Water Engineering and Development Centre

Rural WASH projects

Development of e-learning units on rural sanitation at scale

Location Client Dates Value
UK for use world-wide World Bank Water & Sanitation Program Mar-Dec 2013 USD42,000

WEDC staff involved:

Summary of project activities and outcomes:

This demonstrates our ability to adapt the latest technology to our capacity building work through development of a self-paced and web-based course that takes approximately 10 hours to complete. This involves following the online learning programme and making full use of associated materials, for example watching video clips, reading case studies and other forms of literature provided to the learner via the web interface and undertaking self-assessment tutorials to check understanding and knowledge. Learners choose whether to view supplementary materials on-screen, or download fully and print (for example the WSP Learning Notes and related WEDC resources).

The software used for the framework of the e-learning course was Articulate Presenter. Each section of the unit runs in an Articulate Presenter window which contains the following learning assets:

  • Narrated slide show presentations (used to present the structure and thread of the course)
  • Film clips (case studies; talking heads; group discussions; interviews etc.)
  • Animated illustrations, charts and process diagrams
  • Static technical and editorial illustrations
  • Interactive exercises and links to built-in additional reading and resources
  • Links to websites and other internet-related resources
  • Summative self-assessment tests
  • Formative unit assessment (The course can also be provided on CD although a formative assessment would be required to be taken online)

The course was designed to run primarily from a Learning Management System (LMS). Specifically, Loughborough University's LMS known as 'Learn' is supported by Moodle 2. Each section of the course was also provided to WSP within zipped folders for loading by WSP onto its learning platform/website. The course has been validated and studied by a wide range of World Bank employees through their on-line learning platform, and by WEDC Master students both at WEDC and through our distance learning programmes.