UNeLearn Group

Terms of Reference

The contributing organizations of the UneLearn group commit themselves towards sharing and collaboration of expertise, content & technology to leverage resources that each organisation has individually, with the goal of increasing available learning for all member organizations.

Part 1 Objectives of the Group

Building on characteristics of e-learning
E-learning implies the delivery of learning materials through the internet or a physical support (CD/DVDs, USB, mobile, etc). In this context, learning becomes less subject to constraints of space: one can theoretically learn from anywhere, as long as there is an internet connection and a computer. E-learning can also release from time limitations: with asynchronous courses one can learn at anytime, there is no need to wait for a session to be organized in a few months. E-learning also modifies cost models: while development costs can be important, online courses can be distributed to a large number of people at very low costs (excluding tutoring and follow up). To summarize, once e-learning courses have been developed, they can in theory be used by anyone, at anytime, at a very low cost. The objectives of this group is to build upon those characteristics.

Objective 1: Economies of scale

E-learning offers unprecedented possibilities of economies of scale: once a course is developed, it costs virtually nothing to distribute it to one, a hundred or a million of learners. As training costs are mainly associated with course development, exchange of existing material (as they are or as a customized product) and potential cooperation on content development are strongly encouraged. Thus we reach further and achieve better results with lesser investment.

Objective 2: Capacity building

By opening access to quality content to all staff, partners, and the general public we can promote our work and values, change minds and build skills and competencies necessary to the completion of our humanitarian objectives.

Objective 3: Harmonization of training approaches

Sharing, developing jointly and distributing courses can provide some form of harmonization of training within and among UN organizations. This can ensure better cooperation, quality training products and facilitate job mobility.

Part 2- Principles of good partnership

I. Ensuring re-usability
E-learning course production companies often ensure that copyrights are owned or co-owned by them. It may sometimes seem financially interesting in the short term, but to ensure reusability both within the organization and outside (without being bound to a specific developer), it is effective to negotiate that the organization fully owns the material, and that the content is created using relatively standard tools and techniques allowing localization and customization without necessarily using the original company. 1. Organisations are encourage to own the copyrights of the product they develop and to offer it to other organisations under Creative Commons (CC) licence1

2. Developers are encouraged to incorporate royalty free audio-visual elements (pictures, music, videos, etc). Alternatively, it is essential to reference the copyrights of all elements included in the developed courses (images, videos, music, content and inserted documents).

II.

Ensuring compatibility

3. The developed material should be SCORM 1.2 compliant to ensure compatibility with the largest number of existing learning management systems.

III.

Ensuring adaptability, customization and localization

4. Developers are encouraged to incorporate all on-screen text in HTML or XML to ensure that content can be updated / modified / translated easily. Design elements (pictures, drawings and flash animations) should therefore include as little text as possible.

5. Course developers should ensure that all design elements are made available (when using external developers, all production files should be obtained and not just the final SCORM package).

IV.

Ensuring quality

6. Open ECBCheck is a new accreditation and quality improvement scheme for ELearning programmes and institutions in international Capacity Building. It
1

You can learn more about Creative commons from: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Creative_Commons_and_Open_Educational_Resources To select a licence: http://creativecommons.org/choose/?lang=en_GB

supports capacity building organisations to measure how successful their elearning programmes are and allows for continuous improvement though peer collaboration and benchmarking. OpenECBCheck works on the basis of a peer self-assessment. You can get further information directly on the website: http://www.efquel.org/openecbcheck/ It is encouraged that UN organizations use peer assessments to review content from other members.

V.

Referencing courses and resources

7. Contributing organisations are encouraged to list their courses and planned projects / areas of interest through the following form: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform? hl=en&formkey=dDNyTXhPXzRoMnJ6NDF0MGZvLTdrQUE6MA

Part 3 Membership and Governance

The UNeLearn group is a commitment towards implementing the principles of sharing and partnership outlined in Part 2. To achieve these goals and to ensure the continuation of the group, a simple governance and membership model is proposed.

I. Membership
A flexible membership model is proposed to allow members to choose the level of commitment that they can support: 1. Level 1 Sharing of existing expertise, content and technology 2. Level 2 Collaboration on joint projects with shared budgets The membership will also state whether the organization requires cost recovery for the above models.

II.

Governance model

The group is to consist of a voluntary core team (with a rotating chair). The role of the core team is to ensure: 1. Facilitation of ongoing collaboration through online discussions and regular UNeLearn meetings 2. Recruiting of new members into the group

Contributors