EU 4 Inclusive Teaching project is funded by EuropeAid and it was started in 2022 with a budget of 2,2 m€. The objective of the project is to enhance inclusive competence-based learning in pre-university education in Albania, and to equip teachers with skills and competences needed for applying the concept of inclusive teaching. One of the specific focal points was greater inclusion of children with disabilities and children from disadvantaged backgrounds in schools. TAMK’s role in the project was being responsible for designing and implementing a ‘trainer-of-the-trainer’ (ToT) program for over 300 Albanian teachers about modern and inclusive pedagogies together with Tampere University. The trainers would then train their colleagues so that the actual reach of the project is as high as 15,000 teachers in Albania, in turn benefiting 135,000 children and young people.
I had the privilege of joining the EU 4 Inclusive Teaching project in early 2025. My role in the project was two-fold: firstly, I would be running trainings on using Zoom and Moodle as tools for learning for a small group of Albanian teachers that would then use these tools when they train their colleagues. Before these trainings, I of course prepared a special Moodle area for them to showcase how it can be used, and I also created a separate sandbox Moodle for them where they can test everything with teacher rights. It was eye-opening to interact with the teachers within these sessions to discover how they understand online learning and the pedagogy behind it, and again, as it so often happens, I ended up learning probably just as much as the Albanian teachers.
After this training, my role changed, as I started working together with Wide Services and Open Society Foundation for Albania to help them build a learning environment where they could then run the trainings for 15,000 Albanian teachers. I have a long experience of working on digital pedagogy, learning design, and various digital learning environments, and based on my previous knowledge and experiences, I consulted the project partners at various stages of the development process. The first step was to go through the lengthy technical specifications provided by Open Society Foundation for Albania, which outlined the requirements for the learning environment, and comment on things I thought needed some feedback. Wide Services was responsible for building the environment as a customized Moodle installation, and I was happy to notice that they implemented all the improvements I suggested very efficiently. The core team developing the learning environment had weekly meetings to see the progress and to offer directions for developing it further. We also continuously tested all the features of the environment through multiple roles and on different devices. Finally, the training Moodle was ready.
The project culminated in December 2025, when the final event was held in Tirana. It was amazing to see the large group of different stakeholders that the project had benefited gather for the event, and I felt really privileged to be a tiny part of the whole thing. I hope this blog post served as an example how RDI projects can really make a difference, and even something as mundane as Moodle can turn into something rather exciting when implemented in an international, cross-disciplinary setting.
Text and picture:
Henri Annala
Senior Lecturer, International Coordinator, Digital Pedagogy Expert TAMK.
