Open source software platforms are a foundation of the ICT4D toolbox. The Digital Principles, a community-generated set of guidelines to help develop ethical and effective digital projects for development and aid, include as core tenets using open platforms, investing in software as a public good, and developing new software code to be open source. But the practice of open-sourcing sustainable and high-quality platforms is more challenging than we acknowledge.

Too often, we conflate the purpose, license, and business model of software, bundling ‘free-and-open-source-software’ (FOSS) as a kind of avatar for ‘software for good’. In so doing, we deprioritize the purpose and effectiveness of the software and hobble the success of platforms that could be the foundation of a thriving technology for social good.

 

Multiple motivations

In its best incarnation, software is trying to solve a problem. Notionally at least, donors fund apps and platforms because donor and developer agree on a problem and want to solve it together. Practitioners choose to use platforms because they solve a problem they have. Then there are questions about effectiveness to ask. This is idealized, but choosing a platform to fund or use in social change work should be just this simple.

Software released with an open source license has one other motivation: contributing to a software platform whose code is open to all, as a community asset. Some donors will fund only open-source software, among other reasons because they believe in this vision of collaborative building.

Both problem-solving and community asset-building are valid things to want to do, of course, and in itself the tensions between these two motivations are not fatal and can be resolved, if they are acknowledged. The problem comes because we need to think more clearly about the business models available once you open-source a technology; and we need to develop clearer understandings of what it takes to run a healthy technology platform – let alone an open source community which needs a different kind of love and energy to grow and service.

 

Non-profit funding vs investing in a business

Often, people expect public benefit software to be open source, and open source software to be free or cheap. They are often funded like non-profit projects. But when that funding ends it’s hard to find more. Providers are expected to have developed some sort of business model during the initial funding period. But non-profit funding is typically project-focussed, short-term, focusses on features over maintenance and core product development, and development over sales and marketing – arguably key early stage investments for successful software platforms.

And in any case, getting investment in a platform when you’ve already given away your competitive advantage is tough. Most colleagues I’m aware of have supported their FOSS platforms through consulting and custom implementations or feature development, another kind of project-based funding that keeps your developers busy providing bespoke services to paying clients and draws them away from spending time on the core of the platform. Or, unable to get repeat grants for maintenance and continued improvement, platform providers continually ‘innovate’, developing new products or new features rather than consolidating and improving the original. So we end up with proliferating, confused, feature-rich, poorly-maintained platforms.

 

Let’s stop conflating purpose, license and business model and start investing in successful software

As a sector, we need to think more slowly about how funding flows create technology landscapes. If we have a commitment to open source, because of a conviction that open source software is a community asset, then that’s fine – but we need to then also commit to funding it properly and supporting these projects to thrive. One such effort is the Open Source Center at the Digital Impact Alliance, although I note that the model here is partly to help FOSS projects to outsource the core project roadmap, specification and other functions that they need to succeed – to an organization which already has funding. This might be a precursor to making a case for platforms to be funded to have these capacities themselves, but does not tackle the systemic issues.

And we need cleaner and more reliable funding flows for proprietary products, too. If we want a flourishing technology market for development and aid work, we need to create a less distorted marketplace for them, and the conditions for more than one approach to successfully generating value.

About the Author:

Laura Walker McDonald has over a decade of non-profit experience at the forefront of social change. She specializes in inclusive technology, starting her career at the British Red Cross working on humanitarian policy, accountability and learning. In 2010, she joined FrontlineSMS where she helped turn an open-source platform into a non-profit business and took the software from 25,000 to 250,000 downloads in just two years. She then worked as the CEO of SIMlab working with clients and partners to choose better technology tools and improve their impact. She is currently consulting on tech for social change projects and evaluations. She holds a Master of Law degree in International Development Law & Human rights from the University of Warwick, UK.

Building effective, engaging online content is hard. And unlike still photos or infographics, video and animation can be particularly challenging for delivering consistent, high-quality learning experiences through adding audio and motion. 

But regardless of whether you have an interviewee who keeps touching their lavalier microphone or a late storyboard change that shifts an entire animation, music can usually help. Used effectively, music can draw learners into the video, provide an emotional arc to reinforce the narrative, and conclude with an energizing call to action.

While every use case is different, we wanted to share some of our process for selecting the music for our latest demo reels for both video and animation (featuring work and built by John and Yohan of the creative team!). By design, both reels are amalgamations of different projects, some fun and others serious, but still needing to be tightly integrated into one video. So we turned to music and the starting sequence to help us get our look-and-feel the way we wanted the TechChange brand to come across to viewers.

For our animation reel, we decided that we wanted a cheerful, energetic sound with a strong beat so that we could sync up animation transitions. Syncing beats can be easier for animation than video, as we had more control over the speed and variability than we would over a person talking (which could look strange at high or slow speeds). So we started with a short, playful techbot logo animation (designed by 2016 Summer Creative Fellow Katie Wang — thanks Katie!), and let the music do the rest. Take a look for yourself!

For our video reel, we wanted an uplifting track, but ideally more inspirational side than fun. Since it was a video reel, we decided to start with creative use of video footage instead of an animation in order to showcase our work (as well as beautiful b-roll from our 2018 workshop in Mozambique). We also wanted keep the video under a minute, as there’s only so many talking heads and b-roll footage that any casual viewer will want to sit through. 

But most importantly, even though both videos were different lengths, topics, and creative mediums, we wanted to give both a consistent “TechChange” feel, but without breaking the bank. We’ve worked with custom scoring and in-person musicians (as you may know from our many Fail Songs from 2016 through 2013, which have their lyrics and guitar chords online), but that can often be time and cost prohibitive.

So….we went online! To a service called PremiumBeat.com and started listening to different samples. After listening to a variety of tracks while watching the draft video with the sound off, we settled on one particular artist (Gyom, a 4x Emmy Nominee) and wanted to have a consistent BPM of around 115 so that even if the music was different, it would sound familiar and consistent. We ultimately settled on the track Body Rock for animation, and Dream Catcher for video. After that, we edited down the “Shorts” we wanted and made sure the loops synced up with the transitions. We bought each track for $49 and then synced it all up to export as a completed video.

This is just one example for two videos, but we also use music and audio editing in many, many different ways to achieve engaging learning experiences. We’ll cover more in future posts, but we hope this short explainer will help you in your learning journey!

While online learning has quickly advanced as a capacity building solution in the international development space, connectivity challenges continue to plague program implementation. For impact areas struggling with low- or no-bandwidth learning environments, the solution still requires physical travel of trainers to reach the desired intended audience. However, as we’ve reported repeatedly over the last seven years, including with offline-first delivery of Malaria training in Uganda and Nigeria, offline doesn’t have to mean old-school.

For example, TechChange recently partnered with Jhpiego to deliver a landmark course on Maternal and Child Survival Program in Liberia, which provided a blended and offline approach to training over a five-month period. In this post, we’ll share more about how this was accomplished from a technical perspective when it comes to building in Articulate 360. For those unfamiliar with Articulate, it serves as the primary rapid-authoring tool for building courses that can work on any major online learning platform….or even no platform at all! There are five key steps to success:

Step One: Replace Absolute Links with Relative Paths

Publishing Articulates for offline use often means creating a lot of relative paths, which involves a lot of files looking for other files within folders. So, what if you have a large project with many folders (and other Articulate files) linked up by relative paths, but want to deliver a single course file to the client that runs correctly and still “understands” where to find what it needs along its relative paths?

Here’s where Windows shortcuts come in handy. What you’ll need to do is 1) Place all linked Articulate files and documents in a single folder, which you then hide in the delivery folder, and 2) create a shortcut for the course launch file.

Because Windows shortcuts in their default form use absolute paths, you’ll need to make an adjustment to the shortcut in order to have it run on a relative path. The reason why is that absolute paths look for a file starting with the C:// drive of the computer that created the file — so, if you were to deliver an absolute shortcut to a client, the pathway would look for a file on your C:// drive, instead of looking for a file relative to its position in a folder. The beauty of relative paths is that they operate as they should on any desktop; absolute paths won’t work outside of your own desktop.

Step Two: Place All Files and Documents in a Single Folder

Let’s place all linked Articulate files and documents in a single folder, which you then hide in the delivery folder. We’ll take the example of Jhpiego’s MCSP Faculty Development Program, the most recent usage case. Organizationally, this course had a parent Articulate file, the Faculty Development Program, hereafter referred to as FDP. Any user that opened the FDP Articulate could access any of the module Articulates, which were in three series — the TL, AE, and CP series — thanks to relative paths.

When you open the delivery folder, you see this:

 

 

Step Three: Hide Your Work!

Notice that the folder “Modules” is a hidden folder, and wouldn’t normally show. To hide a file, right click on the file, click Properties, check the “Hidden” box, then click OK, applying the change to all folders and subfolders. If you’d like for files you’ve hidden to show again, open up the containing folder, click “View” at the top, and then check the box reading “Hidden items” in the Show/Hide category. The file “CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH COURSE” is our shortcut file with a modified relative path and opens the parent course, FDP. Let’s open up that “Modules” folder.

 

 

Here we have each of the module folders that open up separate Articulates within the parent Articulate course, FDP. Those folders (the TL, AE, CP folders) contain all the documents that each module needs as well as that module’s Articulate output. The “Output” folder you see is the Articulate output for the parent course, which our shortcut taps into. Now, how do we make that shortcut? Let’s open that “Output” folder.

 

 

Step Four: Take a Shortcut

We’ll need the shortcut to hit “Launch_Story.exe,” so we’ll right-click on that and choose “Create shortcut.” Windows will make the shortcut for you, which you can take anywhere and rename as you like. For now, let’s take that shortcut one folder up, out of the hidden folder and into the delivery folder.

 

 

So we’re back here. We’ve renamed our shortcut “CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH COURSE.” Now we need to modify that absolute path into a relative path, so the shortcut knows that no matter what computer it’s on, it needs to go from this folder, into the hidden folder Modules, and into Output to find its “Launch_Story.exe.”

Right-click your new shortcut and choose Properties to modify that path — at the outset, you’ll see this on your screen:

 

Step Five: It’s All Relative (Paths)

Now, let’s take that absolute path and make it relative. In the “Start in:” field, just delete everything. Then, in the “Target:” field, type in the following, with modifications based on the folder names in your relative path:

%windir%explorer.exe “.Your\Relative\Path\Launch_Story.exe”

The beginning of this should not be in quotes, the only part in quotes is your relative file path. In the case of the FDP course, this would read as follows, since we’re asking the shortcut to look in the same folder at the start for the hidden Modules folder, then telling it to go inside Output to find the Launch_Story.exe for FDP.

%windir%explorer.exe “.Modules\Output\Launch_Story.exe”

Once you click OK, the icon on the shortcut will change to a folder with a small blue square overlaid on it. If you click Properties again to check out that slick relative path, it should look like this:

 

 

You’re done! Now any user will just have to double-click on your newly modified shortcut to launch the course!

If you have any questions or comments (or suggestions for things we may not have thought of!), please feel free to contact me and the TechChange team at: info@techchange.org.

Today marks the fourth year since the TechChange office moved to our current location on U St, and to celebrate we held a team potluck lunch…..with a special surprise! Nick and Austin had secretly organized a puppy party and office visit from Homeward Trails Animal Rescue.

Homeward Trails Animal Rescue is a non-profit 501(c)(3) in Fairfax that finds homes for dogs and cats rescued from high-kill animal shelters, or whose owners could no longer care for them or were found as strays. According to the “About” page, “Homeward Trails not only facilitates adoptions from local shelters, but also supports a large network of foster care providers who take homeless dogs and cats into their homes, care for them, rehabilitate them when needed, and prepare them for their permanent adoptive homes.” If you’d like to support this wonderful organization that has rescued over 21,000 animals, see what you can do to get involved today.

As for the benefits of a TechChange Puppy Party, not only is looking at “cute” animals a proven method for improving performance on detail-oriented tasks, but it also provided the team an opportunity to learn about the responsibilities and process for adopting an animal from a local shelter. We were also able to update some of our “official” staff photos…..which we’ve included a selection of below.

 

Note: This post was written in collaboration with Erica Chin, Instructional Technologist and Medical Illustrator at Jhpiego.

The instructional design team, led by Director of Instructional Design, Shannon Fineran, is proud to announce the release of a landmark course series designed for the Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP) at Jhpiego in partnership with USAID. The course is currently being piloted among health practitioners from several health care facilities in various regions of Liberia.

Unlike a stand-alone training course, the faculty development program provides a blended approach and a social program delivered over a five-month period. Faculty that participate are offered a supportive environment to build confidence, leadership, change management, and teaching skills. It includes three instructor-led training sessions and two rounds of individualized eLearning course facilitated by a moderated discussion platform for peer support. The individual eLearning course is comprised of 15 modules organized into three sections: Theoretical Learning, Clinical or Practical Learning, and Student Assessment and Program Evaluation. The program is centered around the completion of a change management project relevant to improving educational quality or teaching skills.

 

 

The team at Jhpiego’s Technical Leadership Office, led by Julia Bluestone (Health Workforce Team Lead) and supported by Erica Chin (Instructional Technologist and Medical Illustrator) and Alison Trump (Technical Advisor), worked closely with TechChange’s instructional designers to create this engaging, comprehensive course series that utilized interactive content presentations, knowledge exercises, resources, and individual module assessments in each section of the program.

The project posed a series of delivery challenges for the instructional design team. The Faculty Development Program is intended for release in regions of low internet connectivity, prohibiting technical design strategies typically used in a more traditional eLearning course. Because of this, the course was delivered via individual USB drives with the course pre-loaded onto them. Additionally, the course’s intended audience had varying levels of computer literacy and experience with technology. To minimize potential learner confusion, the team created a single main menu to provide direct access to all modules and cohesive course navigation. The main menu, itself a separate Articulate file, included a course module tutorial, as well as “scene selection” style sub-menus for module selection.

 

 

TechChange opted for a streamlined course interface design, implementing a static menu on the left side of course slides and recurrent course navigation buttons at the bottom of course slides. The Articulate publishing process was particularly complex for the instructional design team — the course needed to be offered offline, had a complex Articulate-to-Articulate branching scheme, and needed to be launched from the double click of a single button to allow for ease of use. All of these challenges resulted in new discoveries for the team.

Want to learn more about how the team reached a publishing solution? Stay tuned for another blog post on how to use relative linking for offline distribution!

For more information on the MCSP program at Jhpiego, please visit this link.