Abstract:
This study intends to present a bespoke
teacher professional development MOOC designed by
Teacher Education for Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) team
that allows MOOCs to become a viable means offering
cost-effective, quality professional teacher development.
TESSA is a network of teachers and teacher educators,
working to improve classroom teaching in Africa. TESSA
MOOC is an innovative approach to capacity building for
teacher educators and teachers across Africa. The study
presents outputs of an evaluation of TESSA MOOC course
undertaken by Kenyan teachers and teacher educators. The
experiences of the participants were that the TESSA
MOOC was a new but interesting, appealing and flexible
course. In addition, the participants were able to learn from
one another and what they learnt may impact on their
pedagogical skills. Key challenges identified include
difficulties in downloading of materials due to lack of
internet connectivity and use of ICT phobia for learning.
MOOCs represent an untapped potential for teacher
professional development that can be a cost and resource
effective means to deliver quality education to teachers and
teacher educators. Therefore, the teachers and teacher
educators may need to exploit this learner based TESSA
MOOC to build capacity for teaching
