Call for EOI Senior Short-term Expert to operate and maintain Learning Management System for TS Health Inspection and Food Safety

I.     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.

2.   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 , VTE4all , 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 in the past two years. The e-Learning Lessons (ELLs) developed were published on the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) for TVET teachers and their students registered in the above specializations, in the partner schools, to access.

The project plans to continue providing access to TVET students registered in the partner schools to their digital learning materials on the LMS to ensure that 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 e-Lessons in the public TVET sector, 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 the 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 have already been trained by the project in the past academic years. And the newly ones will be supported in the use of the LMS for the delivery of the e-lessons and for tracking their students’ learning progress, if needed.

Based on the enrolment rates in the past two years, it is expected that up to 250 students to be enrolled in the TS Health Inspection and Food Safety for the next academic years.

In order to support teaching and learning in the 5 TVET partner schools, the project is looking to contract a LMS expert, with specific experience in Moodle, to operate and maintain the platform, and act as a first line support to resolve any LMS technical issue for the upcoming three academic years.

3. GIZ shall hire the contractor for the anticipated contract term, from 01/10/2024 to 29/01/2027.

4. 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.
• Collect information on the LMS users in Excel from project team at the beginning of every academic year to create user accounts for:

             o TS1 and TS2 students of Health Inspection and Food Safety in 5 TVET schools.

             o Teachers responsible for delivering the technical theoretical subjects of the above-mentioned specialization in the 5 schools.

             o 5 school directors that are part of the implementation.

• Create cohorts in the LMS for each group of students and their teacher(s) enrolled in the TS1 and TS2 levels for each school.
• Assign each cohort/group to the courses they are registered in.
• Support project team in performing technical tasks related to site administration in the LMS.
• Remove users that are no longer enrolled in the schools from the LMS at the end of each academic year.
• Maintain 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.).
• Conduct training sessions for technical theory teachers on the use of the LMS for the delivery of e-lessons, if needed.
• 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 the internet for follow-up discussions.

Outputs/Results:

• Excel file including information of TS HIFS users and cohorts for account creation for each academic year.
• Customized technical support to schools provided upon request.

Administrative Deliverables:

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

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

II. Tender requirements

1. Qualifications of proposed staff

1.1  Expert 1

1.1.1 General qualifications

Education: University degree at least at Bachelor level or LT in Education Technology, Instructional Design, Information Technology, Computer Science, 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.

1.1.2 Experience in the region/knowledge of the country

At least one year of working experience in Lebanon.

1.1.3 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).

2. Quantitative requirements

Kindly Refer to the feedays table found in the attached EOI document.