos Nigeria. Also in the next 2-3 years, this innovation will spread to more schools and teachers in Nigeria
WhatsApp is readily available for use. However, anyone can reach out to info@relearn.ng to know how to apply the Inquiry-based method through WhatsApp
