As part of our 10 year anniversary celebrations, we are taking you behind the scenes and into our offices to meet some of the people who bring you our courses and aim to make learning with us successful.
In a previous blog James Schollar, our Product Owner and Producer from the Technical Development Team, gave us insight into how we work with subject specialists to develop and review course content. Here, he explains how we work to best practice and quality standards.
The trust and heritage that Pamoja has established over the last decade bringing IB Programmes online to students and teachers is maintained by our rigorous course design approach and process.
This has been developed through experience – ours, and that of the subject specialists we work with. It ensures that best practice and quality are embedded throughout, from the early stages of online design and production through to the checking processes during and after the courses are made live.
As we launch as a Cambridge International School to deliver world-renowned Cambridge IGCSE and International AS and A Level courses through our platform, we will continue to use the process. This will make sure that our new users will also have a good experience online and get results.
The Pamoja Course Design Approach sets out ways of achieving this, including standards for digital media and lesson preparation and principles for good online assessment. This is how we make sure that the look and feel and usability of the platform is right for our students and teachers.
For example, over the last 10 years, we have established emphasis on quality, not quantity for our IB Programmes as we develop the course content. We err on the side of clarity and brevity, making sure that the workload for the student and the teacher is appropriate. To free up time for teachers to support students with their learning goals, structured lessons are provided and the build of these enables good understanding of progress and attainment and informative levels of feedback.
Our quality standards also ensure that we build in varying activities such as quizzes and interactive, collaborative content such as discussions and peer working including study groups, keep IB Programme learning alive and interesting. From feedback over the years, we know that it is important to maintain motivation after the first year and a good balance of assignment formats are key here too.
For Pamoja taught IB courses, weekly lessons with clear objectives help students to keep on track. The build of these ensures that students can progress at, and set their own pace, without rushing ahead before they are ready to do so. In our experience, busy young people value this ability to plan around other activities in their lives.
Watch this space for my next blog outlining how we review and test that all this works.
To see how our courses work from either a student’s or a school’s perspective, please submit your request to arrange a suitable time and date for a demonstration.
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