Learning innovation at scale: Implementing xLOBs for all UNRWA schools in the West Bank

The Experiential Learning Objects (xLOBs) model is an innovative approach to teaching and learning that is helping to significantly raise learning outcomes across the West Bank. XLOBs are pedagogical tools that support instructors in teaching complex subjects in a dynamic and engaged way. The building blocks of the model include physical and/or digital learning resources (for example, textbook extracts, articles, digital images or photos, open educational resources, video or audio snippets, stories, animations, gadgets) and learning activities and applications of knowledge that are meaningful and stimulating to students and that integrate life skills and citizenship education with subject content.

The model favours activities to entice students to continually produce knowledge and provides instructional, easy-to-use strategies that support teachers to integrate the different elements of the learning model together and to facilitate meaningful learning. Together the different building blocks of the model produce an active and stimulating learning process in the classroom while working with and through the mainstream educational systems and curriculum in the West Bank. 

An ongoing pilot in math and science has verified the effectiveness of the model and helped establish the mechanisms and tools to scale the model at an educational systems level. This project will scale the model to all 96 West Bank UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools for grades one through nine and will also experiment with UNRWA schools in Gaza. The implementation will showcase an educational transformation model that can be adopted at a systemic level and could potentially be scaled to all UNRWA schools in the region, reaching half a million Palestinian refugee children in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.