Cooperation in Networks to Produce Online Learning Material

Cooperation in Networks to Produce Online Learning Material

Gerd Junne, Bénédicte Marcilly, Mona Janning

Manuscript for the volume on “Online Collaborative Learning for Non-governmental Organizations in Developing Countries”

[Version 0.3 14-02-2010]

The present contribution describes the creation of an online programme on “Cooperation in Networks” as well as its content. The programme is the product of cooperation between The Network University (TNU: see ), the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD: see ), andmembers of national and thematic networks, which link IICD partners with other ICT for development stakeholders in Africa and Latin America.

Cooperation in networks has become crucial for Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), whether they concentrate on knowledge exchange or on advocacy. Cooperation in networks helps to get better access to resources, allows a division of labour, and assures a greater impact. To reap the benefits of such cooperation, a proliferation of all kinds of networks has taken place, from loose informal networks to highly formalized ones. But many of these networks do not perform so well. Cooperation in networks also comes at a cost. First of all, it is time consuming. It costs a lot of time to make information on one’s own organisation available to other network members, to follow what other members are doing, to participate in the network’s different activities, to design appropriate network structures and procedures, and to address the conflicts that invariably occur along the way. Many networks, after an enthusiast kick-off phase, run into difficulties and eventually become a kind of sleeping beauty that only exist by name, work at a level far below their abilities and therefore miss out on development opportunities.

This finding gave rise to the idea of creating an online course on cooperation in networks, which contributes to addressing these problems. The objectives of such a course are to: help network members to improve their cooperation, revive sleeping networks, motivate members to participate in the life of the network, and manage internal conflictsabout membership, the members’rights and obligations toward the network and each others, the network objectives, finances, and leadership. The course does not present recipes, but it describes a number of options on how other networks handled similar situations, and it provides a well structured environment, in which participants can share and discuss the problems they have encountered and the solutions they envisage.

The creation of such a programme demands different types of experience, such as experience with online courses, theoretical knowledge of networks, and practical hands-on experience with networks among NGOs.

The present contribution first explains the long-term perspective behind the programme, the process in which it has been created, and some aspects of the content of the programme. The content of the programme is then applied in a reflexive way to the process in which it has been created, because the course itself is the product of cooperation in an informal mini-network.

Network experience

IICD is actually active in nine developing countries (six countries in Africa: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, two in South America: Bolivia, Ecuador, and 1 in the Caribbean: Jamaica).[1] In these countries, national networks of IICD partner organisations and other ICT for development actors have been created. The networks focus on the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in accelerating development in various sectors (education, health, livelihoods, governance, environment) and cross-cutting themes such as gender and technical and social innovation.[2] In addition, sector specific thematic networks have been formed (where they did not yet exist), in which ideas and experiences of members shared across countries. All those networks have three major functions: they serve as a ‘connecting’ mechanism that brings people together who share similar interests;they function as a ‘collecting’ facility, allowing people to upload and download different types of information resources useful to their work; they raise awareness and they operate as lobbying and advocacy forces that influence public and sectoral policy and development processes. During the last ten years, these networks have accumulated enormous experience, which could be shared with others. These networks will in the future become ever more important, because they may take over some of the functions that IICD tries to fulfil in any given country. It is therefore crucial that these networks function well. In addition to supporting these networks, anotherobjective of the online course on cooperation in networks is to test if e-learning would be a suitable tool to share the enormous experience IICD has accumulated in the use of ICT. Actually, this tool would help to pass on IICD’s technical and social innovations in creating and enhancing development opportunities in education, good governance, livelihoods, health and the environment.

The Network University (TNU) also has an existential interest in the functioning of networks. As its name indicates, it is a network organisation in itself. It has been created out of the insight, that the best expertise with regard to a specific topic is seldom concentrated in one place only. Very often, different institutions and individuals all over the world can make an important contribution to online programmes. TNU has been created to bring the knowledge of universities, international organisations, NGOs, national ministries, and private companies together to assure high quality programmes. TNU has the ambition to involve these different kinds of organisations and knowledgeable individuals in the design and supervision of its courses. The very first course which TNU offered, on “Transforming Civil Conflict” (TCC), for example, was a course developed together with Doctors without Borders to help doctors and other specialists, who have been sent into a conflict area at short notice, with an analysis of the conflict in which they are suddenly inserted.

On the other hand, TNU also wants to stimulate collaborative learning among the participants of courses. They do not follow the programme on an individual basis, but in close contact with a group of other participants, to exchange information and opinions and to work on common assignments. In the case of the TCC course, for example, it lead to an intensive exchange between a staff member of Doctors without Borders and an army officer, who both approached the same questions from a totally different angle. Once participants have finished a course, TNU would like to stay in contact with them, to support the application of the knowledge gained in the courses, but also to connect former participants as experts to new courses. They can make an important contribution to continuously update the course, share their experience with new students in other courses, and continue to exchange information among each other.

The Broader Picture – a long-term perspective

Similar to the mission of IICD, TNU intends to contribute to capacity building in the “South”. Actually, almost all e-learning programmes originate from the “North”. One of the objectives of TNU is to provide an organisational framework, in which many “Southern” institutions can develop and offer their own programmes.

Every teacher knows that those who prepare a programme learn much more than those who follow the programme. If we want to stimulate learning processes in the global South, it is more effective to help people makeeducational programmes rather then invite them to followsuch programmes. The programme on “networks” is a step in this direction. It is a co-production with local networks in seven developing countries and of international thematic networks, which have been created and nurtured by IICD in the past ten years. Close interaction with people involved in the networks assures that the topics addressed (and the way they are dealt with) correspond to the needs of participants. It allows at the same time to select active participants who are capable and willing to act as tutors in the next rounds of the programme. In the future, they may make their own online courses. In that way, the programme intends to contribute to potentially income generating activities in the South.

In the longer run, this should help to create intellectually demanding employment opportunities in the South, which could help limit the brain drain to the North. Locating not only the tutoring of international e-learning courses in the South, but increasingly also the design of the programmes should assure that content and form are adequate for the majority of participants. At the same time, worldwide cooperation will be stimulated to keep access to the most important knowledge centres, and to achieve international accreditation.

We envisage that in the future, groups of people, dispersed over different countries, will cooperate in the design, creation, scheduling, continuous updating, tutoring, and evaluation of e-learning programmes. They will have to cooperate in networks which coordinate the selection of topics, assure the smooth cooperation between different institutions and individual content experts, programmers, graphic designers, tutors, and participants. All these stakeholders are members of networks around specific courses, and these networks have to function well. With this long-term perspective, we have started the development of a course on networking, because we,too,will need it in the future.

Creating the Online Course on Networking

The online course is itself the product of cooperation in a small informal network, in which individuals worked together with more institutionalised networks. TNU took the initiative of this course, given that it has more than ten years of experience of bringing the expertise of universities and other knowledge institutions and individual experts together in the design of courses. TNU has also a tradition of cooperation with many resource persons that incidentally contribute to running courses, either by answering specific questions or by reporting on recent experience

It is a big advantage of online courses that they can be created on the basis of more than one individual’s experience only. Since most of the programme is web-based, a lot of expertise can be brought together. It becomes possible not only to make programmes ON specific challenges, but to make programmes together WITH the persons who experience the challenges, wherever they are.

This has to guarantee that courses are demand-oriented and not, as often is the case, in anticipation of what potential participants should get to know. This way of jointly developing a course does require a working structure that takes advantage of the flexibility of web based programmes, yet makes sure to harvest and process the generated information. Hence, there need to be a group of leaders and initiators who identify the problem around which a course is built. Those persons then need to involve people who might contribute in a valuable way, be it as academic expert or having hands-on experience.

This is not a question of “crowd-sourcing”, but a question of addressing specific sources of knowledge directly. The challenge is how to make people interested to contribute and invest time. Many people are ready to share some of their knowledge, as long as this is not overly burdensome for them, as long as their contribution is duly acknowledged, and as long as they gain some intellectual benefit from the exchange. Experts get (yet) another opportunity to make their perspective public and to apply their knowledge in order to assist others. They might also find it attractive to be challenged in search of more complicated solutions and answers. The contributors to Wikipedia and the Linux open source system have often joined for competitive pleasure[3]. However, in the longer run, an expectation of reciprocity is needed, the idea to get back of what has been given to keep people willing to share. So the more an online programme achieves to beinteresting, the easier it becomes to find additional experts who contribute to it, because the experts themselves also benefit intellectually from their participation.

It is a great advantage of having a broader range of resource persons around a programme. Participation of other experts makes it interesting for additional experts to join. And if there are more experts, they should be less bothered individually. It should be one of the tasks of the moderator of the online programme to make sure that only questions that cannot be answered otherwise are passed on to external experts, and that the time needed to answer them remains within acceptable limits (perhaps explicitly agreed upon).[4]

Collaborative learning thus begins in the early design phase of a course. It is not only a question of cooperation among the participants (learners), but already a challenge for the group of course makers, who have to find a way to cooperate with each other in the making of the course.

In the concrete case of this network course, its creation started with the cooperation between the three authors of the present contribution. One of them is working in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, one in Hamburg in Germany, and the third shuttling between the IICD office in The Hague andMali and Ecuadorto interact with local partners, build their capacities and give them strategic advice and technical and financial support. In a second phase, we broadened the interaction with members of the national networks in Mali and Ecuadorand invited them to participate in the exchange. In this way, the preparatory phase in itself is already of considerable value, because a lot of experience is exchanged and a common learning process is initiated.

It is for this kind of cooperation in a formal or informal network that the network course has been made. TNU does offer an online course on how to create an online course.[5] But that course concentrates more on the individual steps that have to be set in order to design an online course, discusses the differences in comparison with face-to-face courses and focusses on what online moderators need to take care of.

The creation of the network course started with a discussion between TNU and IICD on the possible contents of a course and on a Memorandum of Understanding which clarified what the two parties would contribute to the programme and what they expected to get from it in return. IICD would share its experience onsupporting the creation and (co-)operation of national and thematic networks with TNU, and TNU would not use the information for any other purpose than for the common course. In return, IICD network partners will be given access to the course free of charge (up to a maximum of half the total participants of any given course). IICD staff members can also participate in the course (without any obligations), and IICD can put course material also on its own website, as long as reference is made to TNU and the common course as a source. TNU aims to offer the course on a cost covering (not for profit) base to other institutions as well.

When the Memorandum of Understanding was signed, the development of course material started, but at a slow pace. Since it is not part of a paid project with fixed deadlines, the risk is always high that work on the programme is interrupted by other obligations. To speed up the preparation of course material, former TNU staff joined the project and prepared a large part of the content materialfor TNU while the IICD staff prepared material from the IICD experience.

An early version of the result was then discussed with members of IICD’s national networks in Mali and Ecuador. Partners in Ecuador gave encouraging feedback. They found the provisional material very interesting and some of them said that they would definitely join the course once it is ready. They had not yet come across an online course on networks, which proposes theory with a lot of practical examples. They raised a number of conceptual issues and made valuable suggestions for the structure of the course. They also provided a lot of editorial advice.

For partners in Mali, this was more difficult. First of all, they had a number of clarifying questions, because the language barrier created some difficulties.[6] They also were concerned about access to online courses in general, because of unstable connectivity. For partners in a similar situation, it would be practical to have some course material in an off-line version, even if this reduces the interaction with participants in other networks abroad.

At the point of writing, the comments received are incorporated in the course material, which is extended to cover those aspects which still need elaboration. The result will be a beta-version that will shortly be put on the web in order to test the course with members of the IICD networks. In this way, a programme is created which provides many examples of concrete pitfalls in the development of networks and of ways to avoid them.The initial moderation of the course will be done by the authors of this contribution, who are also responsible for the further continuous improvement of the content.

The Content of the Course on Networking

The course provides a structured way to explore relevant literature and to benefit from the insights of other participants. Different participants will go through the course in different ways and follow their own path, depending on their own interest, their previous level of knowledge and the time they can invest.. The content of the course will thus not be the same for all participants but caters to the needs of the individual learner.