MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: T2 Teaching Tutoring Program Developing Social Performance Management Training for European Microfinance Institutions

The Università Telematica Guglielmo Marconi of Italy is leading a project funded by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme to offer microfinance institution staff remote training on social performance management in English, French, Italian, Polish and Spanish. Topics include: introduction to social performance management (SPM), aligning strategy for SPM, strengthening information systems for SPM, aligning management systems to support SPM, the Quality Audit Tool (QAT) for managing social performance and social performance reporting. Project partners include the Microfinance Center (MFC) in Poland, Universidad National de Educacion a Distancia UNED in Spain and PlaNet Finance in France. Training sessions are expected to begin during January 2010. More details are available via Didier Krumm at dkrumm@planetfinance.org.

Sources and resources:

T2 Teaching Tutoring:
http://www.t2project.eu/t2/

Università Telematica Guglielmo Marconi:
http://www.unimarconi.it/uni/unieng/indexa1.php?id=05124

Source document available at Microfinance Gateway:
http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.41185/T2%20project%20reference.doc

Source document:

A new distance learning tool to address the needs of European Microfinance Institutions will be designed by microfinance practitioners and educational players.

“T2 Teaching Tutoring – Intelligent Agents to customize lifelong learning pathways in the microfinance sector”, is a two-year project 2008-2010 supported by the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme.

Partners of the project are Università Telematica Guglielmo Marconi in Rome (project leader), Microfinance Center MFC in Poland, Universidad National de Educacion a Distancia UNED in Spain and PlaNet Finance in France.

I. Context
The European Commission has designated 2010 “European Year for combating poverty and social exclusion”. EU Member States agreed on achieving an overall employment rate of 70%, an increase in the number of women in work to over 60% and a 50% employment rate for older workers by 2010. They also reaffirmed the necessary interaction between the economic and social policies. 2010 is thus expected to bring forward the EU Agenda regarding the fight against poverty and social exclusion.

In this framework, T2 project intends to promote, at European level, knowledge and skills, concerning the microfinance sector that is important not only for people excluded by the traditional finance sector, but also for NGOs, local authorities and everyone working against exclusion.

T2 aims at improving the quality, appeal and accessibility of training in the microfinance field that will provide training organisations with a model that will customize training based on specific MFIs needs and help establish a common and integrated European training offer on sustainability of microfinance programmes.

II. Course content description: Social Performance Management in Microfinance, ie translating your mission into practice

A research has been recently conducted end of 2009 by MFC in Poland, UTGM in Italy and PlaNet Finance in France to identify more accurately the major topic of the training for MFIs. Around ten IMF per country were contacted. It resulted that according to them the topic of this e-training should be on Social Performance Management in Microfinance, ie translating your mission into practice. There is in fact a significant gap between the institutions’ mission and the possibility of measuring progress towards achieving it. The only indicator seems to be the number of loans granted, as opposed to the target client and thus the impact of their actions. Reporting on social performance is still a lot less developed than reporting on financial performance. Although many initiatives have been developed lately for a more consistent, verified and frequent reporting on social indicators (i.e. reporting standards defined by a Social Performance task operated by the MixMarket); a lot of MFIs do not yet have the information systems in place to provide all necessary indicators and some of them need also to be more aware of these new initiatives.

The course will be offered end of January 2010 in English, French, Italian, Polish and Spanish with the following topics:
• Module 1: Introduction to Social Performance Management (SPM)
• Module 2: Aligning strategy for SPM
• Module 3: Strengthening information systems for SPM
• Module 4: Aligning management systems to support SPM
• Module 5: Quality audit tool for managing social performance (QAT)
• Module 6: Social Performance standards report

The course has been designed on the basis of the guidelines for Social performance Management in Microfinance, Imp-Act by Ms Agata Szostek (microfinance expert from MFC Poland)

III. Training delivery methodology
The T2 project aims at improving the quality and accessibility of training in the microfinance sector by providing a didactic model based on integrating Intelligence Agent technology into a blended learning course. This allows trainees to customise a training path according to their availability and specific needs.

The T2 “Social Performance Management in Microfinance, ie translating your mission into practice” course will be offered in Poland, France and Italy and delivered in three sessions:
• an on-line course, available to all MFI professionals, regardless of their location,
• web-based project works carried out by all MFI professionals organized by the teachers.
• Customized training classrooms

The online course consists of 3 kinds of learning objects: audio-video lessons, lecture notes and static slides. The audio-video lesson consists of an audio explanation synchronised with a slide presentation. The audio-video lesson generally represents the core of each lesson whilst the other learning objects (lecture notes and static slides) represent supportive materials. Learning objects promote learning thanks to both visual (text, images, diagrams and movies) and audio support (the teacher’s recorded explanations) that facilitate personalized learning.

Intelligent Agents (IAs) are autonomous software systems realized that can operate in the training environment as virtual tutors that adaptively assist users in the performance of the training tasks. They can intervene in case of suboptimal performance, demonstrate skills, provide explanations and answer questions, and play the role of team members in a multi-person task. IAs, represented as virtual humans, take advantage from non-verbal behaviours, in order to capture the student’s attention on the crucial moments of learning. Thus, IAs become learning facilitators gifted with great reactive, intuitive and interpretative skills.

IV. E-learning platform
The project work results will be shared and discussed among a community of teachers and trainees and will consequently be integrated into the T2 e-platform.

The learning platform is structured in the training area and communication area.

Communication
The communication area consists of a set of instruments promoting collaborative and cooperative learning – forum, news section (announcements), calendar or agenda informing users/learners about the availability of new modules for the e-course, the intelligent assessment, chat and wiki. Users will be supported also by a tutor who informs users about the logistics of the course program, offer technical assistance, update the NEWS section on the E-platform and encourage interaction among users through different communication tools.

Training
The T2 e-platform encompasses an e-course and Virtual Tutor Environment featuring a chat-bot or “Virtual Tutor”, an intelligent tutoring system able to generate individual assessment pathways for learners. This evaluation tool helps teachers customize face-to-face sessions based on each learner’s specific needs. The Virtual Tutor acts as a realistic teacher, personalizing a sequence of assessment questions and giving appropriate feedback based on the trainee’s response.

IV. Customized classrooms
Data from the e-course and the intelligent assessment path is collected in a server database in order to provide teachers with meaningful information on student activities. These data are:
• For a specific student:
o List of the learning objects studied with the date and time the file was opened and the time spent.
o Total time spent on a single learning object
o Total time spent on a module
o Score acquired during the different intelligent evaluation paths
o Partial scores carried out with the four criteria that define the overall score such as importance and difficulty of the questions, correctness and quickness of the answers. This to helps understand the quality of the student’s performance that cannot otherwise be well depicted from the overall score.
o Score acquired during the different questions.
o Number of times a student has participated in the six different intelligent evaluation paths
o Number of topics posted in the forum
o Number of replies posted in the forum
o Number of messages written in chat
• For all students:
o The average time spent on a particular learning object.
o The average time spent on a module.
o Average score acquired during the different intelligent evaluation paths
o Average partial scores acquired with the four criteria that define the overall score
o Average score acquired during the different questions.
o Overall forum activities
o Overall chat activities

All of this information allows the teacher to define strategies in order to design their customized face to face classes. For example if a user answers poorly to questions concerning a particular topic, the teacher checks first if he/she sufficiently completed the learning objects on this particular topic. If so, the teacher will focus on this particular topic during the face to face class. If he or she thinks that the student has to study more online, he or she asks the pupil directly to do so instead of presenting this topic in depth during the face to face class.

The aggregate data identify which particular topics were generally well understood than others. Thus the teacher knows which specific topics to focus on more for review or further study during the face to face lessons and has the opportunity to prepare and develop new learning objects for the less understood topics for the online course.

Useful data for teachers are also provided by the communication tool logs. A teacher can invite a particular student to post more information and opinions in the forum in order to facilitate collaborative or peer learning.

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