Month: August 2017

Over the past two and a half years, Emily Fruchterman has been involved in nearly every aspect of TechChange’s online learning portfolio. Starting as an Instructional Design Fellow in the summer of 2014, Emily transitioned into a role split between Operations and Instructional Design, and then moved into the role of Director of Instructional Design in 2016.

Now, as she is departing for new opportunities in health policy, we wanted to sit down and learn more about her work and thoughts on TechChange.

Q: Could you share a bit about your background? What originally interested you about joining TechChange?

Absolutely! I was a bio major at the College of William and Mary in VA. Like many of my peers, I started off as a pre-med student. Through my extracurricular activities I came to realize the impact that education, training, and policy can have on health outcomes – these activities shifted my focus and led me toward online education.

When I first heard of TechChange, way back in 2014, I was so excited to find a team working on creative and innovative training solutions related to health and international development. It was clear that TechChange takes partnership seriously and works on a diverse range of projects.

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Emily running a Live Event session as an Instructional Design Fellow.

 

Q: What are some of your favorite projects that you’ve worked on? Has there been anything particular that you’ve enjoyed or found interesting?

There are so many great ones! I’ve loved strategizing with all of our partners and co-developing training solutions in both self-paced and facilitated environments. One of my favorite parts of TechChange is the ability to dive head first into new subject matter, be it febrile illnesses, global warming, new tech tools, or mobile phones for public health.

If I have to choose, there are a few that stand out in particular. I’ve been working with API Wellness on their trainings since my first week at TechChange as a fellow and have come to greatly appreciate their partnership. I also greatly enjoyed working with the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery to build a course on the Open Data for Resilience Initiative.

Q: How has your role changed since you first joined TechChange?

Oh boy, I’ve definitely worn my fair share of hats here. I started off as a fellow and helped out with aspects of course execution. I then moved into my role as Program & Operations Coordinator – I learned an immense amount about running a small business and continued to grow as an instructional designer. In my role now as Director of Instructional Design, I’ve greatly improved my project, client, and people management skills.

Q: Can you describe some of the travel experiences you’ve had with TechChange?

The travel is another huge perk of working with TechChange! I’ve been able to meet with subject matter experts and attend conferences around the world over the past few years.

The first trip TechChange sent me on was to Uganda to revise a course on diagnosing and treating febrile illnesses. The primary goal was to encourage private sector pharmacists to utilize rapid diagnostic tests before treating every fever as if it were malaria.  The highlight of that trip was walking into a computer lab and seeing the first version of our course on every computer screen – I realized then the impact and reach our courses truly can have.

A few months later, TechChange sent me as our representative to a conference in Sri Lanka that focused on freedom of and from religion. I was there to give a presentation on mapping human rights violations and ended up learning so much about the experiences of religious minorities throughout South Asia. One tip – if you’re ever traveling from DC to Sri Lanka, give yourself more than 4 days in country. I’ve never been so tired in my life.

One of our partners, API Wellness Center, also included TechChange in their presentation at the 2016 US Conference on AIDS, where we spoke about the use of online trainings for health outreach.

Earlier this year, a few of my colleagues and I travelled to Mozambique to meet and film subject matter experts for a course on coastal adaptation to climate change. It was incredible to meet with the community members, government representatives, and scientists who are all collaborating to mitigate the impact of climate change.

The most recent trip was this past February to Thailand, where a few of my colleagues and I gave a 1.5 day workshop on data visualization for a health-focused audience. The conference was a blast!   

Q: You’ve worked on a massive variety of projects across multiple styles and student needs — how do you keep pushing yourself to try new techniques and approaches?

Well, the first step in any project is scoping out the client’s needs and getting to know their target audience as best we can. We try to keep the end user in mind throughout the entire process – it really influences how we design the course interface and structure.

Every partner is a bit different, which makes it easier for us to try new things. We’re also able to learn over time about what resonates with a given audience and make tweaks to continually improve the learning experience.

Q: What’s the team like? What are your favorite parts about working at TechChange?

Oh man – this team is amazing. It’s cliche, but I truly feel that I can count on them for anything. We have a ton of fun, maintain a supportive environment, and are always striving to create better learning experiences for our partners. I don’t think I could find a group of more passionate and caring folks.

My favorite parts of working here are also related to the team, and how much our executive team cares about each one of us. I love our birthday celebrations, team lunches, and show and tell.

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Q: Lastly, what’s something that not a lot of people know about you?

I absolutely cannot stand spicy food or cilantro.  I feel especially limited by my inability to handle spicy food, but am glad that TechChange has accepted this weakness 🙂

We are excited to announce the creation of a new Anti-Corruption Compliance training designed for company leadership, compliance officers, and all staff in emerging markets around the world! Created for our partners at the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), this 40-minute course runs through the basics of how to design and implement a compliance program, teaching users about the many forms that bribery can take, how to avoid conflicts of interest, and how to boost accountability within a mid-sized company, among many other topics.

This course presents the perfect use case for online teaching: the audience is global, so the most streamlined and cost-effective way to disseminate this training is online. The course is also targeted at new compliance personnel in leadership roles, so the content is concise and streamlined to achieve the greatest impact.

It is also fun to take! We have all sat through boring compliance trainings, but this colorful course features a lively avatar named Isabel to guide you through course content, offers up carrots (as opposed to sticks) to reveal ways to incentivise compliance, provides red flags to assign to companies that exhibit risky behavior, and lets you click on a clipboard to reveal additional tips for a successful compliance training.

carrots

This course is a strong example of how to teach essential soft skills to business leaders in many different cultural contexts, as opposed to, say, a technical training that teaches someone how to use a particular software. While both are important, many have the perception that it is impossible to teach soft skills online, and this is one of our many courses that seeks to prove that you can not only use online learning to disseminate knowledge, we can also use it to try to change behavior.

This is also the first time TechChange has implemented a “freemium” model on our platform: users can take the course for free, but if they would like to receive a certificate of completion, they must pay a small fee. This certification can add to the legitimacy of a company trying to prove to potential investors in risky markets that they are committed to taking all possible steps to combat corruption in their industry. At the same time, it makes the content accessible to all who may need it or are interested in compliance!

red flag

We look forward to creating more trainings that teach these critical skills to promote social good! Click here to check out the course yourself! Click here to read CIPE’s blog post about the course!

 

 

 

 

Sedinam joined the the TechChange team to support service design and tech initiatives. She will be focusing on supporting partner learning objectives on the TechChange platform. In addition to graduating from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in Computer Science and Economic Development, Sedinam also co-founded Dislabelled, an organization that works with people with disabilities and seeks to reform the special education system in Ghana. She also founded YenAra backpacks in 2015, a socially responsible for-profit business initiative that provides unique and functional African-inspired backpacks to an international marketplace.

Sedinam is passionate about the intersection of technology, business, education and design. In her summers, she has worked as a Google policy fellow, robotics workshop facilitator and software developer. In her free time, she loves harmonizing to everything under the sun, writing articles and meeting new people! Welcome, Sedi!

 

 

Q: Could you share a little bit about your background? What originally interested you in TechChange?

I was raised in Ghana and my family, community and education have contributed significantly to who I am today. In high school and college, I had opportunities to interact with people from a wide range of differences in culture. These experiences deepened my knowledge of cultural differences and I learned to not only respect but also to celebrate diversity.  These experiences also fuelled my desire to learn about people and know more about their stories.

I had the opportunity to first meet some members of the TechChange team during a Mapping for International Development Happy Hour two years ago when I was interning in DC. I read about the CEO of TechChange who was a Swarthmore alum (shout out to Swat!), felt connected to TechChange’s mission, and being the inquisitive person I was, I wanted to learn more. After spending hours discussing various topics from the need for accessibility of technologies to why liberal arts colleges are beneficial, I left the event with the sense that TechChange was a community of friendly, supportive and passionate people that I would fit in with.

Coupled with hearing more about experiences working at TechChange from Swarthmore alumni and students, I was drawn to work at TechChange for three main reasons amongst many: the opportunity to learn and apply my skills in a fulfilling, exciting and creative way, the collaborative team culture at TechChange and a company mission that is at the heart of technology and social change, a purpose I identify with and value deeply. Learning that some of these courses benefit African countries was definitely a highlight to me as a Ghanaian. So far, I can say  that it’s been a great decision and I’m glad to have found a job straight out of college where I wake up genuinely excited about the work I’m doing and the people I get to see!

Sedi's First Day

Q: How do you see this role with TechChange fitting into your studies and past experience as an entrepreneur?

My role at TechChange is currently at the intersection of instructional design, tech, and client partnerships. I love that I can apply my Computer Science knowledge into fully understanding how our platform works both on the frontend and backend. I also love that I can deepen my knowledge about web development.

I am interested in international development so the opportunity to interact with clients from various international development organizations doing amazing work is one that I value immensely! TechChange fits wonderfully into my past experience as an entrepreneur because I get to try my hands at various activities at this company and it’s so exciting.

With my backpack company, I identified a business opportunity when students on my college campus kept commenting about the colorful patterns in my Ghanaian clothes and backpack. Through market research and talking to various students who were involved in diverse areas of campus life, I studied the backpack wants and needs of students on campus. I recruited some of my friends and family to join my team, including a chief operating officer that determined quality control of the backpacks from the local artisans, a designer that sketched our prototypes and a marketing strategist that helped me think about the website design, flyers and questionnaires. Working with the designer, our team came up with functional and attractive designs based on our market research, built prototypes and solicited feedback from customers in the Philadelphia area.  

It was a long-term process of planning, conducting market research, developing pricing strategies, designing posters using Adobe Indesign and learning, learning, learning. I learnt so much about myself during the process and about social enterprises. Similarly, having a job where I’m actually at the intersection of cutting edge work is more than I could have envisioned for myself.

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Q: How do you see your role going forward to build on your work with co- founding Dislabelled and founding YenAra Backpacks?

The question of my role going forward in both organizations was one I definitely had to grapple with in deciding my next steps after college. I still have so much learning to do and YenAra backpacks helped me to do so much learning by actually doing. That being said, I decided to put that on hold to focus more on transitioning to a new work environment and giving my entire self to my role at TechChange. It was definitely a beneficial entrepreneurial experience and I can definitely see myself applying the skills I gained from that experience to my job. With Dislabelled, I am still involved and working with amazing team members to coordinate and organize events! Dislabelled has been run since high school and a lot of it has been during holidays and by coordinating activities remotely. Currently, we have successfully undertaken five projects and our team is working on the sixth project. In one of our projects, titled “SustainAbility” our team led the creation and compilation of a white paper that documented changes on government policy that teachers from various special education schools in Ghana voiced. Our current projects involve organizing informative workshops for parents who have children with disabilities in Ghana.. Outside of work, it is the passion initiative that I can focus on and our team is fantastic.

 

Q: Could you share a bit more about your interest in special education and how that applies to technology?

My interest in special education came about in high school, where we had a speaker who had cerebral palsy come and talk to our Pan-African club at school about her disability. Following that, I worked as a Google Policy Fellow in my sophomore year with the American Association of People with Disabilities as my host organization. That’s where I became even more interested in the intersection of special education and technology. America was celebrating the American Disability Act the year of my fellowship  and I had the opportunity to participate in Special Ed Initiatives including the AAPD Technology forum and the Higher Ed Accessibility project. I also worked on a research project concerning people with learning disabilities and the role of assistive technology. The deeper and deeper I dug into my research the more questions I found. Questions I had included: how has technology been used to positively impact special education in various countries? How do people with physical, intellectual and learning disabilities use technology and in what ways does their technology use differ?   How can we make technology more accessible especially in developing nations and what are some obstacles that prevent special educators from using technology to enhance teaching in their classrooms? I still have those questions and these questions sustain my interest and technology and special education.

 

Q: I know it’s only been a week, but what are some of your favorite parts of working at TechChange so far?

The people here are truly amazing. It’s been great to go home and be able to rave to my roommate about how supportive and fun people here are! One of my favorite parts was the potluck where everyone had to bring a meal item. There was an amazing sense of community and it felt like I was not only part of a team but a family of some sort. Another favorite part of my time here so far was meeting TechGirls and teaching them how to build their own courses on the TechChange platform. As someone from Ghana myself, it was really awesome to see TechChange hosting girls from Middle East and Africa and actively showing them the work we do here. I was inspired by how the team was genuinely interested in sharing their work and encouraging the girls and I was reminded for the billionth time about why this place is such a strong fit for my interests, values and passions!

Sedi and the Instructional Design Team

Q: What is one thing that you’d love to learn or do in the next year?

In the next year, I am excited to gain more experience in managing client partnerships effectively. I love interacting with people and I can’t wait to see how I can use this skill in ensuring our TechChange clients remain happy! I also hope to broaden my global network and perspectives. As a member of the tech team, I also can’t wait to deepen my coding skills even further, specifically in JavaScript/CSS, and learn from the various teams at TechChange including the instructional design and business development side of things. I also want to learn more of what it takes to successfully build an online learning community. I deeply value being in a company like TechChange where I can see first hand the many aspects of running a successful company.

Q: Lastly, what’s something that not a lot of people know about you?

I love love dancing! In college, I taught several dance classes and participated in an Intergenerational Drum and Dance Ensemble. As a student academic mentor, I managed to also weave in several dance wellness study breaks where I led dance workshops to Afrobeats music! I’m actually going to share a couple of links below to some of the songs/beats I’ve been listening/dancing to recently! I need to share the love, haha. Hope you enjoy it and thanks for the opportunity to share a bit of my story!

 

Beat de chez beat- Coupe Decale

Adomaa- Evolution of GH Music

Chance the Rapper- Blessings

Sonnie Badu- Ese Oluwa

 

For the fifth year in a row, we’ve had the honor of hosting two brilliant young leaders from the TechGirls State Department program. This year, Passant Abu-el-Gheit and Reem Saado shadowed the various teams hard at work making online courses in the TechChange office, and contributed a few creations of their own!

Before they finished up their program, we asked them to share a few things about themselves and their work. 

Q: What projects are you currently working on?

Passant: I am currently working on a project related to STEM fields, which is Rumen fluid incubation, that helps in increasing the efficiency of the biomass incubators.

I definitely enjoyed the course that we designed today at TechChange, as it is related to the TechGirls program follow on project, as they both rely on online courses to spread knowledge and raise awareness. We designed a course that recites and illustrates some of the experience that we had during our 3 weeks stay in the US. We designed it in an interactive way so that the user can learn efficiently. This course was designed by the help of the software tools that the TechChange staff has, and of course, with the help of the staff members, we added animations, designed avatars, and texts. After finishing, we uploaded it. This experience is interesting to me because it will help me in my follow on project!

 

Reem: I’m working on the follow on a project that should be done when we go back to our countries. Basically, I am planning to teach the basics of coding to the girls in my school in order to motivate them to major in the STEM fields. In addition to that, I am planning to make a workshop that includes leadership skills. Also, we did some projects today at TechChange; one of them is making our own online courses to inform girls about TechGirls program and the beautiful experience we had.

Q: What was your favorite part of the job shadow day at TechChange?

Passant: I’d say it was the very first part when we designed our pug, it was really fun and educational because it was my first time drawing on an electronic tablet, and we ended up having a beautiful design. The process was really efficient, as it transferred the design from the very basic lines to a 3D avatar.

Reem: My favorite part was building our own online courses. We designed it in line with the schedule that we had across our TechGirls summer program. We wanted to spread the amazing experience through pictures and videos.

Snapshot of the sample course Passant and Reem made describing their favorite parts of the TechGirls experience.

Above: Snapshot of the sample course Passant and Reem made detailing their favorite parts of the TechGirls experience.

Q: Any company would be lucky to land driven, talented individuals like yourselves. What kind of work do you dream about doing in the future?  

Passant: I have several interests in more than one STEM field, and fortunately, I found a field that combines most of them, which is biomedical engineering. I am planning to be a medical machine developer (a person who design medical machines for special conditions).

Reem: The kind of work that I dream of doing in the future is programming. I am planning to be a software engineer and work in Microsoft company.

We feel so lucky to have spent the day with Passant and Reem and look forward to the impact they’ll have in the future!