President Martelly met with Dr. Seán Rowland and his team of senior educators to discuss the teacher education programme that Hibernia College and Quisqueya University, Haiti, are developing with the Ministry of Education in Haiti. The tri-lateral partnership is initiating a National Institute for Teacher Education (INFE). This programme aims to train and certify unqualified, practicing, primary school teachers in Haiti. The outcome of this programme is a trained national teaching force. The impact is an educated generation.

The Haitian delegation received an update on the programme’s progress and phase one completion as well as discussing how to build momentum and deliver on the next phase of the programme in the most efficient and effective way. Phase two begins in February with sixty educators taking part in a blended learning programme in Haiti.

Dr. Sean Rowland, President Martelly, Sara McDonnell and Dr. Nicholas Breakwell.

Dr. Sean Rowland presents President Martelly and First Lady, Madam Martelly with a piece of Waterford crystal.

PROFILE – Teacher e-training

Hibernia College and its elearnITT programme tick all the boxes for government reform of initial teacher training (ITT) in England.

Hibernia College UK was accredited by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) this September (2011), making it the first new organisation to be accredited as an ITT provider by the TDA for more than six years.

As an accredited ITT provider, Hibernia College UK is now approved by the TDA to design and deliver ITT programmes that prepare and train new teachers for schools in England. Trainees successfully completing one of its ITT programmes will be awarded qualified teacher status and will be able to teach in schools in England.

Achieving TDA accreditation status is not easy. It is an intense, rigorous, protracted process designed to weed out organisations that are unable to demonstrate their ability to deliver high-quality ITT programmes. Hibernia College UK has invested significant time and resources achieving accreditation and is rightly proud of its achievement. Tough accreditation remains at the heart of government proposals for reform of ITT issued earlier this year – ‘Training our next generation of outstanding teachers’ – to ensure the quality of initial teacher training. Whilst more schools will be encouraged to become ITT providers, they will still need to satisfy all the
quality criteria.

Hibernia College UK, located out of offices in Central London, is a subsidiary company of Hibernia College, a long-established Irish higher education provider. Hibernia College specialises in the design and delivery of innovative, high-quality online, blended learning postgraduate education programmes and was set up with this aim in mind more than 11 years ago. In the intervening years, it has won numerous international e-learning awards.

Hibernia College has been involved in the delivery of ITT in England for more than five years but as a partner to other organisations. It opted, last year, with the support of the TDA, to apply for and secure its own separate accreditation, enabling it to design and deliver its own unique brand of ITT programmes.

Hibernia College Dublin has a particularly strong background in online ITT and continuing professional development for teachers. Under the dynamic and creative leadership of Dr Seán Rowland, the Co-Founder and President of Hibernia College and Ernst and Young emerging entrepreneur of the year for Ireland for 2008, it has grown rapidly from small beginnings to become one of Ireland’s largest teacher training providers. Its name is known widely in Ireland and, in the face of competition from other, more established institutions, it is now the provider of choice for many potential trainee teachers.

What makes it even more special is that Hibernia College delivers its training on a ‘self-funding basis’. That means its trainees fund their own programmes.

At a time of severe pressure on public finances, the importance of that factor should not be understated.

It is government policy in the UK to increase the amount and volume of higher education being delivered by private institutions, for students to contribute more through higher tuition fees to the cost of their course and for more higher education to be made accessible through online learning. Hibernia College ticks all of these boxes.

But what Hibernia College is finding, as others have before and will after, is that rules, and regulations and processes – VAT is one example – do not always match the rhetoric and still unconsciously favour traditional higher education courses delivered in traditional ways by traditional providers – making it harder for private sector organisations like Hibernia College to operate on a level playing field.

Hibernia College is Ireland’s only fully accredited online institution. It has currently more than 1,500 students in over 30 countries, and is expanding rapidly. The reality is that much higher education has not yet caught up with the advances made in information technology and continues to be delivered using face-to-face classroom/lecture hall-based techniques. These make it inflexible, inaccessible and expensive for potential students, or they are limited simply to downloadable materials. Genuine interactive online learning brings with it huge benefits if they can be realised.

Hibernia College’s longstanding mission has been to bring to higher education the full benefits of the advances in information technology and to use it to make genuinely ‘interactive’ high-quality education accessible by many more potential students, emphasising that, whilst students may learn from home, they do not learn alone. They are part of thriving online learning communities, attending and participating in twice weekly online tutorials. The fact that students genuinely engage with Hibernia College is reflected in its high course completion rates.

It is now bringing its experience to bear in delivering high-quality, online blended learning programmes for England. It is not a straight ‘lift and shift’ approach. There are many similarities between teacher training in Ireland and England, but also important differences. Hibernia College’s ITT programmes for England, drawing down relevant experience, are designed from scratch with the needs of the English market in mind.

The first of its new programmes, due to commence early in 2012, is the ‘elearnITT’ programme – focused exclusively on the training and supply to schools of new teachers of maths, chemistry and physics. These are the subjects for which secondary schools find it toughest to recruit the high-quality specialist teachers they need and are top of the government’s agenda. Hibernia College has ambitious plans to expand the programme to include modern languages. This is another secondary subject that government has identified as a priority to allow it to implement its plans for all secondary pupils to learn at least one modern language.

The reality is that for many of these subjects – physics particularly – universities provide relatively few new graduates and these graduates are in demand from many other occupations and professions and not just teaching.

By the time you strip out those graduates who have no interest in teaching and those who would not make a good teacher irrespective of training, you are left with an insufficient number to meet the ongoing demand from schools.

The elearnITT programme is different. It provides high-quality online subject knowledge enhancement as well as teacher training. What that means is that it can recruit suitable graduates from a far wider range of degree subjects and provide them with the additional subject knowledge and understanding they need to be able to train to teach that subject confidently with secure subject knowledge. It’s not rocket science. The programme can’t provide a whole degree’s worth of knowledge but it can provide them with more than enough subject knowledge to enable them to become highly effective teachers of these subjects to 11 to 16 year olds.

The elearnITT programme also embraces the government’s proposals for reform of ITT set out in ‘Training our next generation of outstanding teachers’. The focus of that reform, Hibernia College believes quite rightly so, is about placing schools, as future employers, more firmly in control of ITT to ensure that they get the right supply of new teachers, and that they receive the training they and schools need and want. elearnITT is being delivered by Hibernia College through a partnership it has developed with a national network of more than 20 high performing secondary schools (‘hub’ schools) that include five new teaching schools (teaching schools are also at the heart of government proposals to reform teacher training). elearnITT is school centred ITT.

Hub schools will take responsibility for organising, managing and delivering the school experience element of the elearnITT programme. Although elearnITT is an online, in-school programme, when they are not learning online, all elearnITT trainee teachers must spend a minimum of 24 weeks in schools. Hub schools will ensure they benefit from high quality school experiences, under the supervision of school mentors who help them to turn theory into practice and prepare them to become highly effective new teachers.

But hub school involvement goes well beyond the organisation of school experiences. Hub schools have been given a marketing and recruitment role and they are now actively identifying suitable trainees for this programme. Hibernia College’s view is that schools will have a far clearer idea of who will make a good teacher and it makes sense that they are given the opportunity to do so. It is hoped that well over 50% of trainee teachers recruited to this programme will have been ‘talent spotted’ by hub schools. All interview days for the programme take place in hub schools and school representatives sit on the interview panels and help make recommendations about who is offered a place. Schools will also supply the majority of trainers for this programme. As well as supplying school-based mentors, they will supply online and pathway tutors.

The elearnITT programme is a genuine partnership with schools designed to ensure that schools get the high-quality teachers they want and need and, for Hibernia College, that is what is most important.

Haitian educators completing one of Hibernia College's CPD Courses

Hibernia College, the Haitian Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training (MENFP) and Quisqueya University, Port-au-Prince, have partnered to establish a national institute for in-service teacher education in Haiti (Institut National pour la Formation des Enseignants, INFE).

The college is currently delivering the inaugural distance teacher education programme in Haiti, providing Haitian educators with an online Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course.

Participants include primary and secondary school teachers and directors, staff from Université Quisqueya, and members from various departments of the Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training including the CFEF (centre for training for primary school educators), the DFP (department for professional development), the CFCEF (centre for training for education managers), the COSPE (consortium of private sector education organisations in Haiti), FONHEP (distance education through the radio) and the curriculum department.

This pilot programme will be completed by mid-December. The college will then host a workshop to discuss the outcome of the project and the experience of each participant and build this research into the national programme.

Phase two of the programme will begin in February 2012. Dr. Seán Rowland returned this week from Haiti. In his comments he stated that while Haiti is in dire need of world assistance, some significant progress has been made. Dr. Rowland met with President Martelly as well as education leaders and international aid organisations. He also attended the opening of the 50th school built by Dennis O’Brien in Port-au-Prince funded by the Digicel Foundation.

Susan Walsh (Senior Programme Manager, Teacher Education) and Dr. Rowland attended the Clinton Global Initiative gathering in Haiti where Susan led the education group and presented on behalf of the international panel. Susan remains in Haiti until the Christmas break and will return to Haiti in January to continue Hibernia College’s work there. Hibernia College is also delighted to participate in Haiti Week which is organised by Haven for late January, 2012.

The goal of the collaboration is to make this new programme available to a broader range of students in South Africa through a blend of onsite tuition and web enabled learning.

Welcoming the announcement Minister O’Sullivan said, “Ireland has a reputation as world education centre and has developed an international standing as a centre of quality education and training.  Hibernia College gives international students world wide access to outstanding faculties and education.  This agreement with UWC reflects the reputation of Hibernia College for innovation and outstanding service and underpins the strong tradition of collaboration between Ireland’s third level education sector and its counterparts in other countries.”

As an engaged historically disadvantaged university, UWC has taken significant strides in developing into a research-intensive university and is committed to supporting Africa’s development though research. By driving towards excellence in a number of research areas across different disciplines, with relatively limited resources, UWC is rising to the knowledge and development challenge.

Peter Eagles, Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UWC and Chairman of the Medicines Control Council of South Africa commented, “I am very happy that our two institutions can come together to share our resources and expertise and I’m confident that our relationship will benefit not only our students, but also the drug development industry both in South Africa and further afield”.

Hibernia College is an online college based in Ireland that offers internationally accredited postgraduate programmes to students in over 30 countries.

Since its establishment in 2000, the college has been steadily building an international reputation in the field of third and fourth level online education and has received international acclaim and awards for its innovative use of web based learning.

Most recently it became the first institution to achieve “Centre of Excellence” status from the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) – Pharmatrain Programme. The IMI is a unique collaboration between industry and academia established to support the faster discovery and development of better medicines for patients.

Jeremy Whitty, Director of Hibernia College’s IMI Pharmatrain Centre of Excellence in Medicines Development, explained, “Our objective is to ensure that students and industry professionals, first in South Africa, and eventually in the major emerging markets, have access to world class education and training in Regulatory Sciences and medicines development. We are very excited to be working with UWC and look forward to jointly tackling the challenges that lie ahead.”

Both Hibernia College and UWC are also involved with the “Novartis Research Day”, an event taking place at UWC that celebrates the work of Novartis’ African interns of 2011 and also aims to foster further collaboration between academia and the pharmaceutical industry.

About the University of the Western Cape

The University of the Western Cape was established in 1960 by the then apartheid government as a higher education institute for the “Coloured” sector of the South African population. It was classified as a historically disadvantaged institution post-1994 given the limited resources that the previous apartheid government had allocated to institutions catering for sections of the population that were not white.  Since then the institution has taken significant strides in developing into a research-intensive university. Recent statistics released by the NRF place the institution 5^th in the country for the proportion of the staff that has a NRF-rating, behind the previously advantaged universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Witwatersrand and Rhodes. In recognition of the advances made in recent times, the University was awarded a DST/NRF Chair in Bioinformatics in 2007, a Research Chair in the area of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies in 2009 and a SKA Research Chair in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2010.  Most recently, in 2011, the University was awarded a fourth Research Chair, namely the FirstRand Foundation South African Research Chair in Mathematics Education.

The University has several cutting-edge research areas in advanced technology.  The South African National Bioinformatics Initiative is Africa’s leading Centre for Bioinformatics and one of 18 comparable centres world-wide, hosting a dedicated super Cray Computer for research. The University hosts a National Centre of Excellence, the DST/MinTek Nanotechnology Innovation Centre (NIC) Biolabels Unit as well as a Biosensors Lab, and the Department of Science and Technology has recently established a Nanoscience Centre at UWC to develop South Africa’s human capital needs in this area. The International Centre for Indigenous Phototherapy Studies (TICIPS) is a major UWC-University of Missouri (USA) project on indigenous knowledge systems within the South African Herbal Science and Medicine Institute. The University has major research programmes in Biotechnology and hydrogen fuel cells (instead of fossil fuel) as energy resource and hosts a DST National Centre of Competence in hydrogen fuel cell technology.

In establishing the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR), UWC has brought together a critical mass of outstanding academics with expertise across several disciplines. Cutting-edge research undertaken by the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) and by our academics in the Community Law Centre in human rights law and children’s rights continue to impact on policy formulation and development at national and international levels. The African Centre for Citizenship and Democracy has done sterling work towards the development of a more inclusive citizenship in the region and the African Continent. The UNESCO Centre of Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education in Africa, under the UNESCO Chair, has championed research capacity development in these areas.

UWC recently opened its new Life Sciences Building, a state-of-the-art structure for scientific research and the leading such facility on the Africa continent.

For more information about the Innovative Medicines Initiative’s PharmaTrain project see www.pharmatrain.eu

HIBERNIA COLLEGE, the online education institute, has been accredited in Britain to train maths, physics and chemistry teachers. The move will allow the college, founded by Dr Sean Rowland, to retrain bankers, accountants and lawyers to work in teaching.

“There are a lot of people out of work or seeking to change career in Britain, and we will now be able to help them,” Rowland said. Hibernia is the first new college in the past six years to have been accredited by the Training and Development Agency for Schools in Britain to provide initial teacher-training programmes.

Rowland said the college hopes to launch its first scheme in January 2012 and to train between 100 and 150 people in the first tranche.

Hibernia has teamed up with about 20 schools in England, which will allow students from the college to receive hands-on training in the classroom as well as tutoring over the internet.

“Ireland has always had a generation of educators overseas, and we want to carry on the tradition around the world using technology” he said.

Hibernia is also looking at opportunities elsewhere in Europe and in North America and Haiti, he added.

The college employs 100 full-time staff at present and plans to hire more as it expands in Britain. “We will be taking on knowledge management professionals, technology experts, tutors and lecturers ” he said.

Hibernia recently opened an office in London although it has been working in the city for several years.

Rowland was named by The Irish Times this month as the 23rd most influential person in Irish Education.

Hibernia used its pre-tax profits of €612,000 in the year to the end of January 2010 to fund its UK expansion.

The College will deliver its “elearnITT” ITT programmes using a blend of online and onsite tuition in the subject areas of Maths, Physics and Chemistry.  Trainees successfully completing these programmes will be awarded a postgraduate certificate in education as well as qualified teacher status (QTS).

Beginning in January 2012, these new programmes encourage experienced professionals to consider teaching as a profession by providing a more flexible route to becoming a fully qualified teacher.  Financial support is available to eligible participants including grants and bursaries towards fees and living costs.

Jeremy Coninx of Hibernia College UK explained, “Our objective is to help address the shortages in these subjects by opening up Maths, Physics and Chemistry teaching to many more graduates.  Our programme is unique in that it integrates high quality subject knowledge enhancement with ITT.  Many more professionals and graduates who have some, but insufficient, subject knowledge can now gain the additional subject knowledge they need to become high quality teachers in these subjects. It will be a challenging course of study, but participants will have the support of specialised mentors and will also have the opportunity to work in some of the highest performing schools in England.”

The elearnITT programme have been developed to address the current shortage of qualified teachers in STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and will be unique in that they will be delivered using a blend of online and onsite tuition, in addition to the standard 24 weeks in-school experience. The custom built online learning environment includes downloadable, multimedia-enhanced lectures, live online tutorials and access to an extensive online library.

This approach to ITT has been well matured by the College which has qualified over 4,000 teachers in Ireland using a similar model. Dr. Nicholas Breakwell, V.P. Academic Affairs at Hibernia College, noted, “The TDA accreditation is a hard earned validation of the outstanding blended learning programmes that the College has been delivering in Ireland and internationally over the last decade.”

In order to successfully deliver the elearnITT programme, Hibernia College has developed a national network of high performing and experienced schools located across England.  These “hub schools” will work closely with the college to identify suitable trainees for these programmes and to maximise the quality of the support for trainees, particularly during their time in school. The hub school partnership aims to ensure that trainees experience an integrated programme in which their online training and school based experience complement each other effectively.

Hibernia College is an internationally accredited online college with offices in London and Dublin and students and graduates in over 30 countries around the world. It is one of the largest providers of qualified primary school teachers in Ireland and has previously worked with the TDA in training secondary teachers in England. In 2010 it won gold at the UK e-Learning Age Awards and was recently designated as a European “Centre of Excellence” for the provision of its online Masters in Pharmaceutical Medicine.

You can now listen to a recording of the webinar here.

Note that this is a live recording of the webinar as it happened with comments and discussion from some very enthusiastic participants!

During the webinar, Susan shares her vision for transforming public education through online and blended learning.  She covers the latest trends, highlights from research, national and international initiatives on virtual schools, online and blended learning in K-12 education.  The objective of the session is to help practitioners understand a framework for online and blended learning.  Kristin Kipp, the United States National Online Teacher of the Year, also shares what it means to be an online teacher, reflecting on how teaching online has improved her career, and highlighting the rewards and challenges of online learning.

Susan Patrick

Susan is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL). iNACOL is the international K-12 non-profit association representing the interests of practitioners, providers and students involved in online learning worldwide.

She is the former Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. As Director, she published the U.S. National Education Technology Plan for Congress and managed research and technical assistance programs on educational technology. In addition, she co-chaired the federal government’s Advanced Technologies Working Group for Education and Training; and served as a member of the Secretary’s Rural Education Task Force.

In 2008, Susan Patrick was named by eSchool News, a leading national education technology journal, as one of the top 10 national education leaders who “have had a profound impact on educational technology” in the past decade for her work at iNACOL and at the U.S. Department of Education.

Prior, Patrick worked in Arizona on government technology policy and legislation under Governor Jane Dee Hull. She received the 2001 Governor’s Spirit of Excellence Award.

She is a former Site Director for Old Dominion University’s TELETECHNET distance learning program.

Patrick holds a master’s degree from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles and a bachelor’s degree from the Colorado College.

Patrick was the first woman to play in the men’s intramural football league at the Colorado College.

Susan Patrick has published articles and appeared in a variety of national news media such as CNN, Newsweek, USA Today, ABC News, NBC, CBS, US News and World Report, Christian Science Monitor, CSPAN, Computerworld, Forbes, National Public Radio, Education Week, New York Times, London Times, eSchool News, Converge, and numerous other publications.

Kristin Kipp

Kristin Kipp is the US National Online Teacher of the Year. Kipp, who previously taught for seven years in a traditional classroom, won the online teaching award in March 2011. She was selected from five finalists who were chosen for their outstanding online teaching and their advocacy work. Kipp is an English teacher for the 21st-Century Virtual Academy in the 84,000 student Jefferson County, Colorado district, an online school that has full-time offerings for grades 9-12 and part-time offerings for grades 7-12.

Jeremy Whitty is the Programme Director of the M.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Medicine at the School of Health Sciences, Hibernia College, Dublin and is Professor of Operations and Quality in the Life Sciences at IE Business School, Madrid.

As well as extensive academic experience in the Life Sciences, Jeremy has over 17 years industrial experience working with such companies as Wyeth Biotech (now Pfizer),  Medtronic and Bausch & Lomb.  His research includes the application of best practices in decision engineering to drug development, especially from Proof of Concept to the end of Phase IIb. He is currently conducting doctoral research at Trinity College Dublin.

Published Research

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