Oxfam

Read the interview summary

Elucidat: Why does digital learning matter to Oxfam?

Jo Grantham, Training Lead, Oxfam:

“I think it’s fair to say that knowledge sharing is absolutely critical for Oxfam to design really impactful programs, and digital learning basically enables anyone at Oxfam to capture and contribute their expertise, and that supports the broader movement.

Prior to Elucidat most of our learning was classroom based or even manuals hosted on local intranets, and what little elearning that we did have was generally developed by external contractors, which is fine, but it was obviously expensive and very difficult to modify.

Whereas what Elucidat’s done is empowered our subject matter experts so they can create really engaging online learning. They find the tool very easy to use, but also very, very powerful.”

Elucidat: What are your proudest digital learning achievements?

Jo Grantham, Training Lead, Oxfam:

It’s really easy to modify a course to change the focus from an internal Oxfam audience to our external partners. We can quickly adapt a course to accommodate other languages as the need arises.

“I think one of our proudest achievements is having the ability to share our content with partners.

For example, we developed a course on data rights so people understand why it’s so important that we respect the rights of the people we work with. And this is now shared with other NGOs right across the sector.

It’s really easy to modify a course to change the focus from an internal Oxfam audience to our external partners. We can quickly adapt a course to accommodate other languages as the need arises.

For example, we’ve just created a Burmese version of one of our courses, to support our work in Myanmar.”

Elucidat: How is Elucidat helping you meet your goals?

Melissa Harris, Oxfam :

“As a global confederation organization, language inclusivity is really important to us. We want all staff, whatever office they’re working in to be able to access resources.”

“So we recently developed a module on safe programming practises, which is the idea that we can always be causing harm as an organization. And we need to have practice in place to mitigate it. It’s really important that all of our staff know about this. So having it available with lots of different languages makes that possible.

We currently have it available in Arabic, Spanish, French, and Burmese. We’re also in the process of adding a translation for Ukrainian and Russian, which is really exciting.

The good thing about Elucidat is the ability to modify the information as we need to.

We’re always learning as an organization so as we develop new resources, we can just update the course really easily. So everyone is able to access the most up to date information.”

Maria Fabregas Golf, Oxfam:

“Elucidat staff were very responsive and helped me during the design phase of my course as well as the implementation phase. It was a great success!”

“So in my case, I was looking for a platform that could help me tailor some content that I already had for overseas staff and partners.

Elucidat allowed me to create different modules on different topics.

We are a big organization with information and knowledge that we want to make available to partners, and Elucidat enables that.

Elucidat staff were very responsive and helped me during the design phase of my courses, as well as the implementation phase. It was a great success.”

Elucidat: Can you paint a picture of the kinds of digital learning you are creating, who’s using it, and how it helps?

Jo Grantham, Oxfam:
“Our digital learning is really broad. From mandatory courses for new starters to courses for specific regions.  

We also have courses that are developed for specific regions and countries. For example, Indonesia are using Elucidat to house some videos that they will share with partners in country. And we have some very sector specific courses. For example, we are about to launch our Sani Tweaks course which focuses on improving sanitation programmes in emergencies and boosting latrine usage rates.”

Elucidat: Who’s involved in the production of digital learning, at Oxfam? 

Jo Gratham, Oxfam

“We don’t have a centralized training function and we want to empower SMEs to build their own content. With the recent introduction of templates in Elucidat, they find it very easy to design their own engaging content.”

Elucidat: Where would you like to take things next?

Jo Gratham, Oxfam

Mobile. Although Elucidat has always been mobile friendly, until recently, we didn’t have that functionality on our [LMS] platform. So that’s something we’re going to be moving towards over the next year.

We’ve recently done a survey to find out what the appetite was for mobile learning within Oxfam, and it is certainly something that the business really wants to move towards.

And we’re also moving towards developing more bite-sized learning and planning on redeveloping some of our mandatory courses to be a more modular experience for the learner.

In summary

Oxfam’s shift to digital learning has proved a cost-effective way to increase the speed and reach of knowledge sharing across the organization. Using Elucidat, they have developed a new model for L&D which embraces their core values: 

• Empowerment: Enabling anyone to capture and contribute their expertise to support Oxfam’s mission.
• Inclusiveness: Creating digital learning that’s truly inclusive of employees in different regions: translated into different languages and adapted for partners.
• Accountability: Creating ownership and making it easy for anyone to quickly and easily keep their content up to date.