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Global | Non-profit organization

When you have 9,000 employees across 87 countries, and need to be able to move fast to support people on the ground, and communities in need; knowledge sharing becomes critical.

Oxfam needed an authoring tool that enabled anyone to capture and contribute their expertise easily, and this is exactly how Elucidat is used. Subject experts from around the confederation create elearning directly. Multi-language elearning, needed tomorrow, that’s easy to adapt and update? That’s now a reality.

Jo Grantham Oxfam

“What Elucidat has done is empowered our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) so they can create really engaging online learning’’

Jo Grantham Training Lead, Oxfam

Oxfam brand image of women at a well
employees & partners
+ authors
countries reached

Introduction

 

Oxfam supports communities to build better lives for themselves. Their three core values of empowerment, inclusiveness and accountability drive everything they do, and that includes L&D. We interviewed three people playing an important role, to gain their perspectives on how a democratized approach to learning, and the use of Elucidat, is supporting the confederations’ mission.

 

Watch the video to find out how hundreds of authors are enabling Oxfam to be reactive to rising needs.

The interview

Why does digital learning matter to Oxfam?


“I think it’s fair to say that knowledge sharing is absolutely critical for Oxfam to design really impactful programs, and digital learning basically enables anyone at Oxfam to capture and contribute their expertise, and that supports the broader movement.

 

Prior to Elucidat most of our learning was classroom based or even manuals hosted on local intranets, and what little elearning that we did have was generally developed by external contractors, which is fine, but it was obviously expensive and very difficult to modify.

 

Whereas what Elucidat’s done is empowered our subject matter experts so they can create really engaging online learning. They find the tool very easy to use, but also very, very powerful.” – Jo Grantham, Training Lead, Oxfam

What are your proudest digital learning achievements?

 

“I think one of our proudest achievements is having the ability to share our content with partners. For example, we developed a course on data rights so people understand why it’s so important that we respect the rights of the people we work with. And this is now shared with other NGOs right across the sector.

 

It’s really easy to modify a course to change the focus from an internal Oxfam audience to our external partners. We can quickly adapt a course to accommodate other languages as the need arises.

 

For example, we’ve just created a Burmese version of one of our courses, to support our work in Myanmar.” – Jo Grantham, Training Lead, Oxfam:

How is Elucidat helping you meet your goals?

 

“As a global confederation organization, language inclusivity is really important to us. We want all staff, whatever office they’re working in to be able to access resources.”

 

So we recently developed a module on safe programming practises, which is the idea that we can always be causing harm as an organization. And we need to have practice in place to mitigate it. It’s really important that all of our staff know about this. So having it available with lots of different languages makes that possible.

 

We currently have it available in Arabic, Spanish, French, and Burmese. We’re also in the process of adding a translation for Ukrainian and Russian, which is really exciting.

 

We’re always learning as an organization so as we develop new resources, we can just update the course really easily. So everyone is able to access the most up to date information.” – Melissa Harris, Safe Programming Policy Advisor, Oxfam

Oxfam image of people planting seeds

What about Elucidat, the people?!

 

“So in my case, I was looking for a platform that could help me tailor some content that I already had for overseas staff and partners.

 

Elucidat allowed me to create different modules on different topics.

 

We are a big organization with information and knowledge that we want to make available to partners, and Elucidat enables that.

 

Elucidat staff were very responsive and helped me during the design phase of my courses, as well as the implementation phase. It was a great success.” – Maria Fabregas Golf, Funding Development Officer, Oxfam

What kinds of digital learning are you creating and who’s involved?

 

“Our digital learning is really broad. From mandatory courses for new starters to courses for specific regions.

 

We also have courses that are developed for specific regions and countries. For example, Indonesia are using Elucidat to house some videos that they will share with partners in country. And we have some very sector specific courses. For example, we are about to launch our Sani Tweaks course which focuses on improving sanitation programmes in emergencies and boosting latrine usage rates.”

 

As for who?

“We don’t have a centralized training function and we want to empower SMEs to build their own content. With the recent introduction of templates in Elucidat, they find it very easy to design their own engaging content.” – Jo Grantham, Training Lead, Oxfam

Where would you like to take things next?

 

“Elucidat has always been mobile friendly, but until recently, we didn’t have that functionality on our [LMS] platform. So that’s something we’re going to be moving towards over the next year.

 

We’ve recently done a survey to find out what the appetite was for mobile learning within Oxfam, and it is certainly something that the business really wants to move towards.

 

We’re also moving towards developing more bite-sized learning and planning on redeveloping some of our mandatory courses to be a more modular experience for the learner.”  – Jo Grantham, Training Lead, Oxfam

In summary

 

Oxfam’s shift to digital learning has proved a cost-effective way to increase the speed and reach of knowledge sharing across the organization. Using Elucidat, they have developed a new model for L&D which embraces their core values:

 

  • Empowerment: Enabling anyone to create elearning to support Oxfam’s mission.
  • Inclusiveness: Creating digital learning that’s truly inclusive of employees in different regions: translated into different languages and adapted for partners.
  • Accountability: Creating ownership and making it easy for anyone to quickly and easily keep their content up to date.