TEA-LP bilateral curriculum exchange process

Our partner universities are currently wrapping up the design of their new energy access focused curricula and attention is now turning towards launch of the new programmes later this year.

As a final step to prepare for delivery of the new courses, we are facilitating bilateral exchanges between pairs of partner universities, to draw and share further ideas and inspiration on the delivery of courses. We recently piloted this process with Mekelle University (MU) and the National University of Lesotho (NUL), as they have already launched their revised MSc programmes.

Course convenors from MU and NUL’s respective MSc programmes met virtually for a bilateral exchange and showcasing of their courses, across common subject areas, highlighting the most exciting or innovative student learning activities and assessment tasks that may inspire their counterparts. During the course of an hour-long Zoomshop, lecturers from each university were paired up in breakout rooms with their respective ‘content counterparts’ from the other university – e.g. lecturers on solar energy courses were paired together – and spent 30 to 40 minutes discussing their courses together, before returning to a plenary discussion to give feedback on the overall process.

Lecturer pairs discussed the content of their courses, as well as their approaches to teaching and learning and their methods of assessing students’ achievement of learning outcomes. Through the exchanges, lecturers were able to identify potential areas of collaboration and further networking between the two programmes, for example through guest (virtual) lectures, sharing of course materials and resources as well as potential co-supervision or external examination of dissertations.

The workshop therefore not only offered great insight into the curriculum designs of the respective programmes, but also provided an excellent starting point for the lecturers to leverage the TEA-LP network, through continuing to interact with their counterparts on a bilateral basis and identifying opportunities e.g. to co-teach and participate in each other’s programmes and share resources. This complements and underscores the  Africa-centric themes of these two Masters programmes, reflecting a fundamental principle of the TEA-LP project of African educators developing African curricula for African contexts