ICTlogy

Why on-line learning in cooperation for development projects and organizations

The best way to understand how can online learning benefit nonprofits is looking at it from the point of view of the educational/training needs and the main reasons why these actions are not carried on: lack of time, lack of financial resources, geographical barriers or commuting difficulties to attend onsite training, impossibility to expatriate the trainer, etc.

Online learning allows, in most cases, overcome these barriers:

• Making possible training: when other models have proved non-viable, plenty of times virtuallity is the only option
• Training without boundaries of time or space (asynchrony and ubiquity). This also implies a huge increase in the accessibility of training (economies of scope), which might be of a special importance for rural communities or nonprofits with a big decentralized network of headquarters, offices and expatriates
• Possibility to adapt and customize the educational action, incorporating south-south collaborations, more interculturallity, sensitivity towards local socioeconomical reality, etc.
• Turn economies of scale possible, thus making training sustainable in the medium run or for a greater number of people, possibiliting the increase of these trainees with a lesser effort and easing the replicability of the educative action
• Enhance the feedback and virtuous circles of the process: through training for trainers, the once trainees then become trainers, positively feedbacking the process by bringing local knowledge. Feedback, at the end of the project, becomes a powerful tool for the empowerment of the target community

What for on-line learning in cooperation for development projects and organizations

Training of the cooperation for development agents

NGO’s – and nonprofits in general – consist of people on staff, volunteers, expatriates, punctual collaborators… All of the need some training and specific skills to carry on with their responsibilities.

Courses about cooperation for development, humanitarian law, volunteering management, cooperation projects management, accountancy, ofimatics, foreign languages, etc. can be imparted and followed through the Internet, thus easing the training receivers to follow the courses comfortably and also enabling the organization to include as trainers those who are the real experts in the subject – not the ones just available –, besides the concerns about communing or assisting onsite sessions.

Advocacy

There’re some organizations whose aim or mission is just let people know about or report human rights violations, unequal wealth distribution situations, etc. It is then a key for success to reach the major number of people. The same effort invested in a determinate action can be focused to a virtual action where the potential target will be the whole world – or, at least, the ones with connectivity to the network and understanding the language of the action. Indeed, the learning materials and the exchange of experiences could be reused for future training editions or by people interested in one specific area of interest.

Capacitation for development

Once the technology has reached developing and underdeveloped countries – and this is becoming more and more feasible thanks to huge infrastructure programs to foster ICTs – it is easier to let their less favored communities get reached by knowledge, a transmission of knowledge that, until now, was only possible through expensive travel and mobilization of experts or people to be trained.
Energy resources management, setting up of water systems, microcredit, self entrepreneurship, cooperativism, digital literacy, infectious diseases prophylaxis and treatment, and a long etcetera of possibilities that, sometimes, they require presence, but that in many others can just be solved virtually or be extremely eased by virtualizing a part of the whole training project.

Yan Simard asked me a few questions related to my previous post.

As I was writing I though it was worth to put is as a post rather than a comment.

My answers are:

• Yes, I think that Google is maybe the best search tool, and maybe it can also become the best learning object search tool. But no, I don’t think that www/Google is still the world’s most efficient learning object repository/search tool.
• And yes, I think there’s a need to gather/describe Learning Objects in a repository just because learning objects do significantly differ in their essence from what you can find browsing the web.

I guess the heart of it all lays just in that last statement: not everything having information is a learning object, and usually, not even a knowledge object.

We can think of a word processor handbook, a word processor tutorial and a the materials of a course on how to use a word processor.

The first one is just information: this word processor can do this and that.
The second one has experience in it: these are ways to use your word processor. You could call it a knowledge object.
The third one pretends to be a knowledge transferrer: learn how to use your word processor so you can use it on your own. It is a learning object.

If we believe that these three objects are different, then Google, that will find everything without discriminating, is not a LO repository (maybe Google Scholar might become sort of it ;)

I you search the web for Learning Objects Characteristics you’d find, mainly, technical characteristics (reusability, number of elements, type of object, etc.). But their aim is not technical but a matter of concept. The Learning Objects Characteristics under a conceptual point of view could be (list not complete ;) :

• pedagogical goals
• target of the course
• methodology
• categories/subjects
• syllabus
• length
• teaching load
• schedule/calendar
• authoring
• mentoring/teaching
• evaluation
• metadata
• standards

Not everything in the WWW has these characteristics but everything in a Learning Objects repository should.
And, if you understand these characteristics (technical and conceptual) as fields, then you have a potential database, thus a LO repository, whose main feature is intelligent queries. Google is good, but it is not yet that intelligent :)

Nevertheless, it is absolutely true that “if you look at various learning object repositories, you will find that when yo do a search you get a lot of worthless results” and that some “learning objects don’t significantly differ in their essence from what you can find browsing the web”, but I think this is not the object’s fault, but the author’s, a human error, somebody thinking what he did is a learning object and it is not.

I also agree with you that “the learning object concept is an answer looking for a question and that question has yet to be found” but there’re lots of good approximations to the correct answer :)

Downloaded and installed Kitten’s Spaminator. Hope it helps me out with some asshole usually spamming here (and all around the WordPress-sphere) :@

I think there’s been some trouble with ICTlogy.net RDF feed, at least it seems to me so looking at Bloglines.

I suggest, thus, that those subscribed to this feed shift to RSS or Atom to avoid being banned from reading such things ;)

I guess I already finished to update to WordPress v1.2.1 “Mingus”

Things I changed (to keep in mind for the next update):

• index.php: functions, template
• wp-admin/admin-header.php: header customization
• wp-admin/menu.php: include own menus
• wp-admin/wp-admin.css: admin header customization, categories column resizing: left position, width, height
• wp-include/template-functions-category.php: function wp_list_cats arguments to sort by name and show/hide empty ones
• clean cookies in cache: if not, unable to login to admin :P
• upload own js, css, images, documents, etc.

My setup is completed and can be always seen in my blog’s right column, at the bottom section: Setup

Nabuur.com is a community of on-line communities to provide assessment to villages in need of help all over the world.

It’s an online volunteering project and, according to their web site, it works thit way:

1. A community has an urgent question

It all starts with a local community in a developing country looking for assistance. After a screening by NABUUR this community gets a ‘Village’ on NABUUR.com. On this Village the representative of the local community describes the question or problem to be solved.

2. Virtual Neighbors look for solutions

NABUUR invites visitors to NABUUR.com and they become ‘Neighbors’ of a Village. These virtual Neighbors then start looking for solutions to the question described by the local representative. They work together and report their findings on the Discussion boards of the Village.

3. Best solutions are selected

After several solutions have been found and the best ones selected, the Neighbors present these solutions to the local representative. The local representative discusses the solutions with his or her people.

4. Solutions are implemented

If the solutions found by the Neighbors fit the local situation they are implemented. The Neighbors get to see the results (photos, stories) on NABUUR.com.

In most cases further assistance of the virtual Neighbors is required. A new question is put to the Neighbors by the local representative and the process starts again.