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Under the umbrella term of ‘Knowledge 4 Development', Atos Origin Learning Solutions will devote 1% of its time to channelling its educational and technical knowledge and expertise into projects and activities that benefit IICD and its local partners in Africa and Latin America. Consultants from Atos Origin Learning Solutions will offer support to a wide range of local projects and activities initiated by IICD. The support will come in many forms, from developing an eLearning tool to train evaluation partners in the different countries, to showing local training partners how to develop multimedia training material , to giving strategic advice on how to implement virtual classrooms in Bolivia. Staff members from IICD will benefit from this partnership too as they can share in Atos Origin Learning Solutions' expertise on state-of-the-art technology in the field of eLearning.

The collaboration between Atos Origin Learning Solutions and IICD fits perfectly with the core activities of both organisations. International IT company, Atos Origin, is an outstanding knowledge organisation. The Learning Solutions business unit focuses specifically on developing business solutions for training and education. This expertise is of great added value for an organisation such as IICD which considers ICT to be the key to sustainable development in developing countries.

First tangible results of the partnership: an ‘eLearning tool'

One of the first things picked up by Atos Origin Learning Solutions was the development of an online training tool. The tool will help IICD to teach all its local partners - including its training partners, its Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) partners, and the project partners in charge of collecting and analysing the questionnaires for evaluation - how to use IICD's online M&E system for self-monitoring and evaluation. In the current situation, IICD staff members offer personal support to the M&E partners, and sometimes to the training partners, whenever they visit the countries, as well as online support throughout the year. The new eLearning tool will definitely help to provide more effective support to those already using the M&E system as partners can now easily refresh their knowledge on specific aspects of the M&E system using a very attractive learning tool. The eLearning tool will also enable a much larger group (namely the project partners) to be trained to use the M&E system.

Designing an eLearning tool for people who are new to computers

The so-called ‘eLearning tool' was developed by Niels Riethorst, a trainee at the company who has been working on this for the past five months. When asked about the tool, Niels explained: “ For me, the challenge lies with developing a tool that can be used by people with very little experience with working on computers and things such as eLearning tools. In fact, this assignment fits in very well with my thesis which will also focus on how people learn ”. Before starting on the design of the eLearning tool, Niels did a lot of research into the didactical skills of the potential users of the tool. During the design phase he made a four-component model for instructional design (4c/id). This model is based on the idea that in order to be able to learn one needs to work on tasks that have a clear relationship with the performance they have to deliver in practice.

Niels Riethorst: “ To use the eLearning tool one needs various types of information: general information to support the application, just-in-time information, and information on each sub-task that needs to be fulfilled by the user. Taking into account that some of the users might have little experience with online training, the emphasis within the information provided in this eLearning tool is on both the sub-tasks and the support information. Even simple tasks such as closing a window are described. But the question remains whether this will still be sufficient for the users. That is why we have allocated considerable time for testing the prototype of the new eLearning too' .

The eLearning tool was tested for the first time at the beginning of December 2007. If everything goes according to plan, the first groups of users will be able to make use of this new online tool from February 2008 onwards. The eLearning tool is very important for IICD as it will allow more project partners to start using the M&E tool. Projects can now learn how to use Monitoring and Evaluation by themselves, which is what self-evaluation is all about!