Public Call for Tender for Senior Short-term expert to operate and maintain LMS for General Subjects e-Learning Lessons PN:18.2208.9-002.00 QuA-VET.

General information

1.   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

a.   Background – e-Learning

Considering the stumbling economic situation that is affecting Lebanon at several levels, the elevated transportation fees, and the unstable security situation in some regions of the country, public TVET students are not attending schools on regular basis.

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 Superieur (TS) Health Inspection and Food Safety (HIFS) in e-Learning modality during in the past two years, and it intends to extend the development of e-Learning Lessons (ELLs) to include the BT2 General Subjects, in addition to the technical theoretical courses in two new sectors.

This will ensure that students have access to a larger number of courses and their learning is not interrupted due to the instability in the country. Moreover, the lessons in EL modality will be a support for teachers during the in-presence lessons.

b.   Outline of the mission

In our initiative to integrate digital lessons in the public TVET, Articulate Rise 360 has been selected as an Authoring Software, a dynamic tool that enables content developers  to create engaging and interactive e-Learning Lessons, in addition to Moodle, or an alternative platform, as a Learning Management System (LMS) for the integration of the lessons into the educational framework, to which students and teachers from the public TVET schools will have access in the 2024-2025, 2025-26 and 2026-27 academic years.

The Moodle 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 e-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.

The modernized general subjects’ curriculum on the BT1 and BT2 level are unified across all TVET specializations. Therefore, the project will be providing access to these e-lessons on the LMS to approximately 250 students and teachers of BT1 and BT2 Industrial Mechanics in 9 schools, in addition to 11 TVET schools with up to 1,731 BT students from different specializations and their general subjects teachers.

There will be up to 70 content developers  trained on Moodle, or any other equivalent LMS, to upload up to 450 ELLs of the BT2 General Subjects and up to 900 ELLs of the technical theoretical subjects for the BT Agrofood and TS Internet of Things (IoT) during the school years 2024/25 and 2025/26. Teachers in charge of disseminating the e-Lessons to their students will be added and trained on the Learning Management System to monitor their students’ engagement levels with the e-Learning Lessons.

In order to support teaching and learning in the partner schools, the project is looking to hire a LMS expert, with experience in Moodle, to operate and maintain the platform, and act as a first line support to resolve any LMS technical issue.

1. GIZ shall hire the contractor for the anticipated contract term, from 02.09.2024 to 15.01.2027
2. The contractor shall provide the following work/service:

• Meet with project manager, output team members, staff from the DGVTE, and of other organizations involved in the project as considered necessary.
• Inform and regularly consult the project team members.
• Collaborate with other LMS experts as part of the QuA-VET e-Learning team regarding training TVET personnel and student lists to be enrolled in specific courses.
• Create courses of BT2 General Subjects in the LMS.
• Collect information on the LMS users in Excel from project team at the beginning of every academic year to create user accounts for:
  • BT1 and BT2 students in up to 11 public TVET schools.
  • BT1 and BT2 students in 9 public TVET schools of BT Industrial Mechanics.
  • Teachers responsible for delivering the digital subjects in 20 schools.
  • 20 public TVET school directors that are part of the project implementation.

• Create cohorts on the LMS for each group of students, and their teacher(s), for each school and specialization.
• Assign each cohort and group to the digital courses they are registered in.
• Draft or update a handout in English and Arabic languages, on how to upload ELLs into the LMS.

• Conduct up to 3 online training sessions, for content developers of general subjects, on uploading e-lessons/SCORM packages to the LMS and adjusting the settings.
• Revise and update handout for Multipliers’ training on the LMS, in English and Arabic languages.
• Deliver up to 2 training sessions for up to 10 Multipliers, from the public TVET schools, on the use of the Learning Management System to deliver e-lessons and track students’ progress.
• Remove users that are no longer enrolled in the schools from the LMS at the end of each academic year.

• Maintain an updated students records on the platform during the academic years: removing drop-out students, adding newly registered ones, and adjusting enrolments of users based on the needs.
• Offer first line support to the team project to resolve any LMS technical issue (passwords, bugs, technical support, etc.).
• Carry out all activities necessary for the accomplishment of the required outputs / results.
• Write mission report and required administrative deliverables, if needed.
• Be accessible after the short-term mission through internet for follow-up discussions.

Outputs/Results:

The outputs / results requested from the expert are:

• Excel files including information of users and cohorts for account creation for each academic year, in each school.

• Course rooms created in the LMS for the General Subjects’ courses.
• Updated handout, in Word format, instructing content developers to upload SCORM packages into the LMS.

• Delivery of up to 3 online training sessions for GS content developers on uploading e-Lessons to the LMS.
• Updated handout in Word format, or e-Lesson format, for Multipliers’ training on the LMS.
• Delivery of up to 2 in-presence training sessions for the Multipliers on using the LMS for e-Learning and training the teachers.

Administrative Deliverables:

• A comprehensive end of mission’s report, submitted to project advisors 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. 

Tender requirements

General qualifications

• Education:University degree at least at bachelor level, or LT in Educational Technology, Instructional Design, Information Technology, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or any other related field.
• Professional experience:  At least 5 years of working experience in IT, digital education and/or training, operating learning management systems, providing IT technical support and training to educational institutions or companies.

Specific professional experience:

• Experience in administering operational functions of a Learning Management System: initial set-up, creating categories and courses, and user credentials.
• Experience in working and providing technical support for instructional designers or subject matter experts.

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 and/or any other equivalent Learning Management System.
• Proficient in use of Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook).
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.