E-LEARNING PROGRAM - VIRTUAL COURSES

“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow”

We truly believe at the MASHAV Educational Training Center (METC) that we cannot continue educating the children of today –the 21st century- as we use to educate in the past. We need to adapt our education to the needs of the present and to the possible challenges of tomorrow.

The E-Learning Program “Virtual Courses” includes a learning process on a diversity of fields of knowledge, combine a large number of tools and channels, and create a platform for dialogues between experts and participants. The programs aim to create a process where educators from around the world learn from each other and share different innovative models and ideas on how to adapt Education to the reality around us.

This program is conducted in cooperation with the ICT Department of the Ministry of Education (MOE) and was based on the E-Learning model that the Ministry of Education uses for educators in Israel.

 

Program Goals

This E-Learning program has the following goals:

·         To develop an enriching educational experience & dialogue on how to adapt our teaching & learning processes to the 21st-century world around us;

·         To expose our alumni to a variety of digital tools and innovative pedagogies;

·         To lead an educational process that connects theoretical content, practical experience and the local context of each participant, as an example of an educational model.

·         To allow our alumni to experience a 21st-century educational process that develops a variety of relevant skills and integrate technology as an essential tool in every teaching, learning and pedagogical interactions.

·         To create a platform for educational change through the transformation of the content of the course into a practical project that implements the learning

 

Program Structure

Content Units: Each course is divide into Content Units that lead the educational process. Each Unit includes:

·         Synchronic live interaction between the participants and the course lecturer. This live interaction is done in a virtual classroom where the participants interact with their peers and with the course lecturer.

·         A-synchronic interaction, where the participants fulfill a series of assignments in their own time, and interact with their peers and with the course lecturer through a variety of collaborative digital tools and an LMS platform that support the course.

 

A Final Project: That required from the participants to connect all the learned content and transform it into an educational practical project, implemented in their own context.

Flipped Classroom Model: The educational process is based on the Flipped Classroom Pedagogy, where the passive learning process is done in the A-synchronic interaction, and the active learning is done in the Synchronic live interactions

Courses & Participants

In the years 2016-2018, the METC center in collaboration with the MOE of Israel conducted eight virtual courses for the METC alumni. In total, approximately 370 METC alumni from more than 40 countries participated in the “Virtual Courses” E-Learning program.

The courses focused on a variety of topics: Educational Leadership, Teaching & Learning Strategies, Educational in a heterogeneous environment, Alternative Assessment, ICT integration in Education, Educational Apps and more.

Here we share some thoughts that our alumni wrote about the program: