[Warning: live blog, could be typos]
Eric Berg, executive director at Lingos, talked through two initiatives that the organisation runs to help bring high quality elearning for free to anyone in the world who is supporting others to improve their lives.
Berg told delegates at the Charity Learning Conference 2012 that at the core of the two initiatives to create and share quality elearning for free to those in the developing world – Last Mile Learning and Global Giveback – was:
- To provide multiple delivery methods
- To creating learning paths
- To use skills and experience of volunteers
Lingos is a consortium of international NGOs. They came together to share ideas and learning on how to use technology to reach people overseas. Aim was to save money and share best practice. The 75 participating organisations have 175,000 people working in developing countries.
Last Mile Learning has been set up for local organisations to get the skills they need to function successfully. Anyone in the world who is supporting people to improve their lives should have access to high quality learning for free, says Berg.
Challenge was how to create content for all users in multiple delivery mode. Did it because we had to, says Berg, as many people we try to reach do not have access to the web.
The Last Mile Learning site is split for learners and facilitators, is open source and is open to everyone.
There are 700 courses which are grouped into learning paths, not as a catalogue of courses. Berg says they they learned this approach from ecornell, which puts resources into learning paths.
Lingos based on giving from corporates. Berg is the ‘chief begging officer’. Says the private sector has been very good at sharing their content. But donors did not want this content shared for free. So, the challenge was to recreate the course content.
The answer to this is Global Giveback. For last three years been running a competition. Matched members with people who have created the private sector content and run a competition for best courses.
Result: 144 courses been created in three years. One practitioner spent 400 hours developing a course.
This year’s focus for Global Giveback is the Last Mile Learning project. There are 24 teams building the content right now.
CLC CEO Martin Baker announced the launch of a Global Giveback UK inititaive. More on that to come.
