The Online Pedagogy Community of Practice (OPCOP) provides regular PD opportunities for ECAE faculty, ECAE students and the wider community. It aims to facilitate interactions and exchanges among participants to enhance and support teaching, learning and assessment practices in both online learning and blended learning environments
The OPCOP Program: Aims and Rationale
The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented challenges for schools and universities in terms of teaching and learning pedagogies and methods. In response to these challenges, many UAE K-12 schools and higher education institutions have adopted new online pedagogies to mitigate the pandemic effect on student learning. However, most of the students as well as some of their teachers/instructors have limited experience in online teaching and learning approaches. In this context, a group of practitioners in the Emirates College for Advanced Education (ECAE) has taken the initiative to establish an online professional community of practice (OPCOP) aiming to support students, teachers and some local schools in their transition to online learning. The OPCOP also seeks to create a space for teachers and students who have a passion and an interest in experimenting with online pedagogies, sharing their best practices as well as engaging in joint research projects exploring the use of these online pedagogies. The OPCOP includes ECAE faculty members, students, teachers and instructors from UAE public and international schools and universities. The OPCOP members meet regularly to discuss, share ideas and conduct training sessions related to online pedagogies. The following are the aims and priorities of the OPCOP:
Priority 1: ECAE faculty
Priority 2: ECAE students
Priority 3: Learning
Priority 4: Knowledge Creation
Priority 5: Research
In addition, our goal is to develop an online resources space on Teams to provide all the resources related to online pedagogies to internal and external faculty members, teachers and students
OPCOP activities include:
This program aims to:
Communication among the OPCOP members