Winneba (C/R), Nov. 19, GNA - The University of Education, Winneba (UEW) on Friday held a colourful graduation ceremony for 5,946 Distance Education students at Winneba.

Professor Akwasi Asabere-Ameyaw, Vice-Chancellor of the University, said out of the number, 3,865 were awarded Bachelor’s degrees while 2,081 were awarded Diplomas.

Professor Asabere-Ameyaw said quite a significant number of teachers held teacher’s Certificate ‘A’ and Diplomas in Basic Education.

“These teachers need to upgrade their pedagogical skills and knowledge to remain effective and functional in their profession”.

He said the use of Distance Education enables the educational sector to respond to the national needs to train or retrain as many teachers as possible for the pre-tertiary level whilst they remained in the classroom to teach.

For this reason, our Distance Education Programmes focus on basic school teachers who have to remain in their classrooms to teach and learn at the same time, he said.

Professor Asabere-Ameyaw said the university had introduced postgraduate diplomas in Mentorship by Distance.

He said the fist cohort of 102 students matriculated in January this year, adding that this programme was to train professional certified mentors to contribute to the changing national aspirations of teacher education in Ghana.

Professor Asabere-Ameyaw said soon they would pilot videoconferencing to enable their distance education students have enhanced interaction with their course instructors to facilitate learning.

He said arrangements had been finalised to train the academic staff of Sunyani Polytechnic for the award of Postgraduate Diplomas in Education in Higher Education.

“This is an innovative programme designed to train lecturers who have no formal training in pedagogical skills,” he said and encouraged heads of tertiary insitutions to encourage their lecturers who had no formal training for effective teaching to enrol in the programme to enhance their delivery skills.