A cohort of teaching staff at the Open University of Mauritius (OUM) are to apply for Fellowship, following participation in an Advance HE programme to develop their teaching and learning skills and be recognised globally for their teaching ability.
OUM have been an Access member of Advance HE for over two years and recently completed Advance HE’s flagship programme, the CLTHE, followed by a bridging workshop to support participants in their applications for Fellowship. The programme followed a meeting at Advance HE’s London office in 2019, where OU’s senior management outlined their plans for enhancing the teaching capacity of staff and rewarding them through global recognition via the Fellowship scheme.
Due to the global pandemic the programme had to be repurposed for online delivery, leading to the participants acquiring the skills, confidence and agility to be able to adapt their practice for online and face to face teaching.
The guiding principle of OUM is to provide affordable access to high quality education through open and distance learning, with the aim of empowering learners to fulfil their potential by providing opportunities to study in a flexible way. OU students can easily combine work and family commitments with educational opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to them.
Director-General of OUM Dr Kaviraj Sukon is currently the sole Principal Fellow recognised in Mauritius and is passionate about teaching excellence and staff development. He was the driver behind the establishment of OUM by the Mauritian government in 2012, and it is the fastest growing higher education provider in Mauritius.
Dr Sukon’s career spans several education institutions and public sector bodies in Mauritius and beyond, and he has consulted for UNESCO, the United Nations Development Programme and the International Labour Organization.
Dr Sukon’s drive for learning and teaching excellence has ensured that teaching staff have every opportunity to develop their pedagogical practice and the Certificate programme underlines his commitment to continuous professional development.
Kristian Rumble, International Partnerships Manager at Advance HE said: “Dr Sukon’s commitment and passion for teaching and learning excellence is one mirrored by ourselves at Advance HE. That the Fellowship scheme is going from strength to strength across the globe, and is being recognised at OUM, demonstrates this shared passion perfectly.
“We are delighted to be working with OUM in their quest for teaching excellence and we look forward to continuing to do so in the future.”
Advance HE’s Fellowship scheme continues to be extremely successful and is increasingly recognised internationally. In March this year Advance HE passed the milestone of awarding the 10,000th Fellowship outside the UK.
Find out more about the Certificate in Learning and Teaching and HE and implementing this at your institution.
Advance HE have a number of services available to support you if you are thinking of applying for one of our categories of Fellowship, from our online category tool to help you find out which category is most closely aligned to your practice, to our new online course, the Fellowship Application Builder, as well as Writing Retreats designed to help you create an application that fully reflects your practice.
We also offer Virtual Teaching, a course aimed specifically at those who have experience teaching in HE but want more information about delivering courses via online platforms.