International Development Office

The Open University

Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
United Kingdom
MK7 6AA
Tel +44 (0) 1908 655694
www.open.ac.uk/ido

10th November 2020

Dear Participant from the 2020 cohort

As the Academic Director of TIDE it is my pleasure to welcome you once again to the project as a whole and to
remind you of some key features of it. It is unfortunate that Covid 19 has disrupted all our plans more than
once and that you have not yet been able to do much with the TIDE team, but we hope that what we now plan
for you to do can continue whatever happens next.

As you may recall the TIDE team is a consortium of UK and Myanmar partners working closely with the
Ministry of Education to help transform distance education in Myanmar. The project is currently due to run
until September 2021 and involves 40 Universities and Colleges in Myanmar and over 300 staff from those
universities. Much has been done but more still needs to be done despite the disruptions we have faced.

You are part of the third and final cohort of 19 universities and colleges whose nominated academic and ICT,
Library and other support staff will participate in some professional development activities over the next 8
months as shown in the infographic below. The new programme has a central element that all staff should
study but there are also specific strands for academic staff and for ICT/support staff. This is not as long or
detailed a programme as you would have undertaken before the disruption occurred and is largely by
individual self-study as we are not able to meet in person or work in teams. But we still believe that this will be
of value to you and your institution. It may be that you have already studied the take your teaching online
course from the special collection of courses that TIDE has made available for university staff and academics in
Myanmar, in which case you may find some elements of the new programme familiar.
An important feature of TIDE so far has been the way that the participating Universities have encouraged
participants to cascade what they have learned through various training events to colleagues. While this has
naturally stopped due to Covid 19 restrictions, we hope that you will be able to cascade what you learn to your
colleagues in your own organizations when that is allowed. We are also planning for some participants from
the first cohort who have already benefited from TIDE activities will support and encourage yourselves in
developing your knowledge and skills. All this is to ensure that as many people benefit from TIDE as possible,
both during and after the project ends, and that knowledge and skills are shared widely.

Finally, I would also like to invite you to watch the recorded briefing presentation, sent to you in due course,
which will provide me with the opportunity to tell you more about the project and to give an overview of the
planned self-study activities you will be undertaking over the duration of our time together.

Welcome again to TIDE and thank you for your cooperation in moving this project forward.

Yours Sincerely,

Andy Lane BSc DIC PhD MCIEEM CEnv PFHEA

Academic Director – TIDE