Vocational Lead Tutors’ of Bangladesh Open University Trained on Academic Counselling

Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) and Bangladesh Open University (BOU) organized a training workshop from 21–22 January 2020 at Regional Centre, Dhaka, BOU. This workshop was organized to train Lead-Tutors, who are engaged in providing tutorials for learners of HSC and Education programmes (BEd/MEd) being implemented under the Project entitled “Impacting Education and Open Schooling through OER- Making a Difference among the Learners by BOU” from July 2018 with the support of CEMCA. Professor Dr. Sanat Kumar Ghosh from Netaji Subash Open University (NSOU) Kolkata, India provided expertise support to all participating lead tutors to design tutorial support services for the Vocational Education and Training (VET) learners through OER and MOOCs in the programme. The project already brought VET to the mainframe curriculum of the Open University especially for open schooling and in pedagogy school. Dr. Manas Ranjan Panigrahi, Senior Program Officer, CEMCA facilitated the workshop. Dr. Panigrahi said, in his inaugural address, “Characteristics of 21st Century learners are Creativity and Innovation, Collaboration and Communication, Critical Thinking & Problem Solving, Global Citizenship, Technology Literacy, Lifelong Learners”.

Thirty-one Faculties and tutors (17 Male and 14 Female) of School of Education, School of Science and Technology, School of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Open School attended the Lead Tutor Workshop. The VET courses are dominated by in the field of agriculture and health technology.

The workshop was inaugurated by Prof. Sufia Begum, Dean, School of Education and Project Director, BOU-CEMCA VET Project, while panel speakers included Prof. Dr. Sabina Yeasmin, Dean, Open School of BOU, Dr. Md. Mizanoor Rahman, Coordinator, BOU-CEMCA VET Project. The event provided an inclusive platform for all stakeholders of vocational education and training (VET) at BOU to work together and develop guidelines for Lead tutors on topics of VET through ODL.

The training is largely aligned with the government’s mandate to increase VET up to 20% by 2021which aims to create employability. The workshop came out with some policy recommendations for BOU such as exchanging VET materials of the regional open universities to achieve the cost-effectiveness for the planned VET program.

Open School Dean said BOU VET Project, supported by the CEMCA, has been working on upgrading the national VET infrastructure that includes building VET model, linking storage facilities in the OER repository as well as setting up an integrated model system for impacting employability of the youths. Based on research findings and recommendations from project team, the project intends transforming curriculum of the existing HSC program and e-BEd/e-MEd program.

AKM Iftekhar Khalid, Joint Director, Training and Research Unit, BOU discussed regarding the national VET policies and the inherent responsibilities of the BOU for implementing the VET in Bangladesh through open and distance learning.