The Department of Education, CTA organized webinar on Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) from 27 – 29 September, 2021. A total number of 68 teachers with 46 female and 22 male from 10 south schools participated in the webinar.
The participant teachers were divided into three groups of 24, 20 and 24 teachers for three days as 27, 28 and 29 September respectively. There were two sessions of one and half hour on each day with broader goals of education (21st Century Skills and BEP goals), Bloom’s taxonomy in the first session and group presentation on HOTS tools and strategies by the participants followed by Q/A and reflection in the end.
The webinar was collectively facilitated by Mr. Jamyang Gyaltsen, Education Program Coordinator of The Tibet Fund and Mr. Kalsang Wangdu, Education Specialist. The resource persons applied flipped classroom strategy to increase the participant’s engagement and learning by having them all to complete reading HOTS strategies at home, collaborate with their colleagues to complete the pre-session assignments, and finally engage in understanding the concept under the guidance of facilitators during the webinar.
During the webinar, participants were fully engaged and actively participated in the reflection, Q/A, breakout room activity. Participants gave presentations on using HOTS tools in classroom as a part of pre-assignment completed in small groups.
Most of the teachers in their feedback mentioned that the content of the training was very relevant, important and interesting but the time duration was short to absorb all the contents. They have also mentioned that the training was effective but suggested us to increase the duration of the training. Many others have requested to organize offline (physical) training for better engagement and understanding. The participants thanked the resource persons and DOE for organizing the HOTS webinar.
The HOTS webinar was funded by the USAID and the sessions were jointly coordinated by Mr. Tenzin Dorjee and Ms. Sonam Gangsang of DOE.