Welcome to the Seplat JV Teacher Empowerment Programme

This training will introduce you to all that STEAM entails therefore you’ll be able to understand the variations between traditional teaching and the new innovative STEAM approach to facilitate learning and what it will mean to you as a teacher. We’ll offer you pointers to documents and a few helpful guidance and resources. Through this training, you will begin to understand the importance of STEAM and why it is important to teach it in a way that reflects learning on the parts of the students.

I’m Victoria Ogunlade-Ajise, your facilitator on the run of the course. Supporting your discussions, I will be your course mentor until the end of the training. You are encouraged to:

•     Complete all tasks and contribute your comments to record your line of thoughts.
•     Read contributions from other learners and the mentor.
•     Complete the reflection grids and other reflective activities in this course.
•     Discuss the course content with your colleagues.

Reflecting on your learning and your teaching

The Reflection journal is introduced here to support your development during this course. You are also invited to undertake a self-audit of your practice and understanding before you start the course.

Please ensure you make a copy of your responses to the self-audit task (hyperlinked) as you will need these in the final task of the course. 

Orientation & Useful Tips for your learning

At the start of a new course, you need to understand why you are learning. This is very important. Creating goals or milestones to achieve throughout your learning and assessing your accomplishment along the way should be your focus. We have itemized some tips and guides below to help you with this online learning journey

Be prepared to learn

You need to set up the conditions to learn. Usually, that means being relaxed and alert, so that our minds are focused on the immediate experience, setting achievable goals for ourselves, and being in an environment that is suitable for learning.

The most important way to improve your experience of learning is to be well prepared. You should prepare mentally – you can do this by setting goals to be achieved and monitoring your learning journey and how you are performing as the course progresses. Asides the mental preparation, you need to be physically prepared. Get a serene environment (free from every form of distraction) as well as a good time to study. Have your pen and notebook ready as well for taking notes. Finally, you need to prepare socially, this means staying away from every social interaction (physical or by any digital means such as social media notifications) that can cause distractions during your dedicated time of study. You can also reward yourself every time you achieve all of this during your learning.

Self-Reflect

Watching a video or reading a text, one will most likely relate it to previous knowledge and experience, finding new information, solving problems, and being confronted with varied and challenging viewpoints.

You learn reflectively every time you ask yourself questions such as “What does this mean?” or “Why are they saying this?”. Thinking about what you have just learned, and focusing on what’s new and important is a good way to make a long-term link between neurons that form our memories.

Peer to Peer learning (Join the conversation)

When we hold conversations with other people, listening, and receiving different but related perspectives, we learn a lot. Interesting discussions always allow us to connect and understand at all levels of facts, ideas, and experiences.

Feel free to share your thoughts and questions about teaching STEAM – the subject knowledge and classroom practices we introduce as this course is designed to enable support from fellow learners, particularly via the discussions. You will be asked to contribute specific answers and, importantly, respond to your fellow learners’ ideas for certain tasks. Also, do not be afraid to reply and make a suggestion if you can help a fellow learner, or perhaps a step has prompted you to share your own experience or reflect on an idea. The course team will also make contributions to the discussions to support you.

When you make a post, draw upon the course content; consider how it relates to your context, and what insights you can take from other learners. Each post is your opportunity to reflect, evaluate, or question to help you deepen your understanding of teaching STEAM.

Read as many comments as you wish as you are not required to make comments on every step or even read every comment. Just make sure that you are involved by liking, commenting, and replying to the discussions.

Learn in your own way

Everyone has a unique way of learning as there is no universal “best” learning method but generally we learn well when we set our own goals, make active choices about what we do, and think about what we have just learned while relating it to our knowledge.

Discussions and Tasks

As you progress through the course you will be asked to undertake several tasks in each module. You will have the opportunity to:

•     Create resources that can be used in your classroom.
•     Experiment with strategies with your students.
•     Share ideas for teaching STEAM.

Note: External links in this course will take you to third-party websites, which may ask for your personal details.