RESOURCES FOR ONLINE TEACHER TRAINING COURSES

Abstract

With the integration of ICT to teaching and learning almost all disciplines which were conducted in the traditional mode throughout the years, are now being taught online in as well. The premier open and distance education university in Sri Lanka, the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) which conducts teacher training courses and programmes at many levels in addition to many other programmes and courses in numerous disciplines is planning to conduct some teacher training courses online as well. Around 3000 graduate teachers of the country’s school system has enrolled in the post graduate diploma in Education (PGDE) programme in the 2017/2018 academic year and the programme is conducted in all the districts of the country through the university’s study centres. To follow online training courses conveniently teachers need resources. This study was conducted to find whether those resources are available with the teachers, whether there are differences in the availability of resources as per their locations and gender and to make suggestions to improve the resource availability.  To select the sample of teachers, initially two districts and the 2 study centres in those districts were selected. After that, the teacher samples were selected randomly from those registered for the PGDE programme in the current academic year for the 2 centres. The main instrument for data collection was a questionnaire while a semi structured interviews were conducted with a few teachers from both centres. The findings were that the availability of some resources was good while some are not. The majority had the Internet facility; there were no remarkable differences between the teachers as per location of the centres. However, male teachers had more resources than the female teachers. Suggestions were made to improve the resource availability and facilitate online learning of teachers.

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