Eric Berg, Executive Director of LINGOs (Learning In NGOs) announced the eight finalists and two winners of the second eLearning Global Giveback Competition today at The eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions Conference and Expo in Orlando, Florida.
Eric Berg, Executive Director of LINGOs, announces the winners of the competition.
Competition winners
The winner in the individual developer category is Amanda Warner, who created the course “Consumer Protection and Financial Education in Microfinance” for ACCION, a microfinance organization based in Boston. The course launched publicly late last month as part of the SMART Campaign. The Flash-authored course has already hosted nearly 500 views.
Amanda Warner, winner of the Individual Developer Category, with her course and her award.
The winning course in the corporate developer category is “Coaching for Results,” created by Illumina Interactive, Inc. and EnVision Performance Solutions, Inc. for LINGOs member Management Sciences for Health, based in Cambridge, MA.
Karen Sherk, of LINGOs member Management Sciences for Health, with the winning course in the Corporate Developer Category. The course was created by Illumina Interactive and EnVision Performance Solutions, Inc.
The Finalists in the individual developer category are:
| Volunteer Finalist | Course Title | Agency |
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Code of Conduct |
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Suzanne Davies and |
HFHI Values in Action |
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Mikaron Fortier and |
Managing your Business Expenses at The Nature Conservancy |
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Pretesting Social Marketing Messages |
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Susan Lichtig and |
PSI Ethics Training |
Finalists in the Corporate Developer category are:
| Volunteer Finalist | Course Title | Agency |
|
A Primer to the Global Fund |
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How to Design a Team-building Workshop |
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A Values Driven Workplace - Living Our Values at ACCION |
The winning and finalist courses are available for viewing at http://lingosglobalgiveback.org/ .
The judges
Agencies entered the courses into the competition and provided a first round of judging on ten criteria. The top courses in each category were then sent to an international panel of seven e-Learning experts based in four countries. The judges reviewed each of the top courses against eight criteria and selected the top courses from each of the two entry categories. The eLearning Guild and LINGOs are enormously grateful to this year’s panel of judges.
Jane Bozarth, Columnist, Learning Solutions Magazine
Greg Davis, Precision eLearning
Linda English, eLearning for Kids
Jane Hart, Center for Learning & Performance Technologies
Jim Klaas, DevEd International
Patti Shank, Learning Peaks
Roger Steele, LINGOs
Comments from winners and agencies
This is Amanda Warner’s second time participating in the eLearning Global Giveback and her second time partnering with microfinance not-for-profit ACCION, whose mission is to give people the financial tools they need to work their way out of poverty. Her first course, “Build, Manage, and Improve Credit,” is available online. “It’s so motivating to see the course in action,” said Warner, who estimates she spent between 180 and 210 hours developing this year’s winning course.
“It was great to play with different ideas, and work on a totally different type of content from my day job,” she said. Warner took reams of ACCION’s existing face-to-face course materials, spreadsheets, Word documents, published guides, and other resources, and developed a proposal for an engaging, interactive simulation.
ACCION Representative Amy Stewart worked with Warner on this year’s individual winning entry as well as with corporate entry Finalist WITS Interactive, who created a custom-course for ACCION “A Values Driven Workplace - Living Our Values at ACCION.” Stewart is grateful both to developers, and to LINGOs and The eLearning Guild for organizing the competition. “There is no question that these courses add value to ACCION,” she said.
Jude Griffin of Management Sciences for Health (MSH), the health organization benefitting from the corporate category first-place course agreed. “The experience of working with Illumina Interactive and EnVision Performance Solutions was fantastic,” she said. “They took the Moodle platform and pulled in other tools. They showed it’s a viable way to use multiple software elements and make a really interactive learning.”
“This course will help people understand what’s possible,” Michael Getz of Illumina Interactive noted. “The course was a springboard opportunity to push the envelope in terms of learning experience,” he said. “We used a creative approach to the blended learning environment: adding value and content to the core content that MSH provided.” The course is built in Moodle. It includes quizzes and engaging interactions through Articulate, and surveys and polls via Survey Monkey.
Irene Stern Frielich, founder and president of EnVision Performance Solutions, Inc., worked with MSH and Illumina Interactive to develop the instructional design for the course. Speaking for both companies, Frielich said, “We both believe in giving back. This was a great opportunity to demonstrate for MSH some new and interesting ways to create learning.” Getz and Frielich estimate that they and their colleagues spent 475 hours developing the interactive coaching course.
Volunteer contributions make a big difference to agencies
Through the first two eLearning Global Giveback competitions, instructional designers and e-Learning developers have created over 70 online courses as volunteers for international non-profit organizations. These courses will help the global staff of the non-profits, all members of LINGOs, do their good work in the fields of humanitarian relief, development, conservation, and social justice even better.
“E-Learning is a cost-effective way for these organizations to provide world-class learning to their personnel around the world,” said Berg, “whether the staffs are based in relatively remote areas in Africa, Asia, and Latin America or working in organizational headquarters in the U.S., U.K., or Europe.”
Habitat for Humanity Instructional Designer Susan O’Connell worked with volunteers Aparna Jadhav and Suzanne Davies on the course “Habitat for Humanity International Values in Action.” She noted that volunteers are essential to Habitat’s global mission of eliminating poverty housing and homelessness from the world and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action. The work of Jadhav and Davies is different from that of the more usual Habitat volunteer, but just as important if not more so, as this course about how Habitat values volunteerism, and how volunteers are integrally tied into Habitat’s mission, is already in use. “I was so impressed with the commitment of these volunteers,” she said. “I’m the only instructional designer here, so the fact that they were so focused and committed allowed me to focus on other work and get twice as much done.”
The eLearning Global Giveback Competition and the value of the great work that e-Learning experts have contributed to the member agencies of LINGOs is incalculable. “Ensuring that staff members in our field offices, all of which are in geographically remote areas, are able to learn about priority topics for our organization is critical,” said PSI’s Learning and Performance Manager Marie-Laure Curie. PSI maximized participation in both the first and second Global Giveback competitions, assigning subject matter experts to multiple volunteers to submit nine courses in the second competition. “Global Giveback volunteers have enabled us to provide quality learning on the right topics at the right time, improving performance of our global team,” said Curie, who also serves on LINGOs’ board of directors.
