The Western University of Timișoara started, on June 15, 2020, the continuing professional training and development postgraduate study program with the title "Educational and digital resources for online training” specially dedicated to the training of teachers in pre-university education, useful for increasing the skills necessary to carry out online teaching-learning-evaluation activities.
In a period of only two weeks, from the announcement of the program to its start, a number of 90 teachers from 30 counties expressed their participation option and registered online. The first counties, according to the number of requests, are: Timiș – 17 requests, the municipality of Bucharest – 8, Hunedoara – 7 and Vrancea 6, Argeș and Iași with 5 requests each.
The rector of UVT, university professor dr. Marilen Gabriel Pirtea, remarked: "The organization of this postgraduate studies program responds to a need and a real demand of the training and professional development market, regarding the development of the capacities of secondary and primary education teachers, oriented towards the use of tools, technologies and digital resources to carry out teaching, learning, assessment activities online in general and in e-learning. We are happy because this study program met the expectations of pre-university teachers, it is a gratifying stage result that motivates us further towards the development of this postgraduate education program".
Considering the extremely busy period with national exams (the national assessment for 8th grade students, the baccalaureate for 12th grade students, tenures, etc.), in the end a number of 68 teaching staff followed the program, who teach so:
• at the level of high school education-49%, gymnasium-30%, primary-11%, others-11% (post-high school, non-formal, university);
• in schools from rural areas-18%, from urban areas-82%.
The teaching staff who followed the program come from 25 counties, mostly from the counties of Hunedoara, Timiș, the municipality of Bucharest, Iași, Vrancea, Maramureș, Arad, Argeș, Bacău, Bistrița-Năsăud, Brașov, Mureș.
In order to offer the opportunity to participate in the postgraduate studies program for as many of those who registered, three groups were formed, which went through the proposed program for the development of key/transversal and specific skills - established by the European Framework document for Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu), which specifies the competences for educators in the European Framework of Digital Key Competences. The curriculum of the proposed program contains six subjects, of which three subjects focus on didactic and pedagogical aspects of the didactic activities carried out online, and the other three subjects have as their object the most used platforms in teaching-learning-evaluation educational activities, for managing communication with students, learning resources and school progress: Google Suite for Education, Microsoft Teams for Education and Moodle.
The teaching staff from UVT who support this program have knowledge and practical experience, being attested by the results obtained in the research activities and by the teaching-learning-evaluation activities carried out with the students on the e-learning.e-uvt.ro platform - the Moodle system customized for the Western University of Timișoara, which is also the support for the didactic activities of the "Educational and digital resources for online training" program.
At the end of the program, concluded on July 31 with the professional skills certification exam, a feedback questionnaire was administered to the students. We consider it of interest to indicate how the students' response was to the question "How do you rate the results obtained after completing this program compared to the initial expectations, from the point of view of usefulness in your work?". The answers, mostly appreciative, were a confirmation of the good connection made between the expectations of the students and the educational contents provided, the students appreciating as follows: "The program far exceeded expectations” – 40%, “The program was beyond expectations” – 44%, “The program was up to expectations” – 16%.
The organization of the following modules of this study program addressed to pre-university teachers will be announced in special section page dedicated to this course.
