A very interesting document about e-learning uses in a 697 nonprofits survey carried on by Isoph and N-TEN: what do they use it for, what are the main pros and cons, etc.
The key findings are as follows:
There’s a wide and growing adoption of e-learning among NPOs, being the largest organizations the most rapid adopters. The survey points that the main reasons for this are a big annual budget and/or a wide geographic focus. I totally agree with this, but I’d like to add that a managerial culture within the organization is also a must to adopt e-learning. While little NPOs usually just don’t “understand” the concept of investment, bigger NPOs do. The reason – linked to big budgets, of course – is that they prefer action than bureaucracy, forgetting that some of this bureaucracy will entail more efficiency in the overall performance of the NPO and its projects.
Vast majority of organizations are (somewhat) satisfied, mainly due to convenience for learners, ability to reach more learners (access) and cost-effectiveness.
Main barriers are staff time, funding, expertise, concern about end user’s technology and concern for effectiveness. I think most of these barriers will disappear once e-learning is a well known technology widely adopted by many, especially concern and expertise matters. Staff time barries are surely linked with what I said before about seeing training in general (not just e-learning) an investment instead of a simple expenditure such as travel costs or electricity consumes.
Most uses concern staff and volunteer training, in first place, and advocacy in second place. There’s a big lack of training for development. End user’s technology concern/shortage is, no doubt, the barrier to overcome in this case. Sadly, is surely one of the best applications of e-learning in development projects.
The article at Goiaba Knowledge Bridge mainly deals with language matters when working internationally. Not that it is very original, but yet it arises some aspects you’d easily overlook.
Just three contributions (one is repeated ;)
To the problem of communication: well, this is not new and we’d surely must communicate in some lingua franca, i.e. English, Spanish, etc. I know the problem is still there. Then: literacy in this language is a must, not for development, but for living (if I’m allowed to exagerate a bit ;)
To the problem of translating and so: online volunteers is quite an option
To the problem of social/tacit knowledge spread all over the world: online volunteers again, stuck to the community and with their knowledge at a click’s reach. If correctly designed, the online volunteers community will not have language matters
To the problem of local content: well, the internet and, especially, intranets, wikis and blogs just ease this creation of local content. Digital literacy is, then, also a must. And technologies focused to content (and not technologies for technology) are the tool.
Dgroups is an online home for groups and communities interested in international development.
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The people leading Dgroups have formed the Dgroups Partnership. Current partners include Bellanet, DFID, Hivos, ICA, IICD, OneWorld, UNAIDS and WorldBank.
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There are an ever increasing number of development organizations that want to have online groups or communities. Instead of creating separate solutions, why not come together and support a platform not just for each other, but for the entire development community?
In my opinion, the added value of DGroups is not the platform itself (you can find zillions of them in the Net) but being thematic, so you can search, within international development, who’s working in a concrete sector, region or country. Some groups are open so you can see its members (with customized resume or message to the visitor), resources, messages and events (group calendar) and even join them.
e-Learning in Nonprofits and Associations (124 Kb)
