Smart Learning Institute

Kiron Open Higher Education won the 2016 UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa-Al Khalifa Prize for the use of ICT in Education for its education platform to help refugees and asylum seekers in Germany, France, Belgium, Turkey and Jordan access higher education.

With school closures all around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers have to transition quickly to distance learning to ensure the continuation of education. Kiron, who has experience with universities teaching remotely for underserved communities, is offering a free online course for teachers to help them create an online learning environment.

“The coronavirus reinforces a need that already exists anyway. More and more students are looking for digital formats to complement classroom teaching, that are appropriate to their mobile lifestyles. At the same time, digital education can respond to individual learning needs and make a major contribution to educational equity,” says Dr. Tobias Ernst, Managing Director at Kiron. “Kiron’s mission is to support this worldwide, with our experience, resources and skills”.

The tutorial takes the form of video lessons. The videos explain key concepts such as synchronous and asynchronous learning, MOOC, OER or blended learning. They also offer guidance on the differences between online and offline teaching, on strategies for creating an online methodology, improving one’s online presence, increasing active participation from students online, addressing the gender question and finally creating a learning environment.

The videos are part of a larger “Teaching Online” study program and were produced by Kiron and the Technical University of Lübeck funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. On the teach.kiron.ngo platform, Kiron makes content from the free course publicly available to anyone interested, helping educators who are teaching online for the first time with practical tips to facilitate the transition into online learning.