ULK POLYTECHNIC STAFF TRAINED ON COMPETENCE BASED CURRICULUM
With Rwanda’s education sector taking new shape, all academic institutions are required to teach their learners and make sure they finish their studies being competent to practically demonstrate what they acquired from class. This is what the Ministry of Education in Rwanda urges academic institutions to be doing. Aware of this, ULK Polytechnic Institute hosted training sessions on Competence Based Curriculum(CBC). The training sessions kick-started on 15th April, 2022.
Since these educational techniques entirely fall in the field of education, Mr. SIBOMANA Alphonse, a Master’s holder in Education, was at the forefront of the training to make sure all concepts related to these techniques are clearly internalized.
As SIBOMANA said, Curriculum is a total guided learning experiences designed to facilitate learning by establishing quality relationship between what is learnt and what operates outside the school. In other words, if learning cannot play a role in sorting out problems impinging on the outside society, then that learning is a failure. This calls for teachers to combine efforts and train their learners and make them competent players who will solve socio-economic problems and many others upon leaving their schools.
SIBOMANA also expounded that there is a big difference between Knowledge Based Curriculum and Competence based Curriculum in that the former involves active learning, learners build new knowledge from prior knowledge and it focuses on what learners can do and apply in different situations. Whereas, the latter is lecture based, the teacher provides subject content concepts and the teacher focuses on content and what learners can know and memorize rather than what they can do.
The training came in handy as all lecturers teaching at ULK Polytechnic Institute did not do education as a specialization. Also, this new way of teaching sounds very innovative as it is geared towards learner’s ability to do something. Given this, the training climaxed in lecturers’ vow to be training learners and equip them with the competence they need to create things.