Consultancy: Individual Consultant for Learning Passport implementation in ESAR and establish the Regional Learning Hub at UNICEF

Background and justification

As countries all over the world closed their schools in an attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19, billions of children were left out of school, often for a prolonged period of time and with limited access to distance learning. This unprecedented crisis represents a unique opportunity to upscale digital learning solutions and, more broadly, technology for development to improve access to education and learning outcomes and build stronger, more resilient education systems. UNICEF took this opportunity to initiate a global push for digital learning for every child which consists of four elements: world-class learning solutions, connecting every school to the internet, providing devices for learning to children and securing low-cost access to online education. In Eastern and Southern Africa, technology for development has room and potential for expansion. Digital learning solutions have undergone a rapid expansion to facilitate country-level curriculum for children and adolescents whose schools have been closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of these initiatives particularly, the Learning Passport, has gained momentum in the Eastern and Southern Africa region. In July 2020, Somalia Puntland deployed the Learning Passport. Some ESA countries (Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Lesotho) are already in the process of establishing it in concertation with governments and several countries have expressed their interest in using the Learning Passport as their national online learning platform.

As part of these efforts to support countries to upscale technology for learning in response to COVID-19 and beyond, UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO), in collaboration with UNESCO, UNHCR, INEE and the Learning Passport team, is developing a Regional Learning Hub. This Learning Hub aims at supporting governments’ and other stakeholders’ access to high quality, open source, ready-to-deploy teaching and learning materials to use through their education systems.

An individual contractor is required to support national-level deployment of the Learning Passport and help conceive, design and develop the Regional Learning Hub for Eastern and Southern Africa. As such, an individual contractor with education (systems, curriculum, EdTech) and technology for development (software development, project management, systems) experience is required to support UNICEF ESARO and its partners working on the Regional Learning Hub.

Scope of Work

Purpose Of Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to:1) support country-level deployment of the Learning Passport (for countries currently inquiring); and 2) the development and deployment of the Regional Learning Hub on the Learning Passport platform.

• TA details/reference to AWP areas covered:


 

Activity 23: Development of resources and platform on continuity of learning

Major assignments/Responsibilities:

This Comprises The Following Activities

Regarding the country-level deployment of the Learning Passport in the region, the individual contractor will support the global Learning Passport and Microsoft teams and Country Office Education and T4D focal points in the establishment and maintenance of the platform in the ESA countries.

• Providing information about the Learning Passport to Country Offices expressing interest in deploying the platform and supporting them in their dialogue with governments
• Deploying the Learning Passport at country-level, which includes:
  • Discussing with partners and Learning Passport users to understand the needs, demonstration to users of what it can be used for, how it can be implemented and how it has been put in place in countries
  • Training to determine how to customize the tool and what content will be hosted
  • Designing and customizing the site
• Troubleshooting, collecting, collating and forwarding any system related issues to the global LP and Microsoft teams. This includes providing routine monitoring and support, gathering user feedback and working with the Innovation Team to recommend any necessary modifications.
• Technical suggestions for feature enhancements if needed based upon the feedback from the users and approval from Learning Passport team and Microsoft.
• Timely response to technical queries from users.
• Assist in guiding deploying countries in the localization of global content resources
• Any other day-to-day technical support to the Learning Passport Programme if time permits.

This Will Cover The Following Activities

Regarding the development and deployment of the Regional Learning Hub, the individual contractor will work with the regional teams of UNICEF, UNESCO and UNHCR, and INEE and the Learning Passport team to establish and document a proof-of-concept version of the Regional Learning Hub (please see annexes for more information on the concept of the Regional Learning Hub).

• Testing and establishing the Regional Learning Hub on the Learning Passport platform, which comprises 3 activities:
  • Discussing with partners and Learning Passport users to understand the needs
  • Co-design with partners to determine how to develop site requirements
  • Designing and customizing the site
• Curriculum mapping, analysis and meta-tagging: reviewing existing global, regional and national curriculum frameworks in order to develop a curriculum framework for the Regional Learning Hub that would be easily adaptable to ESA countries. This framework would form the basis of the organization of curated content on the Hub.
• Mapping available content: This will involve mapping existing content databases (e.g. Learning Passport, USAID IRI database, UNHCR database [https://www.unhcr.org/5e787bea4], INEE database, Khan Academy, Kolibri Library) and:
  • Quality assuring the content
  • Mapping against the Regional Learning Hub curriculum framework
  • Analysing the gaps in two ways: (i) curriculum domain/skill; (ii) completeness vis-a-vis the ready-to-deploy structure
• Supporting the curation and creation sets of resources: This concerns the ready-to-deploy resources across the phases (pre-primary, primary, secondary), skills (numeracy, literacy, science, …) and modalities of delivery (audio, video, digital, print).
• Assist in guiding deploying countries in the localization of resources on the Regional Learning Hub, including developing guidance to support national-level stakeholders on this process.
• Establishing a beta version of the Regional Learning Hub:
  • Migrating the curated and created content on the Regional Learning Hub aligned to curriculum framework
  • Pre-testing the beta version of the regional platform (internally) to be then shared with country MoE users for first user-testing
  • Finalizing the beta version of the Hub after first round of testing: Making necessary adjustments based on feedback from users following their first testing of the beta version in order to get a finalized version of the Hub that is ready to be shared with Country MoE users and donors

Work relationships/reporting to:

The individual contractor will report to the ESARO Education Specialist (Quality) and is expected to work closely with ESARO Education Section and the Learning Passport team members—especially the Technology Deployment Specialist, Country Office colleagues, and other relevant partners, including other UN and development partners working on the Regional Learning hub.