T10kT: Scaling up Professional Development of Teachers

Train Ten Thousand Teachers (T10kT) outreach project at IIT Bombay has optimally utilized the latest ICT tools and platforms for Teacher Professional Development at large scale in distance mode. Since its inception in 2009, the project has provided training to about 120,000 teachers from more than 4060 institutions spread across the country across three phases. The project utilizes a blended format in which live lectures are transmitted synchronously using the A-VIEW software and asynchronous interactions are facilitated in Moodle platform. In the current phase, the project utilizes IIT BombayX platform to provide Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) so as to include a wider spectrum of learners. In this work we look at the model used by the T10kT team and inspect the results from 15 Synchronous STTPs conducted to answer the following research questions: Do institutions registering with T10kT project prefer the distance mode of training? Do the learning activities within T10kT STTPs provide perception of learning and motivate participants to apply them? What are instructors' perceptions of T10kT based instruction in terms of modification in pedagogy and overall implementation? It is seen that 127 institutions have been recurrent participants and there has been four-fold increase in the number of participating institutions indicating the preference of this model. 92% of all the teachers who have participated in the phase II courses found the workshop experience to be highly beneficial and about 93% have indicated high positive intent to apply the workshop learning in their immediate practice. The feedback from the instructors indicate that transition from face-to-face to synchronous T10kT mode was not challenging and the instructors need to focus on learner centered practices for effective learning experience. A limitation that is seen with the current study is that it does not look into transfer of workshop learning in actual practice. However the project has started off blended MOOC models that will enable the administrators to look at student performance as well.