“We are creating a global network”

[ Interview with Günter Podlacha ]

InWEnt is setting up and supporting regional e-learning centres. What exactly do these centres do?
E-learning has been recognised as a promising tool for capacity building. Not only we have done so, but the development community in general. If you know the right didactical methods, you can use digital technology to speed up the dissemination of knowledge and information. Accordingly, several educational institutions approached us and sought our advice. We help such partners to develop and implement e-learning programmes.

Which institution was that in the case of Namibia?
It was the Namibian Open Learning Network Trust (NOL-Net), a joint undertaking of the University of Namibia, the Polytechnic of Namibia and various other partners, including the government. The institutions involved decided to cooperate on a regular basis, they wanted to create an e-learning system that would reach people even in that country’s remote areas. What InWEnt needs is partners’ institutional readiness; they must have the long-term capacity to operate an e-learning centre. They have to command the necessary resources, both in terms of staff and funds, and they must be interested in designing and running their own courses.

What else do you require?
A degree of technological readiness is also indispensable. Our partners need to have adequate expertise. If infrastructure in the target region is adequate as well, we have found ourselves a good partner, who, most often, will already have been cooperating with InWEnt in other areas. In that sense, e-learning programmes complement our other training activities perfectly. The next stage is about identifying what exactly partners need: management expertise,
e-learning strategies, content development, tutoring skills and so on. On that base, our programmes are adapted to the local needs, and we train our partners’ staff accordingly. Afterwards, the centres operate independently.

So you actually do make yourself redundant, as should be the norm for development agencies?
Today, NOL-Net represents us and other German development agencies in Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya, where new programmes for e-learning and vocational training are being introduced. In the background, of course, we still remain available, ready to assist our Namibian colleagues should they require advice. In this way, our e-learning model is snowballing fast.

In anglophone Africa, your Namibian colleagues should not face any language problems. But what about other parts of the world? In Central Asia, English is probably less useful.
That is correct. People in that region speak a variety of Turk languages. However, they do have one language in common – Russian. Therefore, our cascading model of building capacities should be feasible there too. We are planning to cooperate with the German-Kasak University in Lamaty and the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Moreover, we also offer our expertise in Spanish. In Central and Southeast Europe, however, we are making good progress using English.

When development experts speak of the “digital divide”, they are basically thinking of infrastructure and hardware. You do not agree with that equation?
No, I don’t, because that is only one side of the coin. Undeniably, you need infrastructure and hardware if you want any digitised system of knowledge transfer to reach remote areas. But even the best technology will prove useless if you don’t have the didactical and methodological skill to provide programmes for e-learning and knowledge dissemination successfully.

In many poor countries, teaching is typically done from a blackboard in front, in a rather authoritarian way. If people are supposed to teach themselves as autodidacts, using computerised programmes, they will need a strong sense of self-discipline. So you presumably need to do a lot to boost participants’ motivation.
It is important that curricula lead to formal qualifications and advance careers. Moreover, participation in the programmes should normally not be free of charge. Anyone paying for a course will want to see some rewards, and even the mere fact of money changing hands can make a difference – student grants, for instance, have motivational effects. That said, our primary focus is not to promote autodidactic learning in the strict sense of the word. We do not set out to reach only those who seek to gain skills and knowledge on their own initiative and by their own efforts. For us, self-paced learning programmes that do without tutor support are the rare exception.

So how do you work?
We normally apply a mix of didactic approaches, including phases in which tutors and students are physically present. But even for programmes that are entirely done online we always make sure that there is someone to offer assistance to our participants. We must prevent them from getting stuck because of problems relating to technology or content. Up to 2003, we offered many e-learning courses without tutor support, and dropout rates sometimes reached 80 %. If tutors are involved, however, almost all participants see the course through to the end. Such tutoring can be rather bossy. In Asia or Africa, participants often want some strict supervision, telling them what to do and monitoring results. But mostly our approach is partnership-style. We are dealing with adults, after all. What matters is that those who are learning must never feel left alone.

Do tutors define the pace of a course?
Tutor-supported courses are designed to be attending from start to end. They are based on a curriculum with a certain rhythm. Depending on the programme, courses advance week-by-week, or month-by-month. Otherwise, we would have no scope for formal certification, and our participants are quite keen on certificates.

Are your certificates equivalent to academic degrees, - or perhaps course credits?
Wherever higher education uses a graduate-point system, you can, in principle, acquire such points through e-learning courses. But there are also training programmes outside academia that can serve a person’s career.

The value of such qualifications probably varies from one country to another.
Yes, it does. Recognition of certificates varies worldwide. In many countries, a certificate from Germany issued by the Federal Development Ministry and
InWEnt is held in great esteem. On the other hand, we often cooperate with partner institutions – like universities. Those names also appear on the certificates. In cooperation with the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning, we are striving for a definition of course-quality standards and criteria to measure them. That would put us in a position to issue internationally accepted certificates.

Internationally, what is InWEnt’s particular competitive forte?
We do not only train people. We are creating a global network of e-learning centres, in which partners meet as peers, at eye level. Very good news for us was that
e-learning centres based on our model are now being established in Indonesia and the Philippines, resulting from South-South contacts. The Namibians, the University of Western Cape in South Africa and interested partners in Southeast Asia teamed up, you see. We support that venture, and have assumed a back-up role. Our partners act independently, but they can rely on our support if they want to make sure they are still on the right track. Other e-learning providers do not create networks like that. All they offer is educational courses that, in the end, are confined to particular educational topics and that, accordingly, remain separate entities of limited use.

What do you need to do to stay on your dynamic growth path?
Of course, we must, first of all, keep on offering courses and creating new nodal points for the network. On top of that, however, we are looking at licensing and copyright issues – studying the whole bandwidth of options, including open-source, open-content and copy-left models at the one end and proprietary licences at the other. The toughest line we take is to allow modification of a programme only with our explicit approval. We feel that we have a responsibility to ensure that partners get the programmes they need, and that means first-class products. InWEnt is doing pioneering work for other German agencies in this respect. GTZ, KfW Entwicklungsbank, DED and the Federal Development Ministry itself are also interested in e-learning, and they use the programmes we develop.

Questions by Hans Dembowski.