Palau3D 2023
San Diego State University, Interwork Institute is partnering with Palau Community College to implement an inter-disciplinary Bachelor’s Degree for educators. The program is designed for practicing teachers who have completed an AS degree, including necessary general education courses needed to transfer to San Diego State University, and have a desire to complete a bachelors degree. For qualified applicants, the program provides 18 courses that have been selected to enhance the skills of practicing teachers. This will be the third cohort of the Inter-Disciplinary Bachelor's Degree program offered for educators in the Republic of Palau.
San Diego State University, the Interwork Institute, has partnered with Pacific entities to provide degree and certificate training programs in the Republic of Palau and other Pacific entities for the past 30 years. These programs have resulted in over 100 individuals completing various degree programs. The bachelor’s degree program is designed to allow working professionals to complete an advanced degree without having to leave island or their current position.
The program is designed to prepare teachers in Palau with content and pedagogical expertise necessary to provide high quality instruction. Courses have been designed to incorporate local context and cultural issues, particularly in the critical content areas of mathematics, literacy, and technology. Attention has also been given to adapting the curriculum to recognize a diversity of learner needs, such as students with disabilities, and critical issues surrounding language use.
Students in the program will be practicing teachers. As such, most deal with practical issues surrounding their classroom and school experience. In response, much of the instruction will be delivered through problem/project based learning techniques. Using "real-life" issues and situations as the context for the instruction, students will be better prepared to improve their instructional practices.
The program will utilize a blended distance-learning model. This model provides face-to-face instruction for most courses and is supported through local facilitators who work with the SDSU lead instructor to ensure courses are relevant to student needs. Courses are delivered via the Internet and are also copied to flash drives to make content available to students when offline. Instructors interact with students via face-to-face instruction, online discussions, web activities, and audio and video lectures. Each course lasts approximately ten weeks. The program will take approximately three years to complete.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Theresa Lally, Director
Center for Pacific Studies
Interwork Institute
San Diego State University
3590 Camino del Rio North
San Diego, CA 92108
(760) 481-9596-Phone
(619) 594-4208-Fax
tlally@sdsu.edu
tlally10@gmail.com
