Welcome to the course

Welcome to the Leadership and Action online course for Winter 2020 – we are so excited to welcome you to the project!

Course Format

You will generally be sent a post each Monday. You will have one week to read the article, and post an answer onto the discussion board, also commenting on the post of another individual.

From experience, we think you may find that reading the answers of other participants is more rewarding than the actual initial blog post itself, which is intended simply to be a stimulus.

Commenting guidelines 

You will be able to comment on the blog post at the bottom of the page. Please do be respectful of other pupils’ views and keep comments friendly. Disagreement is welcomed – just be sure to probe and ask questions, rather than attack. We ask everyone taking this course to be open minded to different ways of thinking about the topics. Our team (split across Ghana and the UK) will be moderating the forums, comments will need to be approved by a moderator before becoming live on the platform.

In order for us to identify you, please only use your school email address or the email you used to sign up when asked to enter this information.

Please do not post any personal details to enable anyone to contact you. We will delete any comments that have personal information. If you would like to get in touch with someone, we will speak to teachers about this – email gtunnacliffe@eduspots.org.

Certification

Certificates will be awarded to those who complete a minimum of 5 out of 6 posts. We will be awarding marks of ‘distinction’ to those who offer particularly thoughtful contributions (those who really listen to others, ask interesting questions and engage critically and reflectively).

Those pupils who really excel, will be offered ‘best in cohort’ awards.

Course Aims

One of the central aims of EduSpots as an organisation is to enable people across the world to come together to reflect critically and empathetically on global issues and sustainable development.

Across the past few years, the EduSpots team has learnt a huge amount from the course discussion board which has focused upon gathering different views and perspectives on different controversial topics. It is our hope that this global learning project can help us all better understand each other, and provide a space to ask questions, critically reflect, and empathise with the perspectives of others.

As Appiah (a Ghanaian born philosopher – we recommend you read his book Cosmopolitanism), suggests: ‘conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people to get used to one another.’ Perhaps there are some values that we can hope to converge on, but upon others, total agreement seems unlikely.

Our team

The team involved are: Stephen Tettegah (EduSpots Head of Education and Leadership Development), Ali Eliasu (EduSpots Head of STEM and Sustainability), Priscilla Appiah (Head of Core Training and Leadership Coaching), George Tunnacliffe (Head of School Partnerships), Saoirse Walsh (School Partnerships Officer), alongside Cat Davison (Chair). You can read more about their backgrounds here.