The Active Learning Project

Equipping teachers to engage students through active learning as a teaching methodology - sparking creative minds and creating active classrooms.

The Active Learning Project addresses the outdated culture of lecture-based learning and rote memorization as the dominant method of teaching in Uganda. Our solution redesigns the way education is delivered in Uganda by training teachers to use activity-based learning methods in their classrooms. This will improve the overall quality of education and will empower students to think critically and creatively.

Active learning is rarely practiced in Ugandan classrooms today due to the legacy of a colonial-based school system that emphasizes passive learning and test results as opposed to comprehension and student engagement. Historically, teachers trained in Uganda have not been equipped with the tools to know how to effectively engage students in their classrooms. 

Our solution is to train teachers in active learning through partnerships with teacher training colleges, train-the-trainer conferences for in-service teachers, and by aligning with government officials for eventual national adoption of the project. 

Our solution is designed to utilize a robust training series we have developed for teacher training colleges and teachers in-service. Initially, the trainings will be delivered in-person by expertly trained staff and will cover the pillars of active learning: creative thinking, critical analysis, and ethical decision making. Trainings will also include the topics of lesson planning and activity design, satisfying multiple learning styles, and utilization of the local environment. Our team will train teachers, give on-site supervision, observe and model lessons, and monitor and track progress of teachers and schools. Further, we will provide a digital platform to foster opportunities for teachers to continually refresh their active learning skills and to collaborate and share active learning ideas. This digital resource will provide access to a catalogued version of the active-learning curriculum in addition to refresher content and sample lesson plans for teachers to reference. Equally important, the online platform, which will be accessible by computers and mobile devices, will allow educators a space to share ideas and to collaborate on lessons. Teachers will be able to upload videos, photos, and documents to share examples of their active learning lessons, thereby serving as a resource and mentor to other teachers across schools, regions, and potentially even countries. 

We believe that teaching an activity-based curriculum will engage teachers, raise their confidence and their excitement towards ensuring their pupils’ success, and provide a platform for students to actively participate in their own learning process. We believe that a byproduct for this paradigm shift in Uganda’s approach to education will indeed be improved matriculation rates for students, and enhanced levels of critical analysis, creative problem-solving, and ethical decision making. We believe our solution will impact children to critically examine the world around them, leading to job creators, ethical leaders, and creative problem solvers – all necessary to change the world for good!

The use of technology in Ugandan classrooms is very minimal compared to other developed nations. Having the ability to co-design a technology platform with our beneficiary teachers and future beneficiaries allows for the compounding of information, best practices, and accessibility to technology that has not been prevalent in Ugandan primary school classrooms. It is both a new technology that is being developed by our team to address the challenge of access to information and resources to meet the many demands and needs of Ugandan students and teachers in the 21st century. 

The platform will allow a space for educators from all types of schools- rural and urban to post their active learning lessons. (It will store videos, photos, text, document, etc.) This tool will become a user created database of lesson ideas for teachers to utilize.

In a culture where creativity and critical thinking are not taught through daily life or the public education system to date, teachers commonly struggle to create innovative lessons on their own. Through the Active Learning Project trainings, in conjunction with the use of this technology, teachers will have access to samples sourced from other teachers. 

Over the next we months we plan to implement a training methods course in Primary Teacher Training Colleges in Uganda. These teachers will also be trained to use the technology platform and will upload content from their college demo lessons to build content as we expand.

We plan to pilot the new technology in 10 partner schools and at our demonstration campus. 

We plan to present our project to the Ministry of Education in hopes of national adoption of the project. 

Over the next 3-5 years we plan to implement The Active Learning Project in all Primary Teacher Training Colleges in Uganda. This will train future educators that are being deployed into schools. Through the use of the technology platform we will build a robust resource for educators. We will partner with the government to ensure support from the top down. 

We will package our training toolkit to be presented for fee to private schools and other countries as a professional development strategy.

By partnering with government officials in Uganda, we will continue to expand our reach. We currently operate in seven districts, 20 schools, 2 teacher training colleges, and our demonstration campus. We will continue to expand these as we refine our strategy. 

We are taking steps for national adoption of the project and are preparing to present to the Ministry of Education in the near future. 

10,483 students have benefitted from The Active Learning Project to date.

Over 300 teachers have been trained in the Active Learning Project methodology.

In 2019, we are confirmed to engage with over 1,600 college students who are training to be primary school educators through courses we are providing at teacher training colleges.

We plan to add 10 new partner schools to our portfolio with approximately 300 more educators and over 10,000 more students.We also plan to expand into multiple Primary Teacher Training Colleges, reaching over 2,000 additional future educators. We are continuing to work with district education officials and are moving toward national adoption with the government. Using the technology platform, we will be able to disseminate the project faster and further for a lower cost. 

This will total 600 educators in service; 20,000 students impacted, and 2,000 college level future educators.

We are a team of national and international teachers and social scientists who have experience implementing hands-on, student directed, activity-based teaching methods in primary schools. Our team highly values creativity, critical thinking, ethical practices and classroom innovation. We have stressed what a crucial role these life skills play in the learning process for children. We are locally led by Ugandans which will open doors for adoption of this project nationally. 

We began this project as not for profit with a goal of national implementation of the project in all primary schools and primary teacher training colleges across Uganda. We have now further developed the idea of packaging our training materials, tech platform, and delivery model as a professional development toolkit for fee. We feel that this package of goods would be attractive to private schools and other governments that wish to use our tools as a professional development course for their teachers. Funds raised from selling The Active Learning Project could in turn fund the implementation of ALP to all local schools who need the treatment most of all.

We are applying to Solve because we feel that the network and community of specialists and experts can help us advance our project to the next level. We need financial assistance to continue to move this project forward. We also need experts to help us refine our materials and technology. We are excited about the potential of being a Solve recipient. 

Some of our team's facilitation abilities are limited due to their life perspectives and lack of exposure to excellent trainings in Uganda. We need to invest in our team to train them properly to deploy these services more broadly. We need help developing trainings to use the technology most effectively in rural Ugandan environments. We need financial resources to reach our goals.