IFWEA Secretariat educators Melanie Julie and Renaldi Prinsloo’s paper on OLA has been accepted for presentation at the Moodle Global Conference “Education for the future” in Barcelona in September 2022. The conference will feature presentations and workshops by a range of presenters from around the globe, on topics focusing on different aspects of the Moodle learning platform, including accessibility, inclusion, site management and integration.
The IFWEA paper is titled Integrating Zoom, WhatsApp and Google Translate with Moodle courses to provide Flexible and Equal Online Learning Opportunities to Worker Educators globally.
Drawing on their experience in creating, co-ordinating and running programmes including study circles, webinars and courses, their description of the paper is as such:
“The IFWEA ( International Federation of Workers’ Education Associations ) Online Labour Academy (OLA), which was established in 2012, provides lifelong online learning opportunities to worker educators as well as opportunities for our affiliates to design and run online courses for their constituencies. Our courses focus on providing social, political and workplace education to workers globally, using participatory and popular education methods.
Many of these workers live in developing countries (from the regions Africa, Asia and Latin America) with difficult working conditions, limited access to the internet, different levels of digital literacy and some a low level of English proficiency. To ensure an inclusive online learning environment and equal active participation for all participants in our online courses, we had to integrate external tools such as Zoom, WhatsApp and Google translate.
This flexible and inclusive online learning methodology has been proven to be remarkably successful. Zoom has been an excellent tool for weekly sessions with our participants to catch up and to ensure they can do the activities in the course and answer any questions. We frequently use WhatsApp as a communication tool by creating a group with the participants and providing a link invitation to the group in the online course.
On WhatsApp, we share important information and announcements on the course, links to the weekly Zoom sessions and even short screen recording tutorials of how to access and do certain activities on Moodle. We have a Google translate plugin on OLA which allows our participants to translate the page content of any course into their native language. Google translate also give participants the opportunity to engage in their own language in online
discussion forum activities.”
To find out more about IFWEA programmes, sign up and visit at OLA.