Public call for tender 83477792 Junior Short-term expert (JSTE) to monitor tutors and students’ engagement in e-learning QuA-Vet 18.2208.9-002.00

General information

Brief information on the project

The Multi-Donor Action “Improving the Quality and Attractiveness of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Lebanon for poor and vulnerable social groups” is jointly co-financed by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The joint action is implemented by GIZ as a specific Action within the wider BMZ project “Improving the Quality and Attractiveness of TVET in Lebanon (QuA-VET)”. 

The aim of the action is to orient the vocational training towards the qualification needs of the labour market in sectors with sustainable employment potentials, therefore improving the employment capacities for poor and vulnerable social groups living in Lebanon. The implementing partner, the Directorate General for Vocational and Technical Education (DGVTE), requires further support in involving the private sector in vocational education and training. Thus, the project’s emphasis is placed on improving the partnership between vocational training institutions and the private sector. This includes developing modularized and practice-oriented training programmes in selected sectors, digitalizing e-learning lessons for the technical theoretical subjects of the promoted TVET programs and general subjects and enhancing the quality of in-company training for employees and work-based learning for vulnerable individuals. 

The target groups of the project are vulnerable youth and young adults (aged 15-35), including Syrian and Palestinian refugees, individuals from hosting communities, TVET Lebanese students, unemployed or underemployed individuals (aged 17 to 35), and employees in Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) seeking to improve their employment prospects through relevant qualifications. 

1. Context

Background – e-Learning

Lebanon’s deepening economic crisis has severely impacted the public TVET sector, with inflation and rising costs making it difficult for students to afford transportation and basic educational materials in the normal context. Adding to these challenges, the recent surge in conflict and security issues has left many regions in the country inaccessible, forcing the closure of many TVET schools. Many other schools in relatively safe areas are now being used as temporary shelters for internally displaced people (IDPs), limiting their ability to continue in-person teaching. Consequently, in-person education will not be feasible in many of these institutions for the foreseeable future, and alternative remote learning options are necessary to ensure students continue to receive education during this time of crisis.

Based on the experience in e-learning which the GIZ projects’ ProVTE^[1], VTE4all^[2] and the currently running QuA-VET, have collected and considering that the teaching and learning at distance will be a constant in the future in the form of blended learning, the project has developed and published the technical theoretical courses of Baccalauréat Technique (BT) Industrial Mechanics and Technicien Superieure (TS) Health Inspection and Food Safety in e-Learning modality during the past two years, and is extending the development of e-Learning Lessons (ELLs) to include the BT2 General Subjects for all BT programs, in addition to the technical theoretical courses for the BT “Hospitality Food Production” and a TS specialization.

This will ensure that students have access to their courses and their learning is not interrupted due to the instability in the country, where the ongoing crisis has severely impacted the in-presence teaching and learning methods. Moreover, the lessons in EL modality will be a support for teachers, enhancing their ability to deliver remote and online education effectively.

Outline of the mission

In our initiative to integrate digital lessons in the public TVET system, Articulate Rise 360 has been selected as an Authoring Software, a dynamic tool that enables content developers^[3] to create engaging and interactive e-Learning Lessons, in addition to Moodle, as a Learning Management System (LMS) for the integration of these lessons into the educational framework, to which students and teachers from the public TVET schools will have access.

The platform has been used to deliver e-lessons of BT “Bâtiment et Travaux Publics” and BT1 General Subjects under ProVTE and VTE4all projects, in addition to the digital lessons of the BT Industrial Mechanics and TS Health Inspection and Food Safety under the QuA-VET project.  

Moodle's SCORM compatibility ensures that the e-Lessons developed by our content developers retain their interactivity and functionality, enabling students to engage with the content. In addition, it offers offline completion of the e-Lessons including progress tracking. The teachers responsible for delivering the e-Lessons to their students in the schools will receive a training on e-Learning and on the features of the LMS. 

Based on the enrolments rates in the last two years, it is expected that up to 200 students to be enrolled in BT Industrial Mechanics in 9 TVET schools’ part of the BT “General Subjects”, 200 students in the BT “Hospitality Food Production” in 10 schools, and 100 students in a TS specialization in 5 schools.

There will be up to 70 content developers trained on Articulate 360 by QuA-VET for uploading up to 1500 ELLs of the BT2 General Subjects and technical theoretical lessons of the BT “Hospitality Food Production”, and a TS specialization for the school years 2024/25 and 2025/26 and 2026/27, into the Learning Management System.

Up to 350 teachers, in charge of disseminating the e-Lessons to their students, will be enrolled and trained on the Learning Management System to monitor their students’ engagement levels with the e-Learning Lessons in the partner TVET schools.

In order to support teaching and administrative staff from the 24 TVET schools, an expert is required, with experience in education, able to coordinate with the teachers delivering the ELLs to TVET students and to track the students' learning progress in the Learning Management System.

GIZ shall hire the contractor for the anticipated contract term, from 02.12.2024 to 15.01.2027

The contractor shall provide the following work/service:

• Meet with the project team members, staff of the DGVTE and of other organisations involved in the project as considered necessary.
• Inform and regularly consult the project team members.
• Report on technical and general challenges faced by teachers and/or students, escalated by the Digital Focal Points (DFPs) of the partner schools, during distance learning and coordinate with the IT expert on possible solutions.
• Coordinate with up to 24 Digital Focal Points, and teachers, on their availabilities for the training sessions on the use of the Learning Management System to deliver the ELLs.
• Develop an attendance sheet for tracking teachers’ attendance in the LMS sessions.
• Identify and establish a communication channel to follow-up, on weekly basis, with up to 24 Digital Focal Points, from 24 TVET partner schools involved in ELL delivery during each academic year.
• Organize monthly online meetings with the DFPs from each school and their respective teachers to follow-up, motivate them and gather challenges and feedback.
• Develop and regularly update monitoring sheets reflecting teachers’ engagement and students’ progress and grades in their subjects for each school referring to the LMS.
• Collect and compile the grader reports shared by teachers and Digital Focal Points from the partner schools, regarding students’ learning progress in the e-lessons, and share them with project team members.
• Attend regular meetings with project team members to inform them on the progress and challenges in the schools with regards to e-Learning.
• Carry out all activities necessary for the accomplishment of the required outputs / results.
• Write mission report and required administrative deliverables.
• Be accessible after the short-term mission through internet for follow-up discussions.

Outputs/Results

The outputs / results requested from the expert are:

• A template to document and track challenges and solutions during delivery of ELLs, in MS Word or Excel format.
• Attendance sheet for DFPs and teachers participating in the LMS sessions.

• Monitoring sheet, to be updated regularly, in Excel format, on teachers’ engagement on the LMS during up to three academic years.
• Monitoring sheet, to be updated regularly, in Excel format, on students’ progress and completion for each course during up to three academic years.
• Up to three end of academic year reports on the numbers of e-lessons completed by each student, and the numbers of reports shared by each teacher, in Excel format.
• Report on the challenges and recommendations for coordinating and monitoring teachers’ delivery of ELLs to students in Word format.

Administrative Deliverables:

A comprehensive end of mission’s report, if needed, submitted to project manager for revision and approval following the structure:

• Scope and objectives of the mission
• Approach adopted for conducting the mission
• List of outputs produced during the mission (including meetings and people met)
• Description of the outputs produced during the mission
• Problems and challenges encountered during the mission
• Recommendations for the follow-up of the mission
• Recommendations for the improvement of project implementation

All documents produced should be delivered in hard copy and in digital form using exclusively MS-Office applications.

Quantitative Requirements

Please refer to the TOR for more information regarding the Fee Days in Annex 2

Tender requirements

Qualification & General professional experience:

Education: University degree at least at bachelor level, or LT in Education, Educational Technology, Social Sciences, Business Administration or any other related field.

Professional experience:  At least 3 years of working experience in teaching at secondary level and / or in capacity building/skills development, in addition to experience in monitoring and coordinating with teachers/academic staff delivering distance learning education.

Experience in the region/knowledge of the country

At least one year of working experience in Lebanon

Language skills

Business fluency in Arabic language

Business fluency in English language

Others:

• Proficient in use of Moodle or any other learning management system.
• Proficient in use of MS Office (Power Point, Word, Excel, Outlook).
• Experience in developing monitoring sheets using MS Excel for tracking learners’/students’ learning progress in e-learning/distance education.

Excellent communication skills and ability to explain technical information in a concise manner.