As we celebrate our 10th anniversary with new IB courses and launch as a Cambridge International School, we take you behind the scenes into Pamoja’s offices. We will be hearing from some of the people who bring you our courses and aim to provide a rewarding learning experience.
Here, James Schollar, our Product Owner and Producer, from our Technical Development Team, explains how we work with subject specialists to develop and review courses.
Longstanding members of Pamoja staff like me have seen how trust and heritage have been established over the decade that we have been bringing IB Programmes online to students and teachers. Working with experts is at the heart of this and is also central as we develop online Cambridge IGCSE and International AS and A Level courses.
We work to a rigorous course development process which we continuously review. It is intended to ensure that we work to best practice and quality assurance standards from the early stages of online design and production through the checking process during and after the courses are made live. This is vital to make sure that users have confidence in us, and we know from experience that this is linked with student success.
From the outset we work with experienced course writers and established practitioners including examiners and chief examiners. Many of our IB experts have been working with us for most, if not all, of the 10 years we have been providing these courses online.
In terms of content writing for the IB Programmes, and making sure that our online platform is successful, we build in the experts’ views of what will work best to ensure student success. This includes their input into the scope and sequence, assessment structure and use of courses on our platform. For the IB Pamoja Taught courses for example this might include building in live lessons and group discussions.
I will give further insights into our work on usability in a further blog – watch this space. Working with educators over the last 10 years has taught us a great deal about what they need as they embrace digital learning.
Becoming a Cambridge International School is an exciting milestone for us in the Technical Development Team and once again we are working with experts to make sure that quality content underpins our courses and platform in the best possible way.
Before our courses go live, our course review process includes proofing, copyright checks and curriculum reviews by subject specialists.
After going live, we continue to seek the expert view by asking teachers to provide feedback. After 10 years we have become experts, but this is as a result of working in partnership with those who are out there teaching.
Next time, I will provide some insights into how we work to quality standards to make our online courses usable, and then, how we test this.
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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