Expression of Interest (EoI) 83431024 Junior Short term expert (JSTE) to monitor tutors and students engagement in e-learning

The project "Improving the Quality and Attractiveness of Vocational Education and Training in Lebanon" aims to increasingly align vocational education and training in sectors with sustainable employment potentials with the needs of the Lebanese economy.

Emphasis is placed on improving the partnership between vocational training institutions and the private sector, strengthening human resource capacity in vocational training institutions, and developing practice-oriented training programs. The target groups of the project are young people, unemployed and underemployed adults who want to improve their employment prospects through qualifications relevant to the labor market.

The implementing partner is the Directorate General for Vocational and Technical Education (DGVTE), which lacks capacity at various levels to involve the private sector in vocational education and training. This concerns curriculum development, teacher training and the expansion of practical elements in teaching. The project's advisory approach includes establishing and advising coordination bodies with representatives of the state vocational training sector and company representatives at the macro and steering levels, piloting cooperation models between vocational training institutions and the private sector, systematic human resources development in public vocational training institutions and testing competency-based, modularized training programs.

b.Context 

e-Learning (EL) the stumbling economic situation that is affecting Lebanon at several levels, TVET schools and institutes are not opening on a reguluar basis and are likely to stay closed several days of the week during the whole academic year 2022/23 due to teacher strikes.

Based on the experience in e-learning which the GIZ projects ProVTE and VTE4all have collected, and considering that the teaching and learning at distance is likely to be a constant in the future in the form of blended learning, the QuA-VET project intends to develop the technical theoretical subjects of the following two sectors in e-learning modality:

• BT1 and BT2 “Maintenance of Manufacturing Machines
• TS1 and TS2 “Health Inspection and Food safety”

This will ensure that students are receiving the necessary support to access the technical theoretical subjects as e-lessons and that their learning is not interrupted due to the instability in the country. Moreover, the lessons in EL modality will be a support for teachers for in presence lessons, whenever more face to face teaching will be taking place. 

c. Outline of the mission

To assure a consistent level of quality of the content and the flow of the EL courses, an Authoring Software (AS) – Articulate Rise 360 - has been selected as a tool for the creation of interactive courses.Further to this a Learning Management System (LMS) – Moodle, which is SCORM compatible and can absorb the courses developed by the content developers contracted through QuA-VET project, has been chosen and used during the delivery of the technical theoretical subjects for the BT “Bâtiment et Travaux Publics” under ProVTE and VTE4all projects.

Moodle provides for an answer, that minimizes incompatibility and bug related technical problems and offers a cloud-based solution, which will allow for a quick and hassle-free set-up of the software and even offers offline viewing of the courses including progress tracking. As the e-learning lesson (ELL) development is a time-consuming process, students’ progress must be followed by the teachers who are not involved in the e-lessons’ development. These teachers will also receive a training on e-learning and remote tutoring concepts, and on the features of the LMS.

Based on the data collected from the 12 partner TVET schools, 486 students are currently enrolled in the first two years of the BT “Industrial Mechanic” and TS “Health Inspection and Food Safety” for the 2022-23 academic year. The enrolment rates for the 2023-24 academic year might be slightly differentbased on the analysis of the rates from the previous year.

There will be up to 40 content developers trained in Articulate 360 by QuA-VET for inserting 540 of ELLs of the BT “Mechanical Maintenance of Manufacturing Machines” and up to 1080 TS “Health Inspection and Food Safety”, for the school years 2022/23 and 2023/24, into Moodle, and up to 80 teachers, who will disseminate the e-lessons to their students and monitor their learning progress.

In order to support teaching and administrative staff from the TVET schools, an expert is required, with experience in education, able to coordinate with the teachers delivering the ELLs to TVET students and to track the students' learning progress in Moodle LMS.

d. The contractor shall provide the following work/service:

• Meet with project manager, project team members, staff of the DGVTE and of other organisations involved in the project as considered necessary.
• Inform and regularly consult the project team members.
• Report on technical and general challenges faced by teachers or students during distance learning and coordinate with the IT expert on possible solutions.
• Communicate with teachers on their availabilities for the training sessions on Moodle.
• Develop and update attendance sheets for teachers’ trainings on Moodle.
• Prepare and deliver a short presentation for teachers on the reporting process for the completion of the e-lessons on Moodle.
• Participate and support the project IT expert during the teachers’ sessions on Moodle and clarify reporting mechanism and coordination process.
• Establish a communication channel to follow-up, on a weekly basis, with teachers involved in ELL delivery and track their activities on Moodle.
• Develop a monitoring sheet reflecting teachers and students’ progress and grades in each subject for each school, and update it on weekly basis, referring to Moodle LMS.
• Collect weekly reports from the teachers on the grades of the students in the ELL uploaded in Moodle.
• Inform regularly the project team members on the progress and challenges in the schools.
• Attend regular meetings with the project team to exchange on the flow of e-learning lessons delivery in each school.
• Carry out all activities necessary for the accomplishment of the required outputs / results.
• Write mission report and required administrative deliverables.
• Be accessible after the short-term mission through internet for follow-up discussions.

e.Outputs/Results

The outputs / results requested from the expert are:

• Presentation prepared and delivered to teachers on the reporting mechanism for the ELL completion during the academic years.
• Attendance sheets for teachers’ training in Moodle for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years, in Excel format.
• Weekly report, in Excel format, on teachers and students’ progress and completion for each course, in each school during the two academic years.
• Two end of academic year reports on the numbers of e-lessons completed by each student, and the numbers of reports shared by each teacher, in Excel format.
• Report on the challenges and recommendations for coordinating and monitoring teachers’ delivery of ELLs to students, in Word and PDF formats.

f. Administrative Deliverables:

• A comprehensive end of mission’s report, if needed, submitted to project manager for revision and approval following the structure:

• Scope and objectives of the mission
• Approach adopted for conducting the mission
• List of outputs produced during the mission (including meetings and people met)
• Description of the outputs produced during the mission
• Problems and challenges encountered during the mission
• Recommendations for the follow-up of the mission
• Recommendations for the improvement of project implementation
• All documents produced should be delivered in hard copy and in digital form using exclusively MS-Office applications   

g. Qualifications & General professional experience:

• University degree at least at bachelor level in Education, Educational Technology, Social Sciences, or any other related field, with additional 3 years of working experience in TVET or Education (minimum requirement).

Specific professional experience:

• At least 3 years of working experience in teaching at secondary level and / or in capacity building/skills development (preferred requirement).
• Previous experience in monitoring and coordinating with teachers/staff delivering distance learning education (preferred requirement).

Others:

• Proficient in use of Moodle or any other learning management system
• Proficient in use of MS Office (Power Point, Word, Excel, Outlook)
• Ability to explain technical information in a concise manner
• At least one year of working experience in Lebanon (minimum requirement)

Language skills:

• Fluent in Arabic language (minimum requirement)
• Fluent in English language (minimum requirement)