What does a ‘learning advisor’ do?

We call ourselves “learning advisors”. That is not a very common job title. Would you like to know what we do?As ‘learning advisors’ we do these three things:
1. Train and coach those responsible for the development and delivery of training programmes;
2. Develop tailor made tools for trainers, such as cartoons, videos, exercises and games;
3. We develop online and offline interactive courses that people can do on a computer or smartphone. This is also known as e-learning.

At this moment, there are five of us working on several projects. Our biggest and most challenging project at the moment is the development of training material for trainers who work on gender issues in rural areas. It will probably come together in one-stop resource website where trainers can download all kinds of training materials and tools for their trainings. There will also be some e-learning courses that can be done online (and later off-line through downloading). This project is funded by Swiss Development Cooperation.

Reach many

E-learning is an effective way to reach out to large audiences. Let’s look at some examples: say you want to train all preschool teachers in Rwanda on the effective use of “play” in their classrooms to enhance the development of young children. Instead of using the traditional approach of getting a master trainer to train a group of trainers who will cascade further until every pre-school teacher has been reached, we can make a set of on-line courses so anyone with access to a computer or tablet can take the training at their convenience. This way, the message doesn’t get lost in the process of cascading the training downstream! As most pre-school teachers might not have access to a computer however, we could also create online content ( video’s, images, exercises) downloadable for trainers working in the cascade. This would make cascading training less receptive for dilution of the message.

Curious about our training methods and material?

Some of it is already available on our website under the tab “training material”. All materials are available free of charge.

Our new courses on gender will only be available in May 2018. If you’re interested in a sneak preview, you can sign up to become a reviewer of the course here. Being a reviewer means you’ll have to look at our content and make some comments or suggestions for improvement. You will need a computer or tablet for it, and an active internet connection to do this.

In this way, you can contribute to creating quality content for trainers in Rwanda.
In the next edition of this newsletter I will explain why Three Mountains has chosen to set up shop in Rwanda and invest in e-learning.

Stay tuned!

Jan Willem Eggink