Indev (India Information Development Network) - Delhi, India

Full case study report Published July 9, 2003 By Maartje Op de Coul, New Media Evaluation Manager, OneWorld International Introduction OneWorld is part of the Building Digital Opportunities programme sponsored by the British, Swiss and Dutch governments. One of the elements in this programme is an ICT survey that aims "to give decision makers a clear understanding of how civil society is actually using ICT and its impact through a comprehensive study." It was decided that could be done best through a number of case studies on different uses of ICTs. The present study aims to find out in which way ICTs in general and ItrainOnline in particular enhance ICT capacity building for civil society organisations. ItrainOnline (www.itrainonline.org) is a joint initiative of APC, Bellanet, INASP, IICD, IISD and OneWorld. It's an online platform that aims to provide a selection of the best and most relevant computer and Internet training resources for development and social change. For the case study we selected Indev in India because we knew this training institute uses ICTs and ItrainOnline to conduct and improve their training. A comparable case study has been conducted with WomensNet in South-Africa. About Indev Indev is an initiative of the British Council to address problems faced by development managers in accessing development information on India. The extensive library network of the British Council all over India was a perfect starting point for Indev. In March 1999 British Council launched Indev as a platform for the development community in India to share their content. To help reach that goal, Indev offers NGOs web hosting and web development training. Indev is a membership organisation with low subscription costs. Of the total staff members of Indev, two are involved in training but not full time. The trainers have worked with Indev right from the start and had their first ICT experiences in the early nineties. Three persons were interviewed for this case study: John Borgoyary - Project Manager. He is a development professional, manages Indev and also gives training Madhu John - Web Designer. He has a technical background and is now 50% trainer, 50% web designer Neena Jacob - Asst. Project Manager. She used to be trainer but is now dedicated to content management and partnership development The training A training session conducted by Indev, India © Indev The web development courses are always organised on request of the members and they normally pay for their own travel and accommodation costs. Indev, with support form UNICEF and other development and corporate sector organisations pays for the facilities, equipment and training. Sometimes participants have to bring their own computers. The courses are targeted at NGOs all over India that do not yet have a website, but the participants do need to have some basic computer skills beforehand. During a three days course they learn how to build a website using free ware web designing software like Mozilla and some templates provided by Indev. They consciously choose to teach the use of free and non-licensed software, because they know that "NGOs are not able to procure licensed software because of the financial constraints." Also "the open source philosophy is very much in line with Indev's philosophy." Mozilla is simple and it's good for a first website. From there it's easy to proceed to other tools. At the end of the course all participants show the site they have built using an LCD projector. Achievements and lessons learnt Up till now Indev has conducted 52 training courses and trained 900 professionals of 600 NGOs. Out of those 600 only 93 have a site hosted with Indev now. The number of hosted sites is one of their indicators for success, though they know that about a hundred more partners registered their own domain with a regular ISP in stead of Indev, mainly because these organisations would like to have their own domain name; Indev only provides sub-domains. The main reason why only a small percentage of the trained NGOs establishes it's own site is not a lack of content but the fact that the content has to come from the top level that generally doesn't understand the value of uploading that content. "The challenge for the Indev team is not to train the NGOs how to build a website but more how to convince the management of those organisations of the importance of putting development information online" says John Borgoyary. The only thing Indev can do to try to convince them is show success stories of NGOs that do have a website. Like one of the NGOs from Kerala that wrote to Indev saying "because we managed to host our site on your server few funding agencies from Europe and America showed interest and decided to support some of our projects." Others get lot of requests for volunteers from Australia, Europe, America, etc. Gender matters Three males and one female work for Indev, but this imbalance is not representative for the British Council as a whole where some departments almost entirely consist of women. Examples are the departments of Education, Scholarships and Governance. Of the participants of the web development courses an estimated 30% is female. There are many women working in the NGO sector in India, but most of them in the management and policy making areas. They are simply not involved in building websites and that kind of work even has a low esteem. Technofobia among women also plays a role. So, because in general women are not the ones doing that work, Indev doesn't have a gender policy in its training. In general the gender imbalance in the IT sector in India is changing, especially in the metropoles. Some IT companies also started a policy of employing minimally 30% women. Use of ICTs to enhance the quality of the training ICTs here include online training material, web resources and discussion groups. And also all other kinds of digital tools such as powerpoint presentations, CD ROMs etc. For its web development courses Indev uses a print reference document and the Mozilla manual that you get from the net when you install Mozilla. The reference document explains the background of the internet, the use of having a website, how to search on the internet, what makes a good website etc. It is compiled by the Indev trainers and updated regularly. For each course some prints are made so it is always up to date. Now an external consultant is working on a real manual that will be published as a book. During the course participants are stimulated to search the internet for whatever questions or needs they have, for example to download an animated gif. Apart from ItrainOnline Indev doesn't advise any particular websites; rather they stimulate participants to find their way through search engines themselves. Powerpoint is not considered very effective; they prefer a flipchart. In the near future Indev intends to experiment with handing out the training material on a CD instead of a floppy, because of the vulnerability of the latter. The interactive possibilities of a CD might be useful for the future as well and they also consider including training modules to enable the participants to train their colleagues. Indev always delivers its training courses face to face. It doesn't use distant learning or a combination of the two. Madhu John explains that "there is still a huge amount of push needed to get people doing this or at least take the first step. That can't be done online." Their target audience isn't yet advanced enough to be self-motivated. Other organisations would perhaps find their way to online resources and sites like ItrainOnline without needing Indev. Though Indev has not conducted a course online yet, they would be interested to do so perhaps for the more advanced trainees. The advantage is that the trainee can participate where and when he/she likes. The pre and post training activities of Indev are rather limited and they only use e-mail for it. Normally they visit some of the trained organisations after the training session. Members can come back to the support centre to finish their website, but only 20% uses that facility. They recognize that with respect to the follow-up of the training improvements can be made. A place could be the revamped discussion forum on their website and something like d-groups would be interesting as well. ICTs and the capacity building of the trainers Indev is an exception within the British Council, because they don't have structural staff capacity building in place. Because of the basic level of the courses they give and the fact that not many things change, they don't really miss it. If and when needed Indev invites professionals from outside. Those sessions are also accessible for others such as the technical department. The disadvantage is that it makes the level of participants too mixed and the trainers don't benefit fully. Indev staff in general doesn't have time to go out for a course. On a personal level the trainers do use the internet for resource material. Not so much to search for material on training or pedagogy but rather to find free software that can be used in the courses. None of the trainers we spoke to has as yet participated in an online course, all for quite different reasons. John was approached by an organisation in the U.S., but he didn't have time during work and normally he doesn't use the computer at home. Madhu says that most of the material of an online course is available on the net anyway and the certificate is not important for him. For Neena the main obstacle was the fee. For the same money she would rather go to an offline course. If it would be cheaper she would consider it, because the advantages are that you exchange with people from different countries and you can do the course wherever and whenever you like. Use of ItrainOnline Indev mainly uses ItrainOnline as a reference for the NGOs they train and they use parts of it as handouts. "ItrainOnline is one of the websites I have always referred to in all of my trainings. In fact I have even demonstrated it online wherever I could have internet connectivity" says John Borgoyary. They guess that about 30% of all trainees actually visit ItrainOnline afterwards. The others have either time and connectivity constraints or they already have enough material to digest after the course. Not all sections of ItrainOnline are useful for the NGOs: the chapters on content and design fit in better than the more technical sections. Another problem is that ItrainOnline in general is al little too advanced for Indev's trainees, because their computer knowledge is quite low. For the Indev trainers on the other hand the resources on ItrainOnline are rather too simple. "It's basic information which I don't require. Except maybe some information I found on a search tool." Instead they browse the internet to find what they need. For them it should have come 5 years earlier, then it would have been great. However, ItrainOnline does help them to structure the training material and check whether everything is covered. In the opinion of Indev the perfect user would be a person that doesn't have a computer background but is very keen to experiment with different kinds of computer programmes. "For instance a person who wants to know about different kinds of e-mailing programmes, different versions of browsing programmes or somebody who wants to know a little bit about programming, for instance in ColdFusion; going through these sections on ItrainOnline will help a person know the basics and assist in understanding the hardcore computer manuals." ItrainOnline would also be useful for a technical person in an NGO who is not a trainer, but who is asked to teach his colleagues some computer skills. Indev likes the ItrainOnline site because it is not too heavy, easy to access and has a good design. The navigation structure is smart as well; it's not hard to find what you are looking for. The language used on the site is all right for the trainers but for the trainees the level is a little too high. The resources Itrainonline refers to are very useful and it's unique because none of the other web resources covers so many topics and is specially dedicated to NGOs. It can save people a lot of time and struggle. Of course there is also room for improvement. The site could be updated more often and it would be better if it didn't exclusively refer to web resources. And it would be good if ItrainOnline would not only help you how to use different types of software but at the same time offer that piece of software online. The reason to do so is that there is a lot of software available that is especially useful for and needed by development organisations, like for instance FTP software. Conclusions Indev recognizes quite a number of advantages of the use of ICTs for their training activities: the availability of a wealth of resource material accessible for their students to help them actually develop their site after the training the availability of free and downloadable software that comes with a manual online forums and discussion groups for the follow-up of the training courses the internet offers a lot of possibilities for the trainers' capacity building online courses have the advantage that they can be followed independent of place and time. The exchange with students from other countries is another advantage the added value of ItrainOnline is that it brings together all relevant material on a very user friendly site Some of the limitations that came up: people will always print their manuals as it is not suitable to read large texts from the screen use of the internet and CD's for training courses has more advantages in metropoles than in the rural areas where Indev usually works. for Indev's target group distance learning and online courses are not yet an alternative because face to face training has a huge advantage to convince them for trainers online courses are redundant or too expensive For the next five years, Indev foresees some interesting changes: they expect they will adapt to licensed software like Dreamweaver, because it might be very affordable to have a licensed web design software for NGOs then. John expects that "the gap that there is now will be vastly reduced." there will be more training material and resources online available and online courses will be "a hit among the development community." those tools will be available also for NGOs because a corporate giant called Reliance Industries are already on their way laying underground fibre optics throughout the country. They say that in three years time they are going to give every village in India telephone connectivity. Indev's role will change from a trainer to an intermediary or coach; the sessions will be more hands on and focused on how the trainees can train themselves. Moreover, there will be a better spread of good training institutes so Indev might not need to "go to the grassroots level organisations to conduct a training programme." Resources Indev ItrainOnline