Creating innovative solutions for teachers through effective partnerships

Background

In 2017, the Sultanate of Oman adopted the Cambridge Curriculum, requiring teachers to create active learning experiences for students.

All teachers and students received a curriculum aligned with Cambridge Student Books, Workbooks and Teacher’s Guides - supporting the planning and teaching of every lesson. However, when COVID hit, teachers felt constrained by the PDF versions of the textbooks, which were not designed for remote online education.

Cambridge’s response to the challenge

Cambridge reached out to Google Workspace and the Ministry of Education (MoE) to initiate a 10-week innovation project. The project explored how to digitise the Cambridge content and give teachers the tools to utilise the collaborative and interactive functionality of their Google Workspace platform and create more active learning experiences.

Working in close partnership with Google and a focus group of Omani teachers and supervisors selected by the MoE, we co-developed 3 lesson templates using Google Slides, Docs, Jamboard, Forms and Drawings.

Impact of the 10-week project

Cambridge presented the 3 lesson templates to the digital learning representatives in the MoE to demonstrate how the digital lesson templates could encourage more active learning experiences online. Cambridge also shared a report by researchers at the University of Cambridge, which contextualised our work in research on the way teachers use technology. This helped to inform the MoE's broader e-learning roadmap.

Finally, the project laid strong foundations between Google and Cambridge for collaborative solutions, e.g. around integrated training on Cambridge curriculum pedagogies, Google Platforms, and Cambridge textbooks.

Testimonials

Working in partnership with the Oman Ministry of Education and Cambridge Partnership for Education, we developed a series of lessons leveraging the best of both CPE's content and Google Workspace for Education, our solution for empowering educators globally to streamline instruction and make collaboration easier. These examples will act as a springboard to enable teachers across the country to continue to deliver excellent learning experiences remotely and in person.

Dean Stokes, Head of Education Adoption EMEA

It has been a privilege to support our partners at the Ministry of Education in Oman through this time of great change. Like every country in the world, they have had to consider how to adapt their educational ecosystem in the short, medium and long term to respond to the challenges and opportunities brought about by COVID19 . The Falaj project explored short term opportunities to digitize existing content and use it on existing platforms in a way that reduces teachers’ workload and makes learning experiences more active for students. We particularly enjoyed working with partners across the education system including platform providers, supervisors, teachers, trainers and researchers from the University of Cambridge to propose joined up solutions based on primary Omani research and global academic research. We hope that the recommendations and prototypes from the Falaj project will help to inform the Omani roadmap for digital transformation going forward.

Julia Citron, Head of Professional Development, Cambridge University Press, Education