SAMARTH: Online Professional Development of Teachers

In January 2019, Educational Innovations Bank, RJMCEI, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and SamagraShiksha Gujarat began their collaboration on upscaling innovative initiative of experimenting with an online platform for capacity building of teachers of government primary schools of Gujarat, teaching in standards 1 to 8. The aim of the programme was to help children learn through teachers; thus how to deliver the subject in the classroom was the focus. This programme was interactive and was titled as “SAMARTH-2”, which was inspired due to successful response from teachers in SAMARTH-1. SAMARTH-2 was formally launched on August 16,2019 and phase-2 comprised participation of more than 1,52,966 teachers teaching in standards 1 to 8 of Government primary schools of Gujarat. This capacity building of teachers is done online and has topics on Pragna perspective, Gujarati, Hindi, English, Environment Science, Social Science, Science, Maths, Evaluation and Remedial Education, Children Creativity, Use of ICT in Education in schools and inclusive education children with special needs. There are 182 topics and is supported by 278 case studies in overall programme. The overall curriculum and pedagogy is designed by the EI Bank team. The overall curriculum and pedagogy is designed by the EI Bank team. The content for subject matter is provided by SamagraShiksha along with videos for each topic, whereas for other modules IIMA prepared the content. The design and development of the technology based platform is done by IIMA including hosting. All the modules are having module end questions for self-reflection and learning, which are prepared by IIMA. All the case studies presented are also having 3 reflective questions, also prepared by IIMA. The SAMARTH-2 programme is based on rigorous research design. The objective of this project is to develop a cost-effective platform for online in-service professional development of teachers that uses a curriculum based on cases of teacher-driven innovations. Two pilots for about 2000 government school principals on governance were conducted during January to October 2017, and then a program for 19000 teachers of science and math in Gujarat conducted from May to December 2018. The program was further expanded to 140,000 teachers for grade 1-8. It also incorporated the development of capabilities with the state system for designing and implementing online professional development. The program was completed in January 2020.