AQUEDUTO has a variety of aims:
- helping online training course providers evaluate and validate their own courses
- helping teachers find the right, quality training course for their own developmental needs
- contributing to developing research into effective online training and sharing best practice among partner institutions.
Members currently include: Laureate International Universities, International House London, NILE, The Consultants-E, Macmillan Education, International House World Organisation and the British Council. AQUEDUTO also has reciprocal partnerships with organisations such as Eaquals, Trinity College London and others. Since 2015 AQUEDOTO has developed and revised a quality assurance framework for online training and begun a research agenda.
AQUEDUTO has recently published its first piece of commissioned research which takes a broad look at the current state of Online Language Teacher Education (OLTE). From the executive summary:
“Critical for our understanding of the impact of OLTE on teacher learning is what knowledge and skills teachers acquire in OLTE and the extent to which they can apply that knowledge and skills to become effective classroom language teachers. Future research needs to investigate the impact of both pedagogical and technological designs on teacher learning.”
Murray. D.E. and Christison, M. (2018). Online Language Teacher Education: A Review of the Literature. Aqueduto, Norwich.
The full paper is available online and open access at http://aqueduto.com/research.