Month: July 2017

Several months following the completion of the program, we sat down with Royce Escolar, Monitoring & Evaluation and Communications Officer and M&E Diploma Track graduate, to hear about how the program affected his professional development, ambitions, and projects.

Q: How did you find out about TechChange, and how did you become interested in taking courses?

I found out about TechChange by googling courses on Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). I knew that I had to constantly learn new tools and approaches to enhance my skills in M&E given the fast-paced changes in the sector.  The use of technology to enhance M&E and how to best present and visualize M&E data were what attracted me most when I decided to take up TechChange’s diploma track.

I previously had a chance to coordinate work with USAID when I was with AusAID.  It was good to know that USAID had and still continues to use TechChange to train their officers. It was an indicator for me that the courses offered by TechChange are of high quality and value to a key player in the international development sector.

Q: Have you taken online courses before? 

I surely did. I took my Masters in Evaluation from University of Melbourne via distance learning from 2012 to 2013.  This was a two-year part-time curriculum which allowed me to work full-time during the day and study after work hours.

Q: How would you compare the TechChange experience to other online course experiences? 

TechChange provided a much more fun and practical learning experience by creatively incorporating multi-media in the courses.  I really enjoyed how the topics and courses were presented using easy to understand language. TechChange also gave us lots of opportunities to practice and use the M&E tools and software, including insights on the context where the tools would be most relevant.  I also valued the sharing of experiences from guest resource persons via video and the sharing from other course participants.

Q: How have you been able to use what you learned at TechChange in your work?

Yes, I have used Canva.com a couple of times in creating infographics to better present the outcomes from capacity development initiatives funded by our program. A copy of one infographic I made is available in our program website at: http://aanzfta.asean.org/program-highlights/

I have also used what I learned on data visualization in developing a communication package to be presented to Economic Ministers from 12 countries party to a regional free trade agreement.  This package will be finalized and uploaded to the website (http://aanzfta.asean.org/) by end-September 2017.

By Dec 2017, I will revive my own blog on M&E (http://royceescolar.wixsite.com/evaluation) which has been inactive since early 2016 when I took a full-time job.  I plan to post some of these data visualization products in my blog and write articles reflecting on my experiences and the process in developing these data visualization products.

Q: Would you recommend the Technology for Monitoring and Evaluation Diploma to a friend?

I would definitely recommend TechChange and the Diploma track on technology for M&E!!!

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Above graphic by Royce for the AANZFTA-ASEAN program website
Featured image: ASEC – Community Relations Division

After a successful fall 2016 as Communications Fellow, Arianna returned this year as a Course Facilitator in Technology for Knowledge Management. Arianna is not only an online educator, but also a rising junior-and-a-half at Davidson College. We sat down to ask her a few questions.

Q: What first interested you in working with the TechChange team in 2016?

It was a late night as a nerdy high schooler, conducting topic analysis on the Lincoln Douglas debate resolution, “Resolved: In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory”, when I first discovered the magic of online learning. After hours of skimming dense law briefs and literature reviews with little luck, I finally encountered a MOOC on Democracy and Governance which turned my world upside down.

Ever since, I’ve been both intrigued by the way that online learning can make education on niche topics (or education from fresh perspectives) accessible and eager to find ways to contribute to the edtech space. TechChange was the perfect fit.

Q: What’s it like engaging the TechChange community on a daily basis?

I couldn’t imagine a more amazing experience if you asked me to. I’ve learned so much from the participants’ discussions, from the questions folks ask, from the network of guest experts TechChange brings into their courses. I have always felt most comfortable in discussion-based, three-way learning models, and every day in the TechChange community I come home chewing on something new.

Q: In January 2017, you wrote a blog post on A People’s Education on the World Wide Web. How has your background in educational development in social movements influenced your work?

Aside from the wisdom from my big, bizarre family, grassroots organizers have taught me everything I know. I’ve learned that it’s always appropriate to take a second, stop, and ask yourself, “who am I doing this for?”. If you can’t easily explain to yourself how what you’re doing tangibly helps the people you’re supposedly serving, it’s probably time to change course. You’d be surprised how often that simple check in makes a difference.

Q: What would your TED talk be about?

Without question, group dynamics. I am invested in the processes of rapport, empathy, and community building, and the ways this study can help us make the spaces that we host more accessible and interactive for all types of people. The talk would probably draw heavily on the discipline of Knowledge Management, specifically how KM makes explicit the informal practices of networking and learning that can hinder transparency in organizations. Naming where key information is siloed is one of the first steps to creating a unified team.

Q: What’s next for you after this summer at TechChange?

Finishing my degree. I started working at TechChange during a gap year from college. Needless to say, I’m a big believer in gap years, gap semesters, gap however-long-you-need. In my experience, the four year higher education model assumes a dichotomy between life experience and courses. A lifelong, experiential learner recognizes the fallacy and finds the time for courses whenever it fits best in their journey.

A veteran Illustrator and Animator with the TechChange team, John Kim has been responsible for conceiving, illustrating, and animating some of TechChange’s most beautiful and engaging educational content. From self-paced courses to short animated videos, if you’ve enjoyed a TechChange creative product in the last two years, there’s a good chance that John had a major part in bringing that into reality.

So it was a pleasure to sit down with John and learn a bit more about him and his work!

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

I’m born and raised in Maryland, the land of the blue crabs! I graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2014 with a bachelors in Illustration. I was very interested in TechChange’s animations and thought it would be an amazing experience to join them.

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?

My favorite project that I worked on was the Indianapolis Zoo animation to help encourage the conservation of orangutans. It was my first time actually doing 2D frame by frame animation by hand. Now it has opened new doors for me in regards to working on personal projects. I never realized I said orangutan wrong…

Q: How has your role changed since you first joined TechChange? Are there any skills or ideas that you’ve included in your approach?

At first I was only creating Illustrations for TechChange’s online courses and animations, but I also now help with animating and video editing, including on the YouTube series for Data Day to help our learners better visualize and understand everyday data.

 

Q: What was it like to travel to Mozambique to meet TechChange partners and film subject matter experts?

It’s very corny to say this, but traveling to Mozambique really changed my perspective on life. It was my first time traveling to Africa and I was not sure what to expect. There were/are many things that are happening around the world that I am not aware of and to see the aftermath of a disaster was conflicting for me. I feel like I learned more about myself in Mozambique than I have in any other trip. Also to be able to travel with two amazing colleagues made the trip amazing. I felt like a C-list celebrity in Mozambique with all the stares I got from the locals…

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?

I’m pretty harsh on myself when it comes to criticizing my work. Most times I’m never really satisfied with what I produce, and feel like there are always things I feel like I could of done, but was not able to figure out. I try to learn from all the pros and cons of what came out of the final product and use them to grow as an artist.

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

Everything! It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with such great people who are so CRAZY! It’s great to be able to be in an environment where you can act like yourself without any fear of being rejected. Everyone is open to new ideas and are always accepting of one another.

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

I would love to explore even more styles and animation styles to learn from. It’s always so rewarding to be able to see your work evolve! Also, I would love to be able to take better photos. I’m still a novice and I am excited to gain more experience.

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

My siblings and I have all the same initials. I’m not sure if my parents were just lazy or they thought it was funny. JK!

It’s 2017. We know webinar tools aren’t just for online learning. They can be used for internal trainings, conferences, workshops, you name it. More and more people around the world are finding creative ways to collaborate using webinar technology.

We also know you want to hear more about which web conferencing tools are best, given that this is still our top-performing blog post of all time. So we at TechChange wanted to give you a review of the webinar tools we think are the best in the game in 2017, and give you the pros and cons so you can evaluate which ones fit your needs the best.

At TechChange, our primary webinar tool of choice is YouTube Live, which we switched to almost exactly 4 years ago when it was called Google Hangouts on Air. YouTube Live is a free service which provides a consistent level of quality and is ubiquitous enough for most of the guest experts in our courses to be able to access with ease.

However, many of our clients have been switching over to Zoom, a company that began in 2011 but has since grown a major following.

The reason is because there are a number of features Zoom offers that YouTube Live does not. For one thing, because they are a paid service, they offer customer support, which can be very helpful when you don’t have in-house tech support and are trying to host sessions but are experiencing technical difficulties.

They also have a number of additional features they have build out because their customer base is so broad, and they do a good job maintaining them. Google, because it offers YouTube Live for free, can sometimes stop maintaining certain features, such as the Cameraman app, which allows webinar hosts to have more control over which video feeds the audience can see, with no notice to clients.

For example, Zoom allows presenters to draw on the screen, enable cloud recording, and offers numerous integrations with services like Slack, HipChat, Zapier, Kaltura, and more. Because everything is built upon APIs, you can also access every aspect of the Zoom experience from outside of Zoom, such as how many people joined, etc.

Zoom also allows participants to call in by phone, which can be very useful when hosting sessions with participants from low-bandwidth countries with unreliable infrastructure. There is an option to allow the person calling in to the session pay for the call or to allow the host to pay for the call. They can also host more participants in a single webinar than YouTube Live can, with a maximum of 200 participants when using their highest level Enterprise plan.

But there are also a couple of downsides to Zoom: the first is that it requires all participants to download the Zoom application. This can sometimes be tricky to coordinate, especially on a tight deadline. Additionally, you can only embed Zoom events on a website if you are using the YouTube or Facebook Live integration, which cost an extra $50 a month on top of the usual subscription fee. YouTube Live will also auto-record and auto-archive your events, whereas in Zoom, you need to enable recording, which can be a pro or a con, depending on your use case.

At the end of the day, TechChange courses will be sticking with YouTube Live, but we offer support to clients who want to pay to take advantage of Zoom’s advanced features. If you want a quick overview of Zoom and YouTube Live’s features compared to other webinar tools, please see the chart below!

Chart

Successful, effective online courses? No, that’s hardly a metaphor. At TechChange, we create online courses tailored to our professional participants so that they may create real change in the world. Across international boundaries, languages and experiences, I’ve worked to provide and support our ever-growing platform to make this course a unique success. Instead of hard course deadlines and unrealistic quotas, I measure success by the participant engagement; observing how they foster connections, and use the platform to collaborate for global change.

As a part of the TechChange team, I am unlike many other, typical online course facilitators. I provide and support weekly Live webinars, thoughtful and active discussion forums, and round-the-clock support to fellow facilitators and participants. I’ve found that these tools for facilitation return a higher degree of success upon completion of the course, and beyond.

I’ve had the recent pleasure of working closely with one of our team’s oldest partners to kick-off the fifth iteration of their online course on global health and entrepreneurship. To our delight, the course was a major success, more so than any of the past iterations. We had over 300 applicants and enrollees; over 200 new discussion replies posted in only one week; and more enthusiasm for each week’s Live webinar than we could have ever expected. The participants’ engagement sparked our team to host additional spaces for these professionals to collaborate, and they returned only positive, energizing conversations. We were inspired by motivating testimonies, trials and missions, and were thrilled to have provided a platform through which these ideas could flourish.

This international network of entrepreneurs and critical thinkers, working together in real-time, using the knowledge and tools available in our course, is the true measure of success. I am proud of the hard work we all put-in, and have high goals to meet in the next iteration of the course.

 

Picture this: You’ve just finished the latest Technology for Knowledge Management online course. After four engaging weeks, the guest experts, forums, and content already have you excited to demonstrate your new skills to colleagues and employers. But, how do you get credit for being on the cutting edge of online learning? Fortunately, LinkedIn is evolving into something far beyond the mere online resume holder it once was known to be. In fact, LinkedIn is ahead of the curve on acknowledging that the capacity of an employee is not necessarily tied to traditional educational experience alone. Among other features, the employment-oriented social networking platform now includes an interactive section for core competencies, recommendations, and- you guessed it- certificates.

A badge on LinkedIn is no replacement for a university diploma (well, not yet anyway), but certificates can demonstrate mastery of a particular skillset, like the ability to build an SMS campaign in TextIt or to create compelling visualizations in Tableau. In the remainder of this post, you will find instructions on how to add your TechChange certificates to your LinkedIn profile. If you haven’t yet taken advantage of our other social media opportunities for alumni, be sure to join our Facebook and LinkedIn groups!

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Step 1: Add an “Accomplishments” section to your profile. It can be found on the right side of your profile page. If you already have any certifications listed on your profile, you may instead need to hit the “+” sign next to the “Accomplishments” tab to find this pop up window.

Step 2: Once you’ve selected the option to add a certificate, a pop up window will appear asking you to enter information about your certificate.

The rest of the process is relatively straightforward. You can enter the name of the course you completed for “Certification name”. Under “Certification authority”, a drop down menu will appear once you’ve started typing, where you will be able to find TechChange.

After entering the month and year in which you received your certificate, check the box for “This certification does not expire”. This will make the “To” date disappear. Finally, you’re given the option to publicly link to a PDF version of the certificate. Oftentimes, this isn’t necessary, but if you’re interested, skip to the end of this post for instructions.

Especially if you’re a TechChange veteran, it might be worth adding as a new section to your resume entirely! Employers love seeing qualified job candidates, and these certificates could be that one thing that bumps your resume to the top of the stack.

(Optional) How to add a link to your certificate on your profile:

  1. You’ll need to make sure you have your certificate(s) handy. Make sure you know where it exists on your computer’s file system so you can quickly upload and access it. If you can’t find yours, reach out to us at info@techchange.org and we’ll get you another copy.
  2. Once you have your certificate, you’re going to need to host your file in a publicly available place online. The easiest ways to do that are through Dropbox or Google Drive.
  3. Double check to make sure that you’ve set the viewing privileges to “anyone with the link”!
  4. Copy the link to the “Certification URL” box on LinkedIn. You’re done!

Have any other questions about your TechChange experience? Want to see a tutorial on some other topic related to your course? Haven’t taken a course yet but looking to?

Shoot us an email at info@techchange.org.