The University of Ghana was in 2019, assigned as mentor to six public Colleges of Education: (Accra College of Education, Enchi College of Education, Peki College of Education, E.P. College of Education, Amedzofe, Mount Mary College of Education and Gbewaa College of Education, Pusiga).
The College of Education, University of Ghana, has organized a series of workshops for staff of the six affiliated Colleges of Education (CoEs) to enable them upgrade their skills in various areas of their work. The workshops were aimed at building the capacity of staff in line with the University’s commitment to holding periodic training sessions for the affiliate CoEs.
The workshops were on Appointment and Promotion Processes in the Colleges; Professional Development Session and Material Preparation; Training for Administrative Support Staff and Librarians, and Effective Financial Management for Accountants and accounting staff.
The first workshop, on Appointment and Promotion Processes in the Colleges; organised for College Principals and members of CoE Appointments and Promotions Committees, was aimed at developing a template for appointments and promotions in the CoEs, following a directive from the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) for the University to take charge of appointments and promotions in the CoEs within the harmonized scheme.
Facilitators of the workshop - Prof. Jonathan Fletcher, Rev. Dr. Ernest Ampadu, and Dr. Abraham Okrah – took participants through the processes involved in Appointments and Promotions at the University of Ghana.
A section of the participants during a workshop
A three-day virtual workshop on effective financial management was organised to discuss ensuring that financial management in all the CoEs affiliated to the University of Ghana are in tune with the Public Financial Management Act 2016 (Act 921) and other public financial management laws of Ghana.
The training further touched on best practices in implementing financial transactions that would promote academic activities specified in the agreements between the CoEs and UG, while complying with provisions of the public financial management laws of Ghana.
Content for the training included student accounts management, general ledger management, manual and electronic reconciliation, stores management, treasury, public financial management in Ghana and the Public Procurement Act among others. Facilitators for this training were accountants from the UG Finance Directorate and College of Education, led by Mr. Michael Owusu Ansah, the Acting College Finance Officer.
Additionally, 144 tutors from all six CoEs participated in a three-part Professional Development Session and Material Preparation workshop for college subject tutors.
The training focused on creating an opportunity for the participants to be familiar with assessment tasks in the Year 2 (Semester 1) course manuals and to link up assessment procedures with Bloom’s Taxonomies of Educational Objectives, an avenue for the construction of test blueprints.
Participants engaged in group work
The Acting Coordinator of the B.Ed. programme, Dr. Abraham Okrah, took participants through the course manuals to enable them familiarize themselves with the content and structure.
Rev. Dr. Ernest Ampadu took participants through the relevance of Bloom Taxonomies of Educational Objectives to today’s test construction, and Prof. Jonathan Fletcher gave a presentation on the principles of text construction and the construction of test blueprints.
Prof. Jonathan Fletcher addressing participants of the workshop for material preparation
Participants subsequently worked in groups on item specifications, taking into consideration the various topics of the twelve lessons of each manual in the construction of text items.
Participants in group discussion
A series of virtual workshops was held for administrative staff of the CoEs in the areas of records and information management, student affairs, customer service, committee work, staff appraisals, interpersonal relationship skills at work, writing of minutes, planning and implementing ceremonies and training on the ITS Support System. Administrators in the UG College of Education, led by the College Secretary, Mrs. Emelia Agyei-Mensah, as well as officers from the UG Archives and the University of Ghana Computing Systems (UGCS), were facilitators for these sessions.
Training was also held for librarians in the CoEs, on Modern Practices in Academic Libraries, Library automation using Library Management Software, E-Resources and searching techniques, Referencing and Plagiarism software (Mendeley), and Cataloguing and Classification. These sessions were facilitated by a team of librarians from the UG library system, led by Dr. Monica Mensah.