developing open educational resources for training telecentre workers: process, practices and...

M2007 TC- OER Case Study Version 2

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Developing Open Educational Resources for

Training Telecentre Workers: Process, Practices and Learning

Shipra Sharma

June 2008


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am taking this opportunity to thank all the people who supported me during this research study. My sincere thanks are due to Dr. Mark Surman, Consultant, telecentre.org, Dr. Florencio Ceballos, Manager, telecentre.org, Dr. Basheerhamad Shadrach, Sr. Program Officer, Asia, telecentre.org and Dr. Heather Ford, CEO, iCommons, for providing me this opportunity to participate in the iCommons iCurriculum project. I will also like to thank Drs. Mark Surman, Basheerhamad Shadrach and Ambika Sharma, Research Officer, IDRC, SARO for their patience and cooperation during the long interviews and their suggestions on the draft report. Ambika deserves special mention as she was also instrumental in introducing me to the Training Commons community and motivating them to take part in the study. At the same time, the research team from ISKME, especially Drs.Cynthia Jimes and Renee Chin were very supportive at all stages of the project. Their help in creating the questionnaires is much appreciated and Cynthia’s case study on Free High School Science Texts and Renee’s tips on data analysis and structuring the report helped a lot in organizing the Training Commons report.

My Thanks are also due to the module authors, especially Mr. Surender Rana (formerly with TARAhaat), Mr. Muthu Kumar (Training Consultant, World Corps India), and Mr. Kannan (Plan International India) for their time, patience and cooperation during the interviews. My special thanks go to Mr. Kunal Tyagi (formerly with TARAhaat) who coordinated all the field visits to the telecentres and provided excellent support at a time when the field visits and interviews with telecentre managers seemed out of reach. All the telecentre workers and managers deserve many thanks for their time, patience and cooperation. I thank Ms. Rumi Malik (NASSCOM Foundation) for helping me to understand the issues around curriculum use. And, last, but certainly not the least, I will like to thank the team from iCommons, Ms. Kerryn McKay, Project Manager; Ms. Hettie Dreyer, Book Keeper; Mr. Paul Jacobson, General Counsel and Company Secretary and others for all the help and support throughout the project.

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Contents

Sections Page Numbers Acknowledgements 2 Contents 3 I. Introduction 4 II. Background 7 III. The Process 10 IV. The Practices 15 V. The Concept of Open 22 VI. Challenges & Learnings 27 References 31


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I. Introduction 1.1 Context The Mission 2007 Training Commons (Training Commons) Case Study is part of the iCommons iCurriclum project that seeks to create capacity both within and across initiatives to track, analyze and share key developments in the creation, use and reuse of Open Educational Resources (OERs).1 Training Commons is one of six such initiatives being studied under this project. It sought to create a ‘living curriculum’ for the capacity building of telecentre workers. It is expected that the curriculum would grow through regular improvisations, adaptations and use by telecentre networks and organizations. This effort has resulted in the creation of four training modules on: Entrepreneurship Development, Grassroots Marketing, Grassroots Communication and Infomediary Skills. 1.2 Research objectives The aim of the Training Commons case study is to understand and document the processes, practices, successes, and challenges of this initiative, and to assess its overall impact on stakeholders that include the trainers, who use the curriculum for training, the telecentre workers (or trainees) who participate in the trainings, and most importantly, the external open content community, which can potentially benefit from the lessons learned. Specifically, the Training Commons case study has explored three central themes: 1) its peer production model, 2) user engagement around developing and improving the curriculum, and 3) the concept of open content as understood by the Training Commons community. 1.3 Methodology The research was primarily exploratory in nature that helped to investigate the nature and scope of this emerging approach that is still evolving in terms of its methodology. It involved the following steps:

1. Conducting secondary research to understand the background processes. 2. Identifying the stakeholders to be interviewed from the Training Commons

community, coordinator/s, reviewers, and users. 3. Developing structured questionnaires around the research themes, i.e., the

peer production model, user engagement and concept of open to gather information from the identified stakeholders. Testing the questionnaire with one respondent from each group of stakeholders/ users and based on that improving the questionnaires.

4. Identifying telecentres in the rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra states for field work.

5. Interviewing all the identified stakeholders and conducting field research in the identified areas.

6. Consolidating the data/ information collected under the three themes for analysis and interpretation, and preparing a report based on that.

1 OERs are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge. http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/oer (accessed June 5, 2008).


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The research tools used for data collection were in-depth one to one interview schedules encouraging reflection prompts, and focus group discussions (FGDs) especially with the trainees. The interviews with the module coordinators and the module authors lasted for almost one hour or more on an average and helped to understand the various stages of the project, the module development process and their opinions on the concept of open. The interviews were conducted ‘face to face’ as well as ‘on the phone’ and in some cases, they also required follow up interviews for some issues requiring further probe. The field visits were undertaken primarily to understand the ‘use’ and ‘user engagement’ aspect of this research. It revealed that most of the trainees, who attended the Training Commons pilot workshops, have not seen the final curriculum and right now, it was not being used for training extensively. Therefore, the focus of the interview shifted to understanding the ‘user engagement’ in developing the modules rather than its ‘use’. The researcher also tried to find out the reasons for not using the modules. The data from the field was gathered through face to face interviews and FGDs lasting for a minimum of one hour. The telecentre workers were quite enterprising and confident rural youth willing to share facts very candidly and sometimes they just went on and on discussing several other aspects related to their telecentre business. These interviews revealed their opinion on the relevance of the areas covered for training; the content and the language used in the training, the usefulness and application of the practices learnt during the pilot workshops in conducting their day to day business, etc. The analysis of data gathered from the secondary and primary sources is mainly qualitative in nature. All the responses were synthesized in a summary matrix to avoid overlapping and repetitions. The report primarily reflects an analysis of these findings. 1.4 Limitations and Challenges The researcher has tried to be as objective as possible in interpreting and analyzing the data and information collected. All the observations made in this report are substantiated through appropriate references. The researcher has made due efforts to remain objective and accurate in interpreting and analyzing the facts. Still, the study suffers from a few limitations; with the time gap between the completion of the Training Commons project and the beginning of this study being the most critical one. This study to document the process of curriculum development under the Training Commons Project was undertaken almost one year after the final modules were submitted to telecentre.org by the module authors. Simultaneous documentation of various processes and practices at the time of project implementation would have added more value to it. This time gap manifested itself broadly as serious difficulty in locating and getting in touch with some of the key people associated with this project. By this time, a lot of people, such as some of the module authors, regional training coordinators and telecentre workers had left their respective organizations for better pursuits. Telecentre is an area


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that witnesses high rates of attrition. This impacted the study as well, and sometimes, it was very difficult to trace people, especially the telecentre workers who had no telephone numbers or email ids of their own. The list of participants (Training Commons Pilot Workshops) obtained from telecentre.org’s New Delhi office contained the telephone number and email ids of their respective coordinators and many of these people had also left. Therefore, the most difficult part of the whole study was to locate the right people who can help and guide the researcher to the telecentre workers who actually participated in the Training Commons pilot workshops. Another limitation was to reach the telecentres and telecentre workers located in remote areas. At some places the roads were so bad that it took hours to cross a stretch of 20 kilometers through the dense forests of Madhya Pradesh near the Kanha National Park. Usually, during training workshops, all the telecentre workers assemble at a central location from interior places and they are provided free boarding and lodging. The researcher was not able to offer any such incentives and had to visit them individually and record their opinion on the pilot workshop. The time gap also impacted the interviews with the telecentre workers, as they were not able to recall very clearly what kind of questions were asked during the workshops and what kind of suggestions they provided to the module authors. They had to be prodded again and again; still they were not able to provide satisfactory answers. This is evident in the summary matrix of responses from trainers and telecentre workers which runs into just two pages, although the recording time is the longest for this group of interviewees. This was mainly because the researcher was introduced to them through their area managers and other high level officials. For the researcher, it was the most convenient and appropriate way to reach these people, but at times, it back-fired. The telecentre workers often misunderstood the purpose of the interview although the researcher tried her best to convey the true objectives of the research at the very outset. This led to some of them getting off track and focusing more on their grievances all the time. They wanted the researcher to act as a mediator between them and their higher authorities and convey their grievances and problems to them. The researcher had to remind them all the time that she had no such intent or purpose. Sometimes, this also led to indifferent attitude and the researcher had to skillfully share some common sense solutions (learnt on the way through talks with the regional managers and training coordinators) to pacify them. Another challenge was how to approach the Training Commons Community for interviews. The researcher adopted the strategy of writing emails to all the selected interviewees conveying the objectives of the study and requesting them for a face to face or telephonic interview. The project coordinators were very prompt in responding to this request and they were the first to give an appointment for interview. This was encouraging and the researcher waited for the rest of the community to reply. But strangely it did not happen! They had to be emailed again and when this did not work, she had to seek the help of the project coordinator, Ambika Sharma who telephoned them personally to cooperate. This was closely followed by telephone calls by the researcher and it worked wonders! They agreed for the interviews instantly. Again in some cases,


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although some of them agreed to send their responses by email, the researcher kept waiting and reminding the concerned people. Nevertheless, most of the module authors were very cooperative and in spite of being very busy and always on the move, all of them responded except for one person. Otherwise, it was a smooth sailing! II. Background 2.1 The need The need to conceive something as ambitious as the Training Commons lies in the immense capacity building requirements of the National Alliance for Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Centre (Mission 2007).2 Mission 2007 is the Indian telecentre network comprising of organizations running telecentres;3 other Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and public and private institutions supporting it. At the outset, its partners recognised that any telecentre or Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) scale up requires a multitude of resources, infrastructure, connectivity options and other competencies. In the Mission 2007 parlance, these prerequisites are called the ‘Five Cs’4 and refer to: connectivity (also appropriate access devices), content (and services which are appropriate for the local community), care and management (of the telecentre), coordination (with various agencies providing services and content), and capacity building (of both the telecentre workers and the user community). Capacity building was one of the foremost challenges faced by Mission 2007. To extend the telecentre program to 600, 000 Indian villages, it required an equally huge number of trained telecentre operators and good training materials to train them. There were some sporadic efforts in this direction by organizations, like M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Drishtee Foundation, Development Alternatives (DA)’s TaraHaat, etc. But these training programs were catering to the specific needs of their telecentre

2 The National Alliance for Mission 2007, now rechristened as the Grameen Gyan Abhiyan (GGA) that translates into English as Rural Knowledge Movement, was formally launched in July 2004 to converge and synergise all the ongoing telecentre and ICT4D initiatives in India, so that collectively, they can create a favourable policy environment, curtail the duplication of efforts and replicate telecentre success stories at the national level. 3 A telecentre is a community centre that offers shared access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for the purpose of community level development and poverty reduction… They are staffed by people who help the community use the equipment for a range of purposes, but especially for improving its well-being, in terms of better education, health care, agriculture, and enterprise opportunities. Telecentres are known by different terms such as telecottages, community e-centres, multipurpose community telecentres, multimedia community centres, village information shops, info-kiosks and community knowledge centres. Harris, Roger (2007) Telecentre 2.0: beyond piloting telecentres, APDIP e-Note 14/ 2007. Bangkok: UNDP-APDIP. http://www.apdip.net/apdipenote/14.pdf (accessed June 6, 2008). 4 Initially, Mission 2007 identified seven areas that required attention to implement the telecentre programme at the national level. These were: connectivity; content; space applications; organization, management, monitoring and evaluation; training, capacity building and the election of fellows; resource mobilization; and policy issues. Since some of these areas overlapped, Professor Swaminathan developed the five ‘C’ formulae for Mission 2007 in consultation with other Mission 2007 stakeholders.


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workers and were not available in a structured format for use by other organisations. Moreover, they may not be suitable for the training needs of other organizations. Most of this training knowledge and skills were available with their trainers in a tacit format that they constantly improved from training to training by incorporating examples from real life situations. To deal with the challenges of capacity building, Mission 2007 had already constituted the Jamshetji Tata National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity (NVA)5 and the Mission 2007 capacity building task force (a consortium of M2007 stakeholders with experience in the field of capacity building and training content development). 2.2 The enabling environment Therefore, nothing could have been timed more perfectly than the Training Commons project, supported by telecentre.org6 at a time when the Mission 2007 partners were contemplating the capacity building of one million telecentre/ knowledge workers to man the six hundred thousand prospective village knowledge centres or telecentres across Indian rural areas. Around the same time, telecentre.org was also strengthening its roots and Mission 2007 provided it with an appropriate opportunity to contribute. Another external factor giving impetus to conceptualizing the Training Commons project was the ‘Open/ Common Content’7 movement, based on the ethos of collaborative content creation, free and easy accessibility and adaptability. In this respect, “the objective (of Training Commons) was to bring together similar voices and interests such as the NVA, M2007 Capacity Building Consortium and others

5 The NVA was formed in August 2003 through the collaborative efforts of MSSRF and the Tata Trust. It selects its fellows from among the local champions, who, regardless of their educational status (a few of them being only functionally literate) have shown leadership qualities and have dared to do something different to empower themselves and the community around them. They have also motivated development practioners to look at grassroots realities from their point of view and make such information more objective and unbiased. Since they are also the repositories of traditional knowledge, they are recognized as the ‘grassroots academicians’ and honoured with NVA fellowship. Currently, the NVA is training them to manage upcoming telecentres. 6 telecentre.org is a collaborative social investment program implemented by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and supported by Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC), Microsoft and IDRC. telecentre.org was officially launched in November 2005 at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. (accessed June 6, 2008). 7 Open content, a neologism coined by analogy with ‘open source’, describes any kind of creative work published in a format that explicitly allows copying and modifying of its information by anyone, not exclusively by a closed organization, firm or individual. As with the terms ‘open source’ and ‘free software’, some open content materials can also be described as ‘free content’, although technically they describe different things. Another related term ‘common content’ is occasionally used to refer to Creative Commons–licensed works… and ‘Open access’ refers to a special category of material, consisting of freely available published peer-reviewed journal articles. Wikipedia contributors, ‘Open content,’ Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Open_content&oldid=215513163 (accessed June 5, 2008).


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“The timing was driven by the fact that in 2005, there was a great amount of enthusiasm and excitement about Mission 2007… I went to different Mission 2007 conventions and shared the issues (around making the content open). Another factor driving it was that at that time, telecentre.org itself was new and was looking for ways to contribute (to telecentre networks around the world).” Mark Surman, Training Commons Project Initiator

to explore the possibilities for convergence into a single cohesive partnership.8 And the prevailing common/ open content environment provided a mechanism to move the partnership towards creating a common training curriculum for telecentre workers. 2.3 Uniqueness of ‘Training Commons’

Therefore, while the scaling up plan under the Mission 2007 umbrella identified mass scale training and capacity building of

telecentre workers as a prominent gap; the Training Commons endeavored to fill it through the open/ common content approach. It was conceived by Mark Surman during his tenure as the manager of International Development Research Centre’s telecentre.org program. This project sought to develop a ‘Living (online) Curriculum’, with enough scope for the content to evolve in an organic way to suit existing and futuristic skill requirements of telecentre workers across regions. This curriculum was meant to be used to develop a cadre of trainers from among the telecentre workers who would then train others using it, and so on. The Training Commons is more akin to the OERs, the “Internet empowered worldwide community effort to create an education commons.”9 In line with the ‘education commons’, it sought to develop ‘training commons’ for building the capacity of telecentre workers. The Training Commons effort differs slightly from the OERs or education commons in terms of the nature of curriculum required for training and the target audience. It shares more affinity with the concept of ‘recurrent and lifelong learning’, as it is not bound by any hierarchically structured and chronologically graded education system and is more oriented towards enhancing the life skills of the learners in several informal and formal ways. It sought to create a kind of ‘Grassroots MBA’ that could equip the telecentre managers with the necessary knowledge and skills to run and manage the telecentres as a social enterprise, combining business with community development. Moreover, for developing training commons, there was no formal curriculum or guidelines to refer to except the experience of some Mission 2007 partners and some training materials that they were using to train their telecentre workers. At the same time, the curriculum had to be developed keeping in mind the target audience, majority of whom are based in rural areas, and their educational attainments ranged from functional literacy to Masters’ or even higher. Even the telecentre models differed widely from each other with regard to their objectives and services rendered to the community. Therefore, the content had to be derived from various sources and adapted and simplified to make it comprehensible to the average telecentre worker running any telecentre model. All these

8 Surman, Mark & Ambika Sharma (2006) Mission 2007 Training Commons: Interim Report, Telecentre.org. 9 http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/oer (accessed June 5, 2008).


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“The broader goal (or vision of Training Commons) was to light a fire that would galvanise all the M2007 stakeholders … to train the million knowledge workers and initiate some concrete actions for that.” Mark Surman, Training Commons Project Initiator

made the Training Commons project challenging and path breaking one. It tried to move the Mission 2007 partners towards common curriculum development in a peer assisted, collaborative and participatory way, capitalising on their respective ground experiences. 2.4 Vision and project goals As stated earlier, Training Commons sought to fill the existing void in the telecentre manager’s capacity building area. Its genesis lies in the need for a holistic capacity building program for telecentre operators; a major gap that existed at that time. So, the specific project goal was to articulate the idea of developing Common Curriculum to the Mission 2007 partners and then help them create something as the central curriculum in a collaborative and participatory way that could be used by all the Mission 2007 partners including the NVA. It was hoped that collaboration would result in pollination of new ideas from all the Mission 2007 partners. Other related objectives of this project were to:

a) Aggregate and refine the training content available with the M2007 partners and develop draft one of the curriculum on that basis.

b) Test draft one of the curriculum with the user community, the knowledge workers (telecentre workers) in participatory pilot workshops and improve it with their help.

c) Package it appropriately, make it available in local languages and share it with all M2007 partners for the skill enhancement of telecentre/ knowledge workers.

d) Build a platform for continued distribution and sharing of the curriculum. III The Process The process of realizing the vision and goals of the Training Commons project started with conceptualizing the vision document. It evolved along the way from workshop to workshop and almost all the stakeholders contributed to it. It helped in translating the idea of Training Commons into a reality. Altogether, it included the following processes: 3.1 Project conceptualization and design During the conceptualization and project design phase, telecentre.org played a key role in envisioning the concept of Training Commons and articulating its purpose to the Mission 2007 partners. All the Mission 2007 partner organizations having expertise in telecentre workers’ training and capacity building participated in these workshops as joint visionaries. This phase was somewhat longer than assumed and lasted from October 2005 to March 2006. The main activities during the conceptualization and design phase were articulating the vision of Training Commons to Mission 2007 partners; training need identification; and practical scoping and planning exercises for project implementation. These were achieved through:


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a) Convening workshops and meetings with Mission 2007 partners: In this respect, the Chennai workshop convened jointly by MSSRF and telecentre.org in October 2005 was a landmark. This participatory workshop was attended by trainers and a few heads of organisations representing about sixteen Mission 2007 stakeholders. All of them were directly involved in setting up telecentres and training the telecentre workers.10 During this workshop, Mark articulated the idea of developing common curriculum to train the telecentre workers. The “participants shared existing training models, identified gaps and developed a rough vision for the development of a common capacity building program.”11 He tried to draw in ideas from all the mission 2007 stakeholders, like MSSRF, Drishtee Foundation, TaraHaat and incorporated these to enrich the first vision document that provided an overview of the Training Commons project and its implementation plan. Another milestone was crossed at the Agra workshop held from February 28 to March 2, 2006. This workshop attempted to define the vision of Training Commons project and build a strong partnership to kick it off.12 It led to significant goodwill and increased willingness on the part of Mission 2007 stakeholders to contribute content to the training commons under mutually accepted terms. b) Curriculum mapping: At the same time, telecentre.org also commissioned a curriculum mapping study on the nature of content already available with the Mission 2007 partners. The study concluded that “there is an abundance of curricula available with the partner organizations to train Knowledge Centre Managers. While some organizations have not developed a structured, formal training curriculum, some have come up with well-defined training materials, along with methods and diversified content/topics. Nonetheless, many of these training materials may be too generic which make them difficult to apply outside the project context, without some sort of customizations.”13 The curriculum mapping exercise was instrumental in identifying training materials that the Training Commons can build upon. For example, the current entrepreneurship development module created by the consultant/ trainer from World Corps India (WCI) under the Training Commons curriculum derives a lot from their own Entrepreneurship Development skills program. c) Identifying the training areas: These workshops, meetings, curriculum mapping coupled with Mission 2007 partners’ ground experiences also helped in identifying the nature of training required by the telecentre workers, and providing a vision to implement the project. The curriculum mapping study identified four areas- community development, services and content, entrepreneurship training, and sharpening of

10 Read Mark Surman’s blog at: http://commonspace.typepad.com/commonspace/2005/09/the_power_of_ci.html; http://commonspace.typepad.com/commonspace/2005/09/community_and_c.html (accessed June 6, 2008) 11 Surman, Mark (2005). Mission 2007 Training Commons: Curriculum, Training and Online Community. Proposed Project Overview. 12 Read Mark’s Blog at http://commonspace.typepad.com/commonspace/2006/03/finding_a_commo.html (accessed June 6, 2008) 13 Sah, Gitanjali (2006) Mission 2007 Training Commons: Report on existing content to train knowledge centre managers. New Delhi: telecentre.org


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communication and marketing skills as the most essential for training telecentre workers. Further on, during the Agra workshop, Training Commons community finalized five areas to be included in the telecentre managers’ training curriculum. These were:

a) grassroots marketing b) entrepreneurship c) grassroots communication d) infomediary skills and e) community development14

d) Partnership building: As reflected by the above discussion, the partnership building process was largely inclusive where all the stakeholders were invited to participate. The survey carried out by Gitanjali Sah also helped in identifying stakeholders to some extent. It surveyed all the organizations having capacity building programs and gauged their willingness to share their content, their capacity to contribute, etc. There was no formal process in place for building the Training Commons community. The following criteria determined the participation of the organizations in the project:

a) The organizations should be running/ managing telecentre networks (with a critical mass of telecentres and experience of at least 2 -3 years).

b) They should have some kind of training programme in place for their telecentre workers.

c) The module authors designated by these organizations should be directly involved in training related work and also have some understanding of the curriculum development process.

d) They should have a substantive understanding of the topic (e.g., Grassroots Marketing or Entrepreneurship) as a concept for creating a module on it

e) And, most importantly, the organizations should be willing to share their learning/ experiences as part of the development process and finally should be willing to share the module so developed under the Creative Commons license.

The original implementation plan was guided by the principles of collaborative curriculum development wherein module creation in each training area would be led by one lead organization with other organizations serving as a reference group. It was supposed to be created entirely online in a ‘wiki’ manner by the Training Commons community. This was the ideal implementation plan, which underwent some modifications when the actual implementation began. 3.2 Project implementation The actual implementation phase started from May/ June 2006 with the appointment of a project coordinator. But it also drew upon the partnership building efforts carried out during the conceptualization and design phase. Due to several constraints, time being one of the major one during the implementation phase, the original implementation plan was partly modified to address emergent situations. During this phase, one of the most crucial

14 A training coordinator from MSSRF, Nancy Anabel, was selected to write the community development module, but it could not be produced because she had to proceed on maternity leave and the available time was too short for the other designated person to understand and work on it. Therefore, only four modules were finally produced under the project.


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realizations was that none of the training materials available with the partners was in a well structured form as assumed. Except the module on entrepreneurship, which was somewhat presentable and was the one used for the first pilot workshop; for others, the authors had to work from scratch. Therefore, time was a critical factor impacting the project in myriad manners. a) Revisiting the project goals: Due to some unavoidable circumstances, like longer communication gaps, changes in leadership, shortage of time and so on, the project goals were revisited during the implementation phase and some of the objectives, like collaborative authorship of the modules was replaced by individual authorship. The time and effort required for engaging the wider Training Commons community and consolidating the partnership for the project (explained in detail in the following section) also hampered the realization of its original goals and reduced participation to only five from the original fifteen organizations. Hence, the goal of developing an online platform where the lead and the supporting organizations would continuously contribute, share, modify and refine the content was no longer considered relevant for such a small group and consequently dropped. Another reason for dropping this idea was that the trainers from the participating organizations were not accustomed to working on an online platform. They would have required some training to actualize this. Therefore, at this point in time because of all the above mentioned factors, the focus shifted on producing the Training Commons curriculum rather than struggling with the issues of collaboration and creating an online platform. Mark Surman’s comments aptly elucidate this point,

“I don’t think that the goals of the project changed overtime, but there was a tension that I also saw in other collaborative curriculum projects, the tension between the goal of producing a useful, good quality piece of curriculum in a timely manner and the goal of collaboration and cross fertilization among the partners… These goals were struggling with each other most of the time…”15

b) Partnership consolidation: Partnership building efforts carried out during the conceptualization and design phase were followed by partnership consolidation for implementation. So far, especially during the workshops and meetings, the vision of Training Commons was communicated mainly to the trainers because they had the knowledge, skills and the ability to develop the curriculum. Therefore, they were the target audience for partnership building. In fact, only a few heads of the organizations participated in these meetings and workshops. Thus, at the stage of implementation, the coordinators adopted a personalized approach to consolidate the partnership with the trainers for individually authoring the modules under the Training Commons. They leveraged upon their past and present professional and personal associations with these trainers. Along with engaging with the trainers, these discussions were taken to another level to get the consent of the heads of their organizations. It was essential as this project was going to place some additional responsibilities on the trainers’ shoulders along with their

15 Interview with Mark Surman, April 22, 2008.


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day to day professional activities. Therefore, it was crucial to share the vision of the project with the heads of participating organisations and efforts were made to convince them of the value of participating in this project. Their consent and support was critical for kicking off the project. This process took its own time and except two of the module authors, others joined at different intervals in the life span of the project. The following observation made by one of the coordinators sums up the partnership consolidation process:

“(When) we found authors for two of the modules, namely, Sagarika and Muthu, we realized that we quickly needed authors for the other three as well. At that stage we adopted the strategy of engaging with potential partners ‘one on one’... The internal team (consisting of) Mark, Shaddy, I and Stephen to some extent, went about the task like any other project partners’ selection exercise… (based on our cumulative knowledge and experience of who were the players in the field). We did not zero down to one organization at that time; there were sets of four or five in each of the subject area domains. Then we engaged with them individually at various levels and kept going back and forth.” Ambika Sharma, Training Commons Coordinator

c) Formalizing the partnership: Finally, five organizations, NASSCOM Foundation, World Corps India (WCI), MSSRF, DA’s TaraHaat and Plan International16 joined the Training Commons project and the training personnel from these organisations stepped up to take upon the responsibility of creating the modules in the identified areas. The partnership was formalized by entering into contractual agreements with them. This agreement included their terms of reference, time schedule, deliverables and remuneration for their professional time invested in module creation. The contracted trainers were also paid for field testing the draft modules. d) Redefining collaboration: As mentioned earlier, the original implementation plan, as envisioned by Mark Surman and Mission 2007 partners, was highly collaborative and participatory in nature. The creation of each module under the curriculum was supposed to be led by a lead organization, with several others serving as reference group and constantly reviewing and improving them. It’s participatory and bottom up characteristics were supposed to come from constant engagement of telecentre trainers and workers in the development of these modules. But the way collaboration manifested itself was somewhat different. During the implementation, the Training Commons core community formation went through different ups and downs. The goodwill built during the Chennai and Agra workshops could not be sustained during this period because of longer communication gaps and some of the partners withdrew from the project and the reference group became quite weak. The coordinators tried their best, but they were not successful in engaging this group. At this stage, the focus shifted on producing the curriculum and the scope of collaboration was compromised. It was limited to the module authors and the coordinators throughout the module development phase. At a later stage, when the

16 Plan International was the last organization to join the M2007 core community. It works mainly with children and has no previous experience of training the telecentre managers. But building training modules on grassroots communication based on their integrated media approach was a good experience for the module author. For more information on Plan International, log on to www.planinternational.org.


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modules were being reviewed and value added, the scope of collaboration was extended to include the telecentre workers and trainers, reviewers, editors and graphic designer. IV The Practices The modifications in the implementation plan also impacted the practices adopted for project management, execution and curriculum development. These were contextualized to the emergent needs of the project. These became more personalized relying more and more on face to face interactions between the contributors and the coordinators; increased emphasis on individual authorship and a collegial approach to sharing responsibilities. 4.1 Project management and execution The distinguishing features of the Training Commons project management and execution are: a) Collegial approach to responsibility sharing: The coordinator/s adopted a collegial approach for project management with devolution of roles and responsibilities equally among the members of the Training Commons team. Since this project was an additional responsibility for the authors apart from their day to day organizational work, they had to maintain a perfect balance between these two. Moreover, as stated earlier, two of the module authors joined the project at a somewhat later stage. So, it was important to bring them at par with the others, and the coordinator helped them a lot in this. All of the authors were provided with enough resilience to evolve their working style and contribute according to their own timelines. Nevertheless, the team tried to stick to the major deadlines. b) Personalized coordination: During the curriculum development phase, project coordination was based largely on personalized interaction with the Training Commons team. These included face to face discussions, emails and frequent telecons between the module authors and the coordinator. These helped in sharing their challenges, seeking solutions, motivating the Training Commons team and in sustaining their interest throughout the project. It also kept them updated on the progress made by each one of them, which in turn served as a motivation. c) Volunteer spirit of the contributors: The contribution of the module authors was not technically voluntary. They were paid for their professional time and also for conducting the field tests.17 But their volunteer spirit drove them to undertake several other responsibilities that they were not bound to do under their contract. It was because of the camaraderie between them that they reviewed each other’s modules and helped out each other. Almost all of them had a background in content development and training. They were aware of the value of the project and were too keen to contribute to it and to share their experience and expertise. As they went deeper into the project, they themselves became interested in coming up with the final product, the curriculum, which is amply reflected in the observations of one of the module authors:

“I was involved in this project right from the beginning when the first workshop (in Chennai) was conducted and the concept of training commons was floated... My

17 As per the contracts signed by the module authors. Available with telecentre.org, New Delhi.


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association with telecentre.org, IDRC and the global cause for which the curriculum was being developed based on the principles of shared learning… prompted me to be a part of it.”18

d) Individual authorship based on subject area expertise: There were no hard and fast rules for the division of labour and roles, as by the time the Training Commons project entered the implementation phase, these were predefined on the basis of the module author’s expertise and background. For example, Muthu Kumar, a consultant with World Corps India (WCI), had been imparting the entrepreneurship skills to the telecentre workers for long. So, he shouldered the responsibility of developing the Entrepreneurship Development Program (EDP) module. As noted by him:

“One of the strengths of WCI model was its strong thrust on Entrepreneurship… being involved in the various stages—from identifying, training and setting up the centres, I had a good understanding of what entrepreneurial competencies are required for telecentre operators. This coupled with my background in Behavioural Sciences and Management helped me to fine-tune the EDP module.”19

Likewise, Kannan from Plan International was already developing modules on grassroots communication for the ‘amazing kids’ project where they were using the integrated media approach to train children and use the same for community development. He saw the Training Commons project as an opportunity to apply an improved version of this methodology to train the telecentre workers. Additionally, his background and interest in content development helped him to contribute to the grassroots communication module for this project.20 Surender Rana also, who developed the grassroots marketing module, was involved in conducting the training of telecentre managers and operators and also managed ‘on the field’ operations for TaraHaat. So, he had a good grasp of the elements of training and training curriculum development, specifically, what is required to be included in the curriculum to make it suitable and beneficial for the telecentre managers.21 So, the module authors contributed in the area in which they had the required experience and expertise. The same was true of Sagarika and Nancy, the other two module authors, as well. 4.2 Curriculum Development The Training Commons team adopted a peer assisted, collaborative and participatory approach to develop the modules under the curriculum, although the last two attributes of the project were somewhat compromised. The main steps adopted for module development varied slightly from module to module. For example, the content for the EDP module was already there and WCI was using it to train telecentre managers. So, they were the first to come up with a draft module on EDP. On the whole, module development progressed through the following stages:

18 Interview with Surender Rana on May 3, 2008. 19 Interview with Muthu Kumar, World Corps India on June 2, 2008. 20 Interview with Kannan on May 9, 2008 21 Interview with Surender Rana on May 3, 2008.


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a) Evaluating and presenting the available module: Since the areas of training were already determined, the first step in the direction of module development was to share the training materials available with the Training Commons community. These were evaluated and the gaps were identified. In some cases, where there were no modules or content to refer to, the module authors did some background research and literature review to get an overview of the training area. b) Revalidating training requirements/ need assessment: Since all of the module authors, except Kannan, had a telecentre background, they had a good understanding of the expectations and requirements of telecentre workers and even that of those who were setting up the telecentres for the first time, the first generation telecentre workers. Still, they revalidated the training requirements with the help of the telecentre managers. This knowledge helped them in deciding the content of the module, and the expressions, examples and language to be used in the modules. c) Content development: Content development was a participatory process. Although, these were written exclusively by the module authors, they were supported by their colleagues who had training and content development background. The Training Commons coordinator worked closely with the authors at this point in time. They were given complete flexibility in deciding the structure/ outline of the module, its content, etc so that they can pour out all their experience. At this stage, the training modules differed widely from each other in terms of their structure and template. On an average, the drafts went through two to three iterations to achieve the required format and content. d) Designing the module template: In the beginning, the module authors followed their own structures or formats, but at a later stage, it became imperative to design a common template to provide some uniformity to the modules. Therefore, they evolved a basic template for the modules and all the authors were required to follow it and fit their content into it. Once this uniformity was achieved, the modules were shared with the Training Commons coordinators and other key people involved in the project to seek their suggestions. The modules were again improved based on this feedback. e) Field testing: Once the draft modules were ready, these were field tested among a group of selected telecentre workers/ trainers to obtain their opinion about the content, the terms, concepts, expressions and examples used, the language and even the training delivery methods. These pilot workshops were conducted at strategic locations and the telecentre workers/ trainers gave a lot of practical suggestions to enhance the utility of the modules for the average grassroots trainers. The feedback received from these workshops was used to improve them. f) Peer review: Then, a peer review workshop was convened at the IDRC, New Delhi office to discuss and critique the improved versions of the modules. It was an opportunity for the module authors, coordinators and some invited experts to review each module minutely. The peer review workshop was followed by a ‘all partners’ meet where the module authors and the project coordinators were joined by the heads of the participating organizations, some curriculum development experts from Indira Gandhi National Open


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“In the Training Commons, considerable recognition needs to be attributed to personal relations, not only between me and these people (authors), but also amongst them. (They) really respect each other’s work. When you see your peers putting in so much of time and effort, you are tempted to do the same thing…” Ambika Sharma, Training Commons coordinator.

University (IGNOU) and other external consultants. The modules were further discussed and the invited experts provided inputs on each of the modules. These helped in tracing out and filling the gaps in the modules. g) Expert review, value addition & online launch of the curriculum: This stage included more reviews by curriculum development and telecentre experts. They reviewed the content, language, and examples used in the modules from the telecentre lens and suggested appropriate modifications, inclusion of examples from real life telecentre situations, and illustrations to explain the concepts, and so on.22 They also suggested incorporating more uniformity to the modules. These led to further improvisations and the modules also underwent language editing. Around this time, a graphic design consultant was hired to add value to the modules from the design and packaging perspective. The modules were further reviewed by another consultant, who fine tuned them and also added an introductory manual and trainer’s note to it.23 Finally the modules were launched under the Creative Commons License in the public domain on March 23/ 24 2008 as draft version 1 of the Training Commons. The purpose is to invite feedback from the organizations, trainers and others who would use them. 4.3 Support mechanisms Since the idea of creating an online platform for content creation could not materialize, the support mechanisms provided to the authors were mostly offline in addition to very simple online tools like mailing list and emails. These included: a) Face to face personalized interactions: Most of the content development process relied heavily on personalized interactions, like face to face meetings and telecons between the module authors and the Training Commons coordinator where they discussed each and every aspect of content development very openly. These interactions were held on a regular basis throughout the project life span, but more so during the content writing phase when they shared their initial thoughts around the training areas. b) Peer support: The Training Commons team shared great team spirit since all the authors and the coordinators were known to each other and some of them had also worked together in the past. They constantly reviewed and critiqued each other’s work and provided feedback for fine-tuning it. Since they were working in the same field, but with drastically different telecentre models, they considered it as a great opportunity to learn from each other and enrich their knowledge.

22 Prem Kumar, Sweety & Subbiah Arunachalam (2007) Reviewers’ Comments, telecentre.org, New Delhi. 23 Reddy, Usha (2008) Training Commons Manual: Final Report, telecentre.org, New Delhi.


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c) Administrative support: They received good support from the administrative perspective as well. telecentre.org facilitated all the consequent meetings and workshops for the team. In addition to facilitating meetings and workshops and working closely with the module authors when writing the modules, the Training Commons coordinator also accompanied them to all the field testing locations and motivated the trainers to provide suggestions. d) Financial support: The authors received financial support from telecentre.org for contributing to the Training Commons project and for conducting all the field tests. These included all the costs incurred for convening the pilot workshops (that lasted for a minimum of two days), like logistics and boarding and lodging of participating grassroots trainers and telecentre workers. e) Support from participating organizations: The respective organizations of the module authors not only seconded them temporarily to work on the Training Commons project, but also provided support and encouragement throughout the project. They also received continued help and feedback from their colleagues. They helped in developing the modules as well as in facilitating the entire field testing with the telecentre workers and trainers. f) Online tools: Since it was a small team consisting of the module authors and the coordinator and the authorship of the modules was also decided to be individual rather than group, they relied on very basic online tool, such as a Gmail group mailing list. Through this tool, the authors shared some of the earliest versions of the modules and also made sure that there was no overlapping of content and they remained focused to their area. Another important online communication and knowledge sharing channel was regular emails between the authors and the coordinators. These were helpful in resolving problems, and motivating the authors to stick to the deadlines. 4.4 User engagement As the project revolved around the principles of collaboration and participation, user engagement was intrinsic to the whole process of content development. As originally envisaged, the users or the trainers and telecentre workers were supposed to play an equal and key role in content development to make it more relevant to the user community. Once the draft modules were ready, they were field tested. All the authors tested their modules with their respective telecentres workers. Plan International was the only organization that had no telecentre program, so they tested their module with the telecentre workers of TaraHaat. a) Stages of user engagement The project incorporated user engagement at two stages:- i) Mission 2007 Grassroots Consultation: The first pilot workshop with the NVA Fellows was organized quiet early on in the life span of the Training Commons project. It was held in Delhi on 21-22 August 2006 to gauge the effectiveness and/ or appropriateness of existing curriculum and the training delivery methods in the area of Entrepreneurship. During this workshop, the participating telecentre trainers/ operators


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validated its need and appropriateness.24 In a way, this workshop provided an insight into the training needs of the telecentre trainers and operators and localization of the curriculum to make it more comprehensible to them. While it provided food for thought to improve and localize the available content on entrepreneurship, it encouraged other module authors to work on the draft versions of their respective modules. ii) Pilot testing of the draft versions: The next field testing started once the draft versions of the modules were ready. The Infomediary Skills module was tested during a two day workshop held at Hyderabad on 29- 30 January 2007, and later at Konark in Orissa and Ahmedabad in Gujarat. It tried to assess the relevance of the existing content and explore the kind of content it should contain, based on the feedback provided by the telecentre trainers and operators. The Hyderabad workshop, the first of a series of similar workshops, basically concentrated on motivating the participants to prescribe the kind of material they would require so that they are able to conduct similar training for knowledge centre personnel later. Similarly, TaraHaat, Plan International and WCI organized pilot workshops at their telecentres in different states to test the Grassroots Marketing, Grassroots Communication and EDP modules, respectively. TaraHaat conducted training workshops at different locations like Bhopal, Lucknow, Ranchi and Raipur. Nearly 100/ 200 telecentre instructors and operators attended these workshops. Several gaps identified during the workshop helped them to improve the modules. WCI held workshops with their trainers at Chennai in Tamilnadu and at Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh. b) Trainees’ opinion on the training i) Trainees’ background: An analysis of the participants list available with Training Commons project coordinators and on the field interaction with the telecentre trainers and operators revealed that those participating in the workshops comprised a mix of experienced and first generation telecentre trainers and operators. They were drawn from diverse backgrounds with different levels of education and running different telecentre models. For some of them, who joined the telecentres very recently, this was their first training. ii) Nature of past training: In the past, training was provided in very specific areas related to telecentre operations so that the telecentre workers were able to carry out day to day telecentre work. For example, the TaraHaat instructors and trainers were trained on the basics of how to run the computer literacy and diploma courses at their centres. Similarly, the training program of NASSCOM Foundation centered on imparting knowledge on telecentres, their functions and relevance for the local community. They were also trained on how to mobilize and sensitize the community to use the telecentres. iii) Response to the Training Commons training: For most of them, the training imparted under the Training Commons workshop, whether on grassroots marketing, grassroots communication, infomediary skills or EDP, was a new kind of training 24 telecentre.org Newsletter - October 2006


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altogether. Therefore, when they were trained on how to market their services and how to counsel the prospective students to enroll for their computer courses, they found it very relevant for increasing enrollment at their centres and making these telecentres profitable enterprises. They were already facing stiff competition from the local IT institutes, run by inexperienced people who were charging lesser fee per course compared to them. This was an important issue and had led to the early mortality of a few telecentres because they could not survive the local competition. They also appreciated the training delivery methods that involved PowerPoint presentations, role play and other interactive techniques. iv) Feedback on the training: Most of them provided very valuable feedback on the training, which helped the module authors to modify the content. These were generally related to the language and content. They wanted the language to be simple and the content to be made available primarily in local languages to widen its reach. They also wanted the modules to be well illustrated to explain the theoretical concepts and terms in simple ways. During the Hyderabad workshop on infomediary modules, the participants suggested the incorporation of case studies of successful knowledge centres and grassroots experiences in the modules; explanation of some basic theoretical concepts, such as definition of infomediary skills; modules to be made available in local languages; inclusion of audio-visual aids while training; sharing of video clippings of prior trainings or life experiences.25 v) Application of training in day to day work: The trainers shared that some of the telecentre operators have already started applying the training in their everyday telecentre operations. One of them started counseling the students and their parents, which he wasn’t doing earlier because he didn’t know the techniques of counseling. Thus he was able to convince them of the importance of TaraHaat and Microsoft certification and its value in comparison to other local IT courses.26 Another one, working on the marketing ideas received during the training, offered free access to examination results declared online to all the students in his community. This way, he attracted a crowd of youngsters and was able to translate this effort into more students for his telecentre.27 vi) Impact of training on their ability to train others: As stated earlier, since the participants were drawn from various backgrounds, it became obvious during the pilot workshops that the target audience needs to be appropriate if they want to focus on developing a cadre of the master trainers. For such training, only programme team should be invited and not telecentre workers because the present curriculum fulfills their needs the best. It is more oriented towards training the trainers rather than the learners. An overwhelming outcome of these pilot workshops was the number of persons showing interest in becoming volunteers. The participants were keen to help in designing the

25 NASSCOM Foundation (2007) Training Commons’ Infomediary Skills Module: Report on workshop for master trainers. NASSCOM Foundation, New Delhi 26 Interview with Sauveer Shukla, TaraHaat telecentre Centre Head and Instructor, Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh on May 20, 2008. 27 Interview with Araj Jaiswal, TaraHaat telecentre Centre Head and Instructor, Sausar, Madhya Pradesh on May 27, 2008.


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module as well as in imparting the training. But due to several constraints, their engagement could not be sustained on a regular basis. 4.5 Relevance of Training Commons curriculum for the trainers: The study has revealed that the curriculum developed under the Training Commons project is more suitable for experienced and well educated trainers, like regional training coordinators, who are well qualified and already possess some understanding of telecentre managers’ training and training requirements. The Training Commons serves as a good reference book for them from which they can extract relevant content and frame their own training programs. They can adapt the content into PPTs or package it in any suitable way for training delivery. But it may not be suitable for the grassroots trainers for several reasons: language being one of the barriers, as currently it is available only in English language. Secondly, the grassroots trainers are more accustomed to imparting training through ‘ready to use’ training tool books, PPTs and other materials not exceeding two/ three pages. Even after much encouragement, even those proficient in English are reluctant to read the curriculum that runs into approximately 280 pages and is too theoretical and textual for their understanding. During the pilot workshops also where the curriculum was tested for the relevance of the training areas included in it and its content/ concepts, the module authors developed PPTs and other interactive ways of delivering the training based on the draft modules. The modules in their pure form were never introduced to the grassroots trainers and telecentre operators. And, simplicity of the content and concepts and inclusion of real life examples, something they can relate to, was an overwhelming demand to make these more suitable for the grassroots trainers. As suggested by the Training Commons reviewers and also through interaction with the telecentre operators, this curriculum may not serve the purpose of self learning. Majority of the telecentre operators who participated in the pilot workshops found the training delivery to be very interesting and also validated the need for such training, but most of them found the language and concepts somewhat difficult to comprehend. Therefore, their suggestions centred around toning down these aspects of the curriculum. It was the trainers’ training skills and training delivery methodology that was much appreciated by the workshop participants. The curriculum would have benefited them the most if they were engaged in deciding the content of the curriculum and its development right from the beginning as envisaged in the original plan and as being practiced by organisations like ESPLAI in Spain and Colnodo in Columbia. V The Concept of Open The concept of open as understood by the Training Commons coordinators and authors resonated its global definition. But it underwent some regional contextualization when applied to the Indian scenario, especially while conveying the idea and consolidating partnership for Training Commons. The Training Commons community understood this


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concept more in terms of sharing and collaboration rather than making their years of investment in training and capacity building open for all without due recognition for their hard work, time and money. Its regional contextualization also implied that it is conveyed in a different manner to the participating organizations. 5.1 Defining open content: To the Training Commons coordinators and module authors, open content refers to content that is open and free for people to access; it is open and free for them to modify,

change and improve; and it is open and free to be shared and distributed. Specifically, the Training Commons project implied openness in content, which means that the content has to be generic enough to be contextualized according to local needs through adaptations,

modifications and constant improvements. It should be open in format, i.e., the format in which it is available in the public domain, should be user friendly and easily downloadable; and it should be open to access so that anybody anywhere in the world can use it without any restrictions. ‘Sharing’ and ‘collaboration’ are intrinsic parts of the Training Commons understanding of open content. It sought to create open content in a collaborative and bottom up way to make it sharable across national boundaries and telecentre networks. 5.2 Open content as understood by the Training Commons community The concept of open was not alien to the Mission 2007 partners as well. Mission 2007 itself was founded on the principles of sharing knowledge, content, expertise and resources. That’s one of the reasons why all the partners joined Mission 2007. It is defined as the ‘coalition of the concerned’; they are there because they are concerned about scaling up telecentres and everyone wants to share. The Training Commons project provided its partners with an opportunity to share their experience in capacity building of telecentre managers. They were already working collaboratively on this issue through the NVA and the Mission 2007 capacity building task force. As noted by Basheerhamad Shadrach, Sr. Prog Officer, telecentre.org & responsible Officer, Training Commons project,

“The concept of open was prevalent everywhere, particularly, when it comes to the (telecentre) networks that we are building. The idea of building these networks is not just to bring in people, but bring people with knowledge (to share)… this concept of networking is not just online or offline events, but also (implies) a collaborative style. So, anything that we want to do under that network umbrella, whether it is Mission 2007 or BTN or Phil CeC Net, the idea is to collaborate, help each other and share their resources, content and so on. That’s where the whole concept of open is founded.”

The curriculum mapping exercise carried out by Gitanjali Sah also mentions that “The most attractive component of this project for the participants is its holistic approach

“… open content means that it is open and free for people to access… it is free for them to modify and change and improve… and it is free to be distributed… (It) has the potential to create a virtual cycle through which the material gets richer and richer … One additional thing in the Training Commons vision (of open content) is that it is created in a collaborative way. It is not a part of the minimum definition of open content... (but) the Training Commons had a very conscious process of collaboration.” Mark Surman, Training Commons project initiator


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towards a concerted effort for formulating and implementing a common curriculum with diverse topics on developing ideal Kiosk/Knowledge Centre Managers. It is felt that making the curriculum available in one platform for all ICT4D players to share and use, would make curriculum customization easier based on gender, culture, local language and individual specific needs.”28 But they wanted to work out the right terms of reference to ensure that everybody was obligated to contribute equally. Therefore, the Mission 2007 partners were not averse to the concept of open, but they had certain apprehensions. They wanted this content to be accessible to the CSOs only, not to the profit making organizations. They did not want any organization to misuse the openness of the content and make money out of it (Surender Rana). 5.3 Communicating the concept: “give one & get back three” The Chennai and Agra workshops played a key role in communicating the concept of open to the prospective Training Commons project partners and at that time, majority of them were in agreement with the idea. It was only towards the stage of project implementation when the coordinators started engaging partners for contributing to the project that they encountered some difficulty, especially with the heads of the organisations. Earlier, during the Chennai and Agra workshops, Training Commons project invited only the trainers and other people associated with content development and training. Because of their background and experience all these people saw value in this project and were willing to participate. But there was some resistance when the project started rolling, especially from some decision/ policy makers of the participating organizations. They had invested a lot of time, resources and effort in putting together the training manuals. They didn’t want to let go of their years of experience and expertise so easily, particularly since some of them were running telecentres as social enterprises on a franchise basis and earning revenue for their organizations. So, first of all, the coordinator/s had to instill the value of this project for their respective organizations to overcome their resistance and then, show them the wider picture, that of the value of sharing across telecentre networks and geographical boundaries. They had to realize that they were receiving more than what they were actually sharing with others. Consequently, they didn’t feel threatened or vulnerable. The following observation substantiates this point,

“…very early on, it struck as a give and take format operating under the principle of ‘I give one, I get three’… In fact, by the end, people realized that by contributing one module, they were, in turn, getting three, which (means) a wealth of information coming from organizations who have expertise in that area. Another way of overcoming the resistance was to show them the larger picture that you are the first movers and shakers in that space… that they could be the lead institutions in furthering the capacity building work.” Ambika Sharma, Training Commons coordinator

5.4 The Success

28 Sah, Gitanjali (2006) Mission 2007 Training Commons: Report on existing content to train knowledge centre managers. New Delhi: telecentre.org.


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a) The final product, the curriculum: The most positive outcome of the whole process of creating Training Commons is that finally there is something tangible in hand in the form of the curriculum, which are of value to all Mission 2007 partners and other telecentre networks as well. The curriculum deals exclusively with the capacity building of grassroots telecentre workers across regions, models and approaches. Now, there is something in which all the participating organizations can take pride. b) Providing a platform to share: The Mission 2007 partners were provided with a

platform to share their content, experience and expertise and were encouraged to come together. It introduced them to the mechanisms of bringing together ideas on capacity building of telecentre workers from different Mission 2007 partners subscribing to different telecentre models

and approaches, and leveraging upon this accumulated knowledge to develop the first building blocks that other people can use and further build upon. c) Sense of collaboration: Another positive outcome has been the sense of collaboration among the core contributors, the module authors and the nature of the process of creating it. This process was collaborative, from the ground up and participatory wherein Training Commons partners shared their ideas and improved upon inputs from peers, the grassroots workers and trainers and experts. The kind of camaraderie these people shared was remarkable and, to some extent, it made up for the lack of collaboration from the wider Training Commons community. It is because of the sense of collaboration that they remained together through the process patiently and achieved results collectively. d) Incorporating experiential learning: These training modules have been developed based on experiential learning that the module authors acquired while supervising and managing their telecentre networks. These learnings were incorporated in the modules and have added to their richness and usefulness for the telecentre trainers and workers. 5.5 Future prospects of Training Commons: The Training Commons Curriculum was made available in the public domain on 23/ 24 March 2008. It is launched as the Draft Version 1 of the Training Commons and includes a feedback template to invite suggestions from telecentre practioners and activists across the globe. These suggestions will help in further improving the modules and making it more suitable for the average telecentre trainer and practioner. a) Curriculum adoption by participating organizations: Discussion with the training coordinators of organizations like TaraHaat, NASSCOM Foundation and World Corps India has revealed that, to some extent, the adoption of the Training Commons curriculum is determined by: a) Organisations’ existing telecentre operators’ training programs; b) Availability of trained trainers;

“…the original goal was to create a platform where people can share their content… by the virtue of sharing, people can reduce a lot of cost involving content creation and packaging…” Basheerhamad Shadrach, Sr. Prog Officer, telecentre.org & Responsible Officer, Training Commons project


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c) The nature of their telecentre model (entrepreneurial, social entrepreneurial or community based) and; d) The kind of services these telecentres are providing to the community. For example, the TaraHaat advocates the entrepreneurial model and their telecentres are primarily providing computer education under the Microsoft Unlimited Potential Program in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh (Indian states). It is more like a business enterprise for the person who is running it. Therefore, to make it profitable for the operator, the emphasis of their training has been on how to run and market this program. On the other hand, NASSCOM Foundation endorses the social entrepreneurial model combining business with community development. Therefore, telecentres under the NASSCOM Foundation umbrella are providing a mix of unpaid and paid services to the community; introducing the paid services only later on in the process once the relevance of the telecentre for the community is established. Therefore, the concentration of their training program is on sensitizing the telecentre operator about the functions of the telecentres in the community in general and mobilizing the community to appropriate its services. They train the telecentre operators around these issues and also on the use of computers, Internet and minor troubleshooting related to it. Now, since the trainers working with these organisations have codified the tacit knowledge on training available with them in the form of the Training Commons, they have started borrowing concepts from the modules they have developed to improve their existing training program areas. This was easier because they already have experienced trainers who are familiar with the concepts and terms used in those modules. The adoption of other modules requires further training of the trainers and understanding of the concepts. Only then, they will be in a position to train others. This is a gradual process and organizations are grappling with ways to integrate training in those areas in their existing system. They are adopting ideas from the Training Commons curriculum as and when required. b) Future prospects: The English version of the curriculum is recently launched, therefore, it is too early to talk about its future prospects. At this stage, it is more important to plan for and invest in making organizations/ telecentre networks use it for training and improve it. For achieving this, there should be mechanisms in place to increase awareness about the materials; make the materials available to the users; and encourage its sharing. In order to increase the reach of the Training Commons and make it more useful for all sections of grassroots trainers and suitable for delivery within India, telecentre.org, along with MSSRF, has initiated the process of turning around the curriculum into an Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) course. It has constituted a team of curriculum development experts from IGNOU, content writers from DA, MSSRF and other organizations, graphic designers from Splash Communications and other experts. As per the roadmap, the course will be launched in January 2009.


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VI Challenges & Learnings The Training Commons was a unique project for the Indian telecentre network. Here, partners from diverse telecentre backgrounds came together to develop a common curriculum to address the challenges of mass training of telecentre workers. The Mission 2007 network was founded on the ethos of sharing and collaboration and these values manifested themselves in the Training Commons. Because of being the first of its kind, the project had its share of ups and downs. When the coordinators were asked to name one thing that they wanted to change about the project, they didn’t actually stop at one. And this is true of most of the projects; none are implemented without encountering any problem. Still, it will serve as the first milestone paving the way for more such collaborations for the capacity building of grassroots workers. The lessons learnt through this project would definitely improve the implementation of similar projects in the future. Following are the challenges encountered while realizing the vision and goals of Training Commons and the lessons learnt on the way: 6.1 Dilemma over the target audience: The biggest challenge before the Training Commons project was the target audience itself for which it endeavored to develop a grassroots MBA curriculum. As mentioned earlier, this project sought to develop a cadre of master trainers from among the telecentre workers. This group was diverse in nature with different educational attainments and serving different kinds of telecentre models. It comprised both telecentre workers and trainers. Therefore, at times, the authors faced the dilemma of whether they were addressing the average telecentre workers or the trainers and this ambiguity prevails throughout the modules (Salil Chaturvedi). Therefore, to avoid any such discrepancies, it would be advisable to inform the individual author or group of authors about the target audience and to ask them to maintain this consistency throughout the modules. Another confusion was about the usefulness of the curriculum for the trainers or the average telecentre workers. As noted by Mark Surman,

“There is some confusion here as to who is the user- those who are training the knowledge centre workers or the knowledge centre workers themselves; I think both. They had a fair deal of feedback from the trainers and those who were developing the materials, like Sagarika, Muthu, and Rana.”

On the other hand, the master trainers attending the infomediary skills workshop suggested that these are suitable only for the programme team, not for the average knowledge workers.29 The telecentre workers, in the course of the interviews, were also of the opinion that they liked the training because of the way it was imparted and the relevance of the subject area. The modules were not introduced to them in their pure form; what they actually saw was the training program consisting of PPTs, interactive methodologies and role plays based on those modules. In fact, it was the pedagogical skills of the trainers and the training materials based on those modules that made all the difference; and made all the terms and concepts used in the training very comprehensible to the average telecentre workers. Even the reviewers and experts felt that the modules have an overload of information and the contents are a bit too technical for a grassroots

29 NASSCOM Foundation (2007) Training Commons’ Infomediary Skills Module: workshop for master trainers. NASSCOM Foundation, New Delhi.


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trainer or self learner (Usha Reddy, Sweety Prem Kumar and Subbiah Arunachalam). An average telecentre worker cannot use it without the help of qualified trainers. They provide good stuff for training to the qualified trainers and animators. And right now, they will serve their purpose consistently. And it is also imperative to attach a “Users’/ Trainers’ Note” delineating the right method to use the modules to avoid any confusions among the users. 6.2 Vision communication related challenges a) Confusion about implementation: Some of the coordinators, module authors and non participating organizations from the Training Commons community felt that although the concept of open was communicated quite clearly and was also well understood by all the partners, they were not clear as to how open content will be developed. For them, it was a new way of working together to produce something concrete in the form of the curriculum. There was a concept note, but no well defined action plan to share with the partners, as these developed along the way (Ambika Sharma). Therefore, some of the partners were confused as to how the project would be implemented; who would take the lead in developing the content and how they would use the virtual platform to create and improve the content. A workshop detailing and resolving these issues during the initial stage itself would have gone a long way in engaging all the partners. b) Sharing the vision with the trainers first, not with the decision/ policy makers: telecentre.org invited only the trainers during the Chennai workshop. In the Indian context, it would have been more appropriate for telecentre.org (even before communicating the vision to the trainers) to share the idea informally with the policy makers in the short listed organizations. They should have obtained their consent in the first place to have a fair idea about the number of organizations actually interested in participating and then shared the idea with the trainers from these organizations. Then, they would have progressed to the second level of detailing as to who had what kind of expertise and who would do what. Since the Training Commons project operated the other way round, the trainers were quite open to the idea from the first day, but the coordinator/s had a hard time convincing the heads of the selected organizations to allow their trainers to participate in the project. So, first informal or formal communication and consent obtained by the heads of organizations followed by a workshop with the trainers would have taken the project a long way. 6.3 Project management related challenges

a) Elongated project life span: Most of the coordinators and module authors felt that the project term was unnecessarily long. It took almost two and a half years for the Draft Version 1 of the training commons to be available in the public domain. The telecentres being such a dynamic field, it is probable that what was thought relevant for training two

and a half years ago, would look obsolete in the present context. At the same time, it

“We were too flexible… we could not recruit the partners on time… So, the entire project has been for a longer duration. When it comes to actually getting a product out, we cannot have such a long drawn process… The longer you drag, the more expensive it (becomes) and the more obsolete certain things become.” Basheerhamad Shadrach, Sr. Prog Officer, telecentre.org & responsible Officer, Training Commons project


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would also adversely impact the costs of the project. In this project, the planning stage was unnecessarily elongated and later on, partnership building also consumed a lot of time and effort, while the actual curriculum development process had to be rushed. It led to compromising in several ways to produce the curriculum, like compromising on collaboration and on more proactive user engagement. Therefore, a well planned, tightly scheduled implementation would have saved a lot of time. b) Changes in the continuum of leadership: Another big challenge was frequent changes in the continuum of leadership. As Mark Surman notes,

“From me, it (leadership) went to Shaddy, then to Ambika and then back to Shaddy. If I could fix any of the things by magic, I wouldn’t have done any of these. The passing of leadership from one person to another was a major constraint and also impacted the vision and goal of the project in a negative way.”

This also adversely affected the Training Commons processes and practices. The continuation of the initiator would have driven the project more or less along the predetermined path and would have probably cut down the elongated project life span. 6.4 Project execution related challenges: a) Top down project execution: In this project, telecentre.org was taking up the leadership role with the vision of building the partnership and then moving ahead with the partnership. In retrospect, the project initiator and coordinator/s feel that it would have been a more successful project if the central leadership had come from the Mission 2007 members. IDRC/ telecentre.org should not have taken upon itself the implementation of the project. As per the IDRC mandate, they should have engaged in building the capacity of southern organization to do this job. This is further illustrated by Mark Surman’s comments,

“The balance of leadership was too much on the top and too much from the global perspective and not enough from the Indian perspective. And that creates an issue not only from the value perspective… but also a number of practical reasons because it is not emotionally owned by the partners. They are not in the picture and they have no motivation to sustain it… So, I think the big challenges were about the construction of the partnership, ownership and motivation. What could have been done differently was to maintain the goodwill and participation of the broader Mission 2007 members, and not just the partners we engaged and paid for.”

b) Compromising on participatory aspects: As envisioned, the project needed to be more participatory engaging all the stakeholders, especially the user community through workshops encouraging consultative refining of the content, and by creating a strong feedback loop. “The participatory method is all about involvement, not just getting the feedback.” (Basheerhamad Shadrach), and in many cases, the feedback received from the user community was mainly passive. Adherence to the conceptualization and original project design would have helped the project a lot in making it truly participatory. The module authors also felt that either at the beginning or at an interim project stage, a dedicated team of representatives from all partner agencies could have worked together in one location for a few weeks at one stretch with a schedule of deliverables. That would have added value to the project (Muthu). This could have been also achieved by being virtually connected through an online platform. If the partners were not accustomed to it, they could have been trained for working on this virtual platform.


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“We had a good beginning... But the most critical missing key was to keep them. The Training Commons partnership was reduced to five from the initial fifteen. The continued engagement of the wider community would have helped the project… also continued advertisement to show the benefits of staying involved in the project... we focused too much on the partners who were contributing… everybody (original fifteen) could have been a beneficiary and user. These could not be done and most of the organizations lost interest in the project.” Mark Surman, Training Commons project initiator

c) Diluted collaboration: As stated, collaboration was a key ingredient in developing the curriculum, but it was diluted and restricted to the module authors and the coordinator/s. Although the objective of producing the curriculum was met, it was not done as envisaged. The partners could have been motivated to stay connected to the project (even if they were not contributing to it directly) by showing them the benefits that the project was going to accrue and the relevance of the training areas for their network. d) Limited time for developing the module: Although, on the whole, the project life span was long, some module authors encountered time constraint in developing the modules, especially those who joined late in the process. They had to complete the modules in a time span of three/ four months, therefore, they did not get enough time to research their subject area. It also impacted in deciding the scope of the content because there was a lot of diversity in the nature of the telecentres with regard to objectives and service delivery. Moreover, inclusion of generic examples with relevance for all was another challenge. If they were given much longer time in developing the modules, they could have visited other telecentre networks, assessed their requirements and incorporated those learnings and examples as well. e) Lack of process documentation: During the curriculum development phase, the project relied very heavily on personalized interaction between the members of the core team and the coordinator/s. Almost all the module authors and the project coordinator agreed that these discussions were very intense and sometimes revealed interesting insights into content creation or curriculum development. But there is not enough documentation on the discussions that took place between the module authors and the coordinator/s from time to time. Similarly, there are very few reports on field testing of the modules, except the one on infomediary module by NASSCOM Foundation and another one in Hindi on Media Karyashala or Media Workshop. In retrospect, the coordinator/s also feel that proper documentation would have provided more insight into the evolution of the project and justified the adaptations along the way.

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