As we settle into 2018 and launch a variety of new courses, workshops, and ways to innovate our approach to online learning, we’re thankful to you, our TechChange community, for your unwavering support! In the last year, we’ve trained over 7,000 people from 155 countries on our platform alone.

Check out a few of the cool things we were able to do in 2017.

We’ve released new features on our online learning platform!

  • Frontend editing: Course administrators can now type directly into the platform section that you would like to update or add information to. The new inline editing feature means easy access to editing/updating content, a cleaner design, and a direct way to see real-time updates of changes that you’re making to your course content.

 

     

  • Completion tracking: Course administrators can now track module completion with our new rules feature. By simply setting “rules” for each slide, submodule, and module, learners will be alerted with a green check mark if they have completed the appropriate section.

 

 

  • Progress view: Course administrators can now view the progress of their students holistically with the new progress view. Based upon the rules of each course, the progress view details where students are in relation to course completion, when they were last active, and which modules have been completed.

 

We’ve developed informative interactive modules!

  • IFC Gender Course: TechChange partnered with IFC (International Finance Corporation) to create a multi-module course on the business case for gender smart solutions. The course is customized with three different industry tracts that users can choose between depending on what is most relevant to their work.
  • Jhpiego MCSP: The Faculty Development Program represents a major accomplishment for the Instructional Design team over the summer and fall seasons. The program is centered around best practices for medical practitioners and is meant to improve educational quality and teaching skills for practitioners in Liberia and beyond.
  • CCAP: TechChange built a self-paced course for the Coastal Cities Adaptation Project of Mozambique that focused on the basics of climate change, adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and urban resilience. The course featured many video interviews (filmed by TC staff) with important stakeholders involved in climate change management in Mozambique.  

We’ve created some beautiful content!

  • Making Cents International Report: An exciting collaboration between the Instructional Design and Creative Teams for The Rockefeller Foundation & Making Cents resulting in a youth-oriented toolkit for demand-driven training. Click here to view the report and here to view the interactive website!
  • DCA animation and pamphlet: USAID’s Development Credit Authority (DCA) uses loan guarantees to increase access to finance and promote growth in developing countries. The creative team was tasked to create multiple short animations to explain how the Development Credit Authority works and its benefits to those in developing countries. Click here to view our whiteboard style explainer video and click here to view our mobilizing local wealth for entrepreneurs around the world animation .
  • DIAL animation: We had the pleasure of working with DIAL (Digital Impact Alliance) to explain the Principles for Digital Development and its importance to the digital development community. The team was tasked with creating a 2 minute explainer animation that is both attractive and informative. Assets and animation was spearheaded by our senior illustrator & animator John Kim. Click here to watch the video.
  • mPowering animation: The Creative Team worked on a beautiful animation for mPowering’s OpenDeliver, a mobile-enabled delivery system for health resources that includes a feedback loop to supply analytics. Click here to watch the video!

We’ve hosted interesting workshops and traveled to many places!

  • Mozambique for CCAP: In January 2017, Shannon, Emily, and John traveled to Maputo and Pemba, Mozambique to record interviews with key stakeholders involved in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction efforts across the country. The interviews were incorporated into the four-module self-paced course built to empower individuals with the fundamentals of climate change, preparedness, and urban resilience.
  • Maine for PopTech: In October, the TechChange team headed to Camden, Maine for the 2017 PopTech Conference: Instigate, where we provided tech support, photography, and conference marketing support.
  • Boston for Connected Health Conference: In October, Chris, Yohan, and Meronne went to Boston, Massachusetts to provide event support with photography and video interviews.
  • Qatar for WISE: Chris and Austin traveled to Doha, Qatar for the World Innovation Summit on Education (WISE Summit) for a series of plenaries and workshops on the future of education.
  • Washington, D.C. for the World Bank Youth Summit: Nick gave an interactive workshop on blockchain for international development.
  • Instructional Design Workshops: Throughout the year at TechChange Headquarters, Isabel lead different instructional design with Articulate 360 workshops. Click here to sign up for the next one!
  • TechGirls 2017: 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. Read the full blog post here!

We’re launching new online courses!

  • TC116 Blockchain for International Development: This four-week online certificate course will attempt to cut through the hype and evaluate the potential of this technology on everything from remittances to supply chain management, voting practices, smart contracts, land titling, educational credentialing, health record storage, and more. Learn about the course here!
  • TC310 The Future of Digital Health: This four-week online certificate course will explore how a range of emerging technologies — blockchain, artificial intelligence, drones, sensors and Internet of things, wearable devices, and more — are contributing to patient care and management, disease tracking, point-of-care support, health education, remote monitoring, diagnostics, supply chain management, and logistics.The course will also take a hard look at complexities surrounding patient privacy and security, limits to access, training and capacity building challenges, interoperability issues, regulation and policy hurdles, and more. Learn about the course here!
  • TC301 Artificial Intelligence for International Development: This four-week online certificate course will cover the basics of artificial intelligence from natural language processing and object differentiation, to comparative facial recognition and more. It will draw from a variety of case studies, particularly in financial services, education, and healthcare. It will also explore challenges to adoption that exist around automation, hype cycles, ethical concerns, security, sustainability, and more. We will also explore machine learning, a narrower subset of AI that focuses on data analysis and building algorithms that reduce the need for human intervention. Learn more about the course here!
  • TC101 Online Learning for International Development: This four-week course will include a number of innovative case studies as well as demos of our favorite emerging technologies to support and enhance learning. Over the past 8 years, TechChange has built 500+ online courses on all kinds of topics for a variety of audiences and in a range of formats. In that time, we have had to contend with every imaginable hurdle: diminished attention spans, bandwidth constraints, translation issues, security challenges, and more. This is why we’ve decided to package all of this experience into an online certificate course. Learn more about the course here!

As we continue to build and create beautiful courses, we’re excited to start licensing our online learning platform to organizations and continue building our expertise in online learning. A recent study on capacity building done by the Global Knowledge Initiative listed TechChange as the number one cited source individuals and organizations used most to improve curriculum design, further teaching pedagogy, develop online modules, and build presentation and facilitation skills. We look forward to continue building our online learning skill sets.

We hope to see you online, in person, or in a course!

I truly enjoyed the four-week TechChange course on Agriculture, Innovation and Technology thanks to Nick, wonderful guest speakers and brilliant classmates. I grasped the understanding of the current status in utilizing information and communication technologies (ICTs) for agriculture (ICT4Ag) and challenges and opportunities that lie ahead to facilitate the effectiveness of ICT4Ag. As part of my final project, I interviewed Mr. Vikas Choudhary, Senior Economist in the Global Food and Agriculture Practice (GFADR) at the World Bank.

Q: What do you consider the primary role of ICTs for agricultural processes?

ICTs play a significant role primarily in helping farmers and other stakeholders make effective decisions, and therefore are effective information delivery tools when used in agriculture. Agricultural processes are a sequence of decision making for farmers: what kind of seeds to grow, when and where to grow them, how and where to store commodity, at what price to sell, etc. These decisions have largely been based on farmers’ past experiences and their own interpretation of agricultural conditions. However, farmers increasingly face difficult decision making situations due to irregular seasonal and weather patterns caused by climate change. Therefore, through real-time data collected on various decision factors such as weather, soil quality, and crop maturity, not only can agricultural processes be more efficient, but also the farmers can make better and timely decisions in each process. ICTs also enable farmers make informed decisions in agricultural products transport and marketing by providing information on market prices and reducing transaction cost.

Q: What is the process through which this information delivered to farmers? How does it lead farmers to take right actions?

There are four steps in information delivery that we need to keep in mind for ICT4Ag: data generation, analysis, synthesis and dissemination. Each step, then, requires different considerations to take in designing ICT4Ag (summarized in Table 1). The key to successful ICT4Ag is to provide data in a consistent and integrated manner so that all aspects of information delivery are taken into account.  

 

Table 1. Steps to ICT-led Information Delivery in Agriculture

Steps  Considerations
Data Generation     Data should be high-quality and localized
Data Analysis    Analyze data that is necessary and relevant to farmers (implications)
Data Synthesis    Scientific data need to be communicated in a language or format that is    easily comprehensible for farmers
Data Dissemination       Data need to be coupled with recommendation of actions farmers        could take; Collaboration among stakeholders is especially important

 

Q: How is the private sector participating in information delivery in ICT4Ag?

While there are various types of the private sector involved in the ICT4Ag, one of them would be the companies that have been engaging in information selling, such as Reuters and Bloomberg Terminal. These companies now serve as business platforms for agricultural information delivery and are making efforts to provide much more reliable information to their client base. One example is Reuters Market Light service in India, which is a SMS subscription service to sell agricultural information for farmers. Also, there are businesses that buy commodity and seasonal forecast at higher rates. Therefore, there is a market formed among different business actors in information delivery.

In addition, there are new businesses that are trying to come up with different business models. For example, a company would generate big data from the weather infrastructure that the company has set up and makes profits by selling the information to different types of companies with different interests such as FMCG and logistics companies. There are various sectors of the economy for whom the access to reliable, relevant, topical and high quality data is key. The realm that was traditionally considered as public sector is becoming more private sector as businesses set up their own mechanisms for the on-ground weather data gathering, the utilization of satellite data or the combination of both. However, the private sector participation is still in the trial-and-error stage as business models continue to evolve.

Q: What do you consider are the greatest innovation implementation challenges?

Some of the biggest challenges are lack of hard and soft capacities, customization of data and accuracy of information. First of all, not only the current level of infrastructure, but also lack of human capability of understanding, analyzing and interpreting data is the first hurdle to fully unlock the benefits of ICT4Ag. We need to make substantial efforts to build capacity of the local implementing agencies to disseminate data necessary to farmers. Secondly, customization is critical. The provision of information needs to be tailored to specific regions. However, it is still difficult to figure out how to customize certain information to a particular target level. Next, the accuracy of information is another challenge. The predictive tools for collecting data are usually based on the predictive models, which sometimes do not work accurately. And when information is not accurate, the financial loss of farmers can be thousands of dollars. Therefore, ensuring reliability and accuracy of the prediction is very critical as it builds confidence among people. The good news is the accuracy of information is gradually improving as information is validated from more and more data sources, especially through machine learning, which helps refine the predictive models. In addition to overcoming these challenges, providing relevant, not just any, information is also important.

Many times, we are first drawn by flashy and new technologies before thinking about the essence of content. However, content is what matters after all and is key to all processes. We need to be sure about what information we are delivering, how relevant and accurate the information is, how tailored the information is and what the actual benefits that the information can bring to the farmers. Only if these criteria are met, the benefits of the information enabled by ICTs will take off.

Note: You can find Mr. Choudhary’s insights on ICT and Agricultural Market Information more at https://olc.worldbank.org/content/ict-agriculture.

About the author:

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Hyea Won Lee works as an ICT Policy and Cybersecurity Researcher at the World Bank, and is a M.A. Candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She recently completed our TechChange course on Agriculture, Innovation, and Technology.

On Monday, we had the pleasure of hosting TechGirls’s Job Shadow Day for the fourth year in a row! TechGirls is a selective exchange program that encourages and supports the desire of Middle Eastern and North African teenage girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). During the 3 week long exchange program, the girls (ranging from ages 15 – 17) travel around the U.S. getting a taste of the various careers one can have in STEM. One of the ways they experience a STEM career in the U.S. is by spending a day at a tech company during Job Shadow Day.

We were lucky enough to host Nada Abdelaziz Mostafa Abdelaziz and Lydia Ferial Oukid, who have interests in bioengineering and biomedical engineering, this year at our DC office. Both hope to learn more about the technology and engineering fields, and aspire to be leaders in both their local and international communities. We were able to show them a bit about what we do here at TechChange, and hosted workshops with our creative, industrial design, tech, and communication teams.

Nada and Lydia began their day by working with our creative team to create their own animated assets!

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Check out what they created below:

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Afterwards, they were able to learn about the projects that our tech fellows have been working on this summer.

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As per TechChange tradition, we had lunch at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant.

After lunch, Lydia and Nadia worked with our instructional design team, and were able to create their own online course in Articulate! Check out Lydia’s articulate and Nada’s articulate.

Lastly, they learned how to build their own webpage in HTML, with the assets they created throughout the day, from our tech team!

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All around, we at TechChange had a great time with the TechGirls! We look forward to hearing more of their future accomplishments — best of luck Nada and Lydia!

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Last week, the mobile data collection service Magpi released its latest addition to the platform: data visualizations. We sat down with the founder and CEO, Dr. Joel Selanikio, to talk about the new feature and what Magpi has in store for the future.

Magpi  prides itself in taking the programming out of data collection tasks. As a medical doctor concerned with global health, Selanikio is always looking for ways to add more user-friendly features. He would ask himself, “Wow, we keep taking these things that require programming and taking out all the programming. What else is there we can do?”

The obvious answer was to add an intuitive data visualization layer to Magpi, so that users could easily access, understand, and communicate the data they were collecting.

“Before, we thought that if users wanted to visualize the data, we can just let them export the data and enter it into Microsoft Excel. What we didn’t realize was how time consuming a process this can be for our users, so our new release will allow users to generate beautiful reports instantly,” said Selanikio.

For the past year, the programmers at Magpi have been working hard to make user-modifiable data visualizations which can be easily embedded and shared. Some sample outputs from the new data visualization system are shown below –  these graphs can be automatically generated whenever a user creates a report from their data.

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“I am super excited to show this to people,” said Selanikio. Users familiar with HTML can also further customize the visualizations, and magpi will be adding more data visualization features based on user feedback.

“We’re making it so that if you’re using Google Sheets, you can add triggers so you can enter data in a Google Sheet and it will automatically update your Magpi report.”

Screen Shot 2016-07-19 at 3.05.36 PM

 

In the future, Magpi is hoping to add features such as video, the ability to read barcodes, and more! Stay tuned for more exciting updates to come!

Next Tuesday, July 26, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM EDT, Magpi will be hosting a free webinar on how to use the new reports feature: click here to register.

Please join us in welcoming Amelia, one of our new summer fellows here at TechChange! Amelia graduated this past May from Yale University with a math major. Some of her most rewarding experiences she had at Yale were focused on teaching computer science: working as a peer tutor and TA for computer science classes, as well as designing a training program for students to learn how to repair computer hardware. She is so excited to be a tech fellow this summer and to continue to work at the intersection of education and technology! She is from NYC, so her free time is primarily spent eating the world’s best bagels, and trying to convince herself that it’s about time to learn how to drive.

Welcome to the TechChange team, Amelia!

Earlier this spring, TechChange partnered with the SCORE Association, also known as “Counselors to America’s Small Business”, along with their sponsor, the Deluxe Foundation. SCORE’s nationwide volunteer network provides small business development resources at no cost to entrepreneurs. Kathryn Kelly from their Field Operations team said this about their mission:

“Small business is the engine of our national economy through business formation, job creation and wealth building. In 2014, SCORE mentors helped start up over 56,000 businesses and create over 47,000 jobs. SCORE provides direct support to entrepreneurs and small businesses, which is critical to the development of vibrant communities throughout our country.”

The partnership entailed developing e-learning modules for SCORE’s Mentoring Skills Track, a vital training pathway for volunteers with advanced business experience to share their advice one-on-one with new entrepreneurs.

“The majority of our volunteers come to SCORE with high business acumens in such areas as finance, marketing or accounting. However, they do not necessarily have a background in mentoring,” Kelly said. “Our goal is to ensure volunteers have access to training on soft skills such as listening, facilitation, learning styles and peer learning.”

With these needs in mind, TechChange developed two scenario-based modules based on the first-person perspective of a new mentor learning from other more experienced SCORE mentors:

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The user could test their learning while running through a branching conversation with their first client – a new business owner seeking advice for the first time.

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Depending on the path selected, varied feedback would address the nuances of each possible response.

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SCORE utilizes a variety of resources, including local workshops and in-person seminars to train its volunteers and meet their community’s learning and development objectives. However, online learning has become an increasingly important part of their blended toolkit. Kelly added this about SCORE’s training philosophy:

“Lifelong learning is one of SCORE’s key values. Our e-learning program helps our volunteers stay relevant to the latest business trends and tools to ensure they can provide our clients with the support they need when they need it.”

At TechChange, we agree with SCORE and echo their commitment as we strive to create the best possible interactive resources for today’s ever-changing professional development needs.

-by Michelle Marshall, TechChange

Is your organization looking to train your teams online? Besides online facilitated courses, we also also create custom offline computer training that can be used in settings where internet connectivity is a non-starter. See our different projects on our Enterprise page and feel free to reach out to us enterprise@techchange.org.

 

Please join us in welcoming Tahmid, one of our new summer fellows here at TechChange! Tahmid is a rising senior at Swarthmore College, double majoring in Math and Computer Science. He will be working with the tech team this summer and is excited to learn Node, JS, and React while tackling the many projects, known and unknown, that lie ahead. In his spare time, he likes drawing and painting, solving math puzzles, playing ultimate Frisbee, and sharing fun facts.

Welcome to the TechChange team, Tahmid!

Please join us in welcoming Katie, one of our new summer fellows at TechChange! She is currently a rising junior at the University of Maryland, double majoring in Computer Science and Art. This summer she will be working with both our tech team and our creative team. She’s still exploring her passions in Computer Science, but has interests in HCI. In art, she is interested in digital media, but also enjoys drawing, painting, and sculpting. Aside from that, she loves long distance running and has been running since middle school.

Welcome to the TechChange team, Katie!

Please join us in welcoming Sarah, our new Instructional Design Fellow at TechChange!

Sarah is a rising senior at Carnegie Mellon University, majoring in
Human Computer Interaction and Decision Science with a minor in
Learning Media.  At CMU, she has developed a passion for instructional
design and educational technology, running CMU EdTech and as a
Research Assistant at the Learning Media Design Center.

Sarah is very excited to be spending her summer at TechChange and is
eager to learn more about how education, technology, and social change
can come together to empower learners, build community, and mobilize
change.

In her spare time, she loves long runs, hiking, traveling and yoga.

Welcome to the TechChange team, Sarah!

TechChange courses are designed for busy young professionals. Today we are very excited to chat with Grace Kim, the project manager for the Global Innovation Exchange, who participated in TC103: Technology for Disaster Response. She discusses her experience with the overall program, and how it has impacted her work.

Q: Why did you decide to enroll in the Tech for Disaster Response course?

I spent 8-years as a software sales executive at IBM and several startups, but I had always wanted to focus on T4D. My initial plan was to try T4D from the private sector side, but soon realized that most companies have not integrated products and services serving the development industry into their core business. This makes it difficult to find a full-time, dedicated role focusing on T4D in the private sector. In May 2015, I decided it’s time to change careers, but felt I needed to brush up on development technology. I have always been interested in disaster response and humanitarian aid, but never really figured out how to break into that sector. So I searched online for courses, TC103 came up…and the rest is history!

Q: How did the Technology for Disaster Response course impact your professional life and/or professional development?

While I was taking TC103 in June 2015, I was spending more time and effort (by choice!) on the course than on my day job. It made me realize that life is too short to spend my life doing something that I was not passionate about so I LEFT MY JOB! During my “funempoyment”, I did 60 informational interviews in DC between August and November (Chris Neu, COO of TechChange, was #38 and Nick Martin, CEO of TechChange, was #51) and landed my job at USAID by the end of December. TC103 helped me to learn very quickly about the technologies available in disaster response and develop a network of practitioners in this space. Being able to name drop relevant organizations and people during my informational interviews and job interviews allowed me to demonstrate that I wasn’t a complete foreigner coming from the private sector.

Q: What caught your attention about TechChange courses, or got you interested in taking them?

First, TechChange offered a course that was of personal interest to me – technology for disaster response.  Second, it was affordable for me to pay out of pocket. Third, the platform was really easy to use, and encouraged participation and collaboration between students so I truly felt that I got to develop some good relationships with other classmates.  Fourth, the instructor, Timo Leuge, was very knowledgeable and brought experts in the field as guest lecturers, which I thought, were really great.

Q: What would be an advice to other participants taking a TechChange course? How can they get the most out of it?

1. Do all the reading because you will learn a lot from them.  2. Participate in the course and earn points (for your certificate) by commenting and jumping in on various discussion strings.  You will feel more connected to your classmates. 3. Visit the TechChange office in DC…they are super friendly!

Q: How have you been able to use what you learned in the courses in your work, and how has the program overall been helpful to you?

The Global Innovation Exchange covers all sectors in development so I’m using the learnings from TC103 to make sure that we have the disaster response/humanitarian aid sector content developed in terms of innovations, funding opportunities, resources and events relevant to this sector.

Q: What is the Global Innovation Exchange?

The Global Innovation Exchange is an online platform that is a “one stop shop” for development innovations, funding opportunities, resources and events.  It is free to create an account to connect with like-minded individuals and experts, browse content by sector/topic/region, and share your expertise for the benefit of the global development community.  The goal is to democratize and provide equitable access to information, reduce duplication, and allow us all to make informed business decisions across the development industry.  It’s a great tool to see what people are working on and where, and search for funding opportunities, resources and events that is relevant to you.

Q: Are you new to the ICT4D sector? 

Yes, although I’ve kept a pulse on T4D even when I was in the private sector, joining the Global Development Lab is my first job in the T4D sector.

Q: Would you recommend TechChange courses to a friend?

100%!!!  It is great to see TechChange evolving to offer new courses like the diploma course in M&E and white labeling courses for organizations.  What’s truly beneficial is that the instructors are practitioners who bring real-life experience to the course along with their network of experts who guest lecture.

About Grace:

Grace Kim is a Korean-American returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Los Angeles. She spent over 15 years in the private sector in environmental consulting, digital development and enterprise software.  And recently, she joined USAID | Global Development Lab as the project manager for the Global Innovation Exchange.grace-kim-headshot