Findings from a blended learning training model

• In Event: Lessons Learned from Education in Emergencies Knowledge Transfer Strategies

Proposal

This paper presents findings from development and delivery of Save the Children’s Education in Emergencies Training Programme (also now a Certificate in Advanced Studies with the University of Geneva) employs a blended approach to learning involving a combination of online distance learning, face-to-face residential, mentoring and placement. At the start of the nine-month EiE Training Programme, the course teachers provide a high degree to input and guidance to students and invests a lot of time (and activities) into creating a safe and participatory learning environment in which learners increasingly become the source of the knowledge and conduit of its transfer, with the teacher just providing the scaffolding and medium for this to take place. In the past this approach and the duration of the programme (6-9 months) has led to a community of practice developing between learners which endures way beyond the end of the training programme, within which students provide peer support and guidance to each other in their respective responses. One excellent and poignant example of this was seeing how seasoned Middle Eastern Syria crisis responders (from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq) provided materials, guidance and advice to Greek education officers on how to best support and manage the issues they were encountering in the classrooms in Greece due to the traumatic experience that the children had endured both in Syria and on the hazardous journey from there. In additional to the technical In addition to being a networks of technical support and guidance they also become an informal forum for sharing EiE career opportunities between programme locations and agencies (the EiE Training Programme is an interagency programme).
Feedback from the participants and their line managers from all three cycles completed to date (East Africa, Middle East and South East Asia) has been very positive: 100% of participants rated the EiE Training Programme as good or excellent; 85% of survey respondents have been involved in an emergency education response since starting the programme; 100% of respondents feel better able to contribute to an EiE response as a result of the programme; Graduates have progressed into roles with increased humanitarian focus / seniority since starting the programme, including: Cluster Coordinator, Education Consortium Manager, Senior Education Officer, Area Coordinator, EiE Operational Backstop, Emergency Field Coordinator, Response Manager. Programme graduates have also received additional ToT training which has equipped them to cascade their learning to their teams and within their country programmes, to date reaching 596 other beneficiaries. Although programme mentors have, to date, been Save the Children EiE Advisors, plans are underway for future cycles to team learners up with previous graduates as buddies or field-based mentors – a great example of South-South knowledge transfer. EiE Training Programme graduates who have also been on the ToT, are also starting to deliver the short EiE Trainings, an off-short of the full 9-month course, which serves to both reinforce their knowledge and established them as experts and trainers within their country and regions.

Author

• Arlo Kitchingman, Save the Children - UK