Projects

Sesame Workshop International, South Africa (Takalani Sesame) requested NBA to conduct a needs assessment to inform content development for a WhatsApp Chatbot to be implemented in South Africa. Three partners are involved in the Chatbot project: Takalani Sesame, the LEGO Foundation and DBE-E³.

NBA is working with VVOB and Ntataise as the learning partner in this four-year project focused on professional development of ECD practitioners and teachers on learning through play. Funded by the Lego Foundation, the project seeks to build a common vision nationally on learning through play in ECD, specifically for Grade RR and Grade R.

NBA is working with the World Bank and other partners to develop and populate a website to store and share print-ready files for early literacy resources, including storybooks textbooks, teacher’s guides and more.

This new site, funded by the World Bank’s Read@Home initiative, allows education projects and governments to download print-ready materials for printing at scale and to upload files to share with the global education community. No login is required. 

In 2021, NBA developed a strategy for the Moleskine Foundation's WikiAfrica Education initiative. WikiAfrica Education is a platform of empowerment that amplifies voices from Africa to reflect the rich and valuable history, languages, people, and communities of the continent. The vision of WikiAfrica Education is to inspire a new generation of African creative thinkers and doers by increasing production, access, and awareness of contextually and linguistically relevant knowledge resources from Africa. WikiAfrica Education hosts AfroCuration events to achieve this vision.

NBA has developed and implemented a course based on the Guidelines on Open and Distance Learning for Youth and Adult Literacy for the Commonwealth of Learning and Unesco Institute for Lifelong Learning. The six-week course was developed on the UIL Learning Hub platform.

Funded by the Manufacturing, Engineering and Related Services Sector Education and Training Authority (merSETA), the Eco-vehicles Skills Programme seeks to use an innovative skills development approach that enables students to develop basic knowledge and skills related to sustainable energy. Students work together in groups to build an eco-vehicle, learning about sustainability and related concepts in the process. NBA collaborated with the University of the Free State (UFS) to develop two skills courses, which were offered via Blackboard, the UFS learning management system.

NBA designed, developed and are hosting the Vula Bula African language graded reading series repository. Vula Bula offers carefully structured graded texts for early, emergent and fluent readers in the form of beautifully illustrated stories, contextualised to the young reader’s inner world and life experiences. The books are short and simple, and contain predictable text to facilitate and encourage reading for enjoyment. Simple sentence structures and familiar vocabulary enable rapid reading progress. Clear and detailed illustrations help understanding. 

Working with the Education Development Center (EDC) based in New York, NBA is the South African partner for a two-pronged evaluation study for Takalani Sesame. The first component of the research is the evaluation of Takalani Sesame's Community Engagement work in the Free State. Through this programme, ECD practitioners and parents are trained in how to use learning through play to enrich early learning both at school and in the home and NBA is researching the effectiveness of the intervention.

NBA is providing ongoing consulting support to the Ministry of Education in Guyana in support of implementation of its ICT Master Plan. This started, though UNESCO, with support in the development of an EMIS Masterplan, with support now being provided beyond that to develop an EMIS Operational Manual and Data Management Framework as OpenEMIS is rolled out by the Community Services Foundation in the country. 

In addition, NBA is supporting the development of various related ICT Frameworks for the education system. These are:

The LEGO Foundation has contracted NBA as a research partner to conduct evaluation research for the Foundation Phase Initiative (FPI). The FPI is a partnership between the Department of Education (DBE), UNESCO, Care for Education (CfE) and the LEGO Foundation. The programme is focused on equipping Foundation Phase teachers to use play-based learning and manipulatives (Six Bricks) in their classrooms. Our evaluation work to date has included a large scale survey of teachers who have been trained in Gauteng, Free State and Eastern Cape, teacher interviews and lesson observations.