SOCIEUX+ launches e-learning platform for online training and peer-to-peer exchange

SOCIEUX+ EU Expertise on Social Protection, Labour and Employment has launched an e-learning platform to facilitate online training and peer-to-peer exchange. The development of this tool, based on the open-source platform Moodle, is part of the SOCIEUX+ response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Although international travel restrictions severely curtailed on-site missions, interest from partner countries in the expertise and response of EU Member States to the crisis increased.

The new e-learning site, which can be accessed from the SOCIEUX+ website, allows experts to create interactive, capacity-building courses with a clear pedagogical plan, calendar, variety of resources (pdf, slides, videos, etc.), and pre-designed activities, as well as monitor and evaluate participants’ learning. Participants have access to live trainings and meetings, as well as recordings of these sessions for later viewing. As SOCIEUX+ is a facility for peer-to-peer exchange, the platform is also designed to ensure sufficient interaction among participants via chats, forums, and other interactive tools. All partners need to access the platform is an e-mail address and a computer, smartphone or tablet. The platform has proved particularly useful in contexts where internet connections are too weak to support a live training or meeting.

Aware of the need to develop new technical capacities to get the most out of this platform, guides for instructors and participants have also been developed in the main project languages: English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. The SOCIEUX+ support team also accompanies the experts on the platform to guarantee the quality of remote activities.

One of the first activities using the new SOCIEUX+ platform was a series of sessions on the labour inclusion of people with disabilities in Peru, developed with the Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion of Peru and the Directorate for Promotion of Employment for Workers with Disabilities. In the words of one of the experts who implemented this mission, the Spanish expert Ignacio Velo:

“The use of the platform is, from my point of view, an important support to the work developed by experts. Nowadays, we have to look for technology-based tools. Online missions provide us with the opportunity to maintain direct contact thanks to the different existing apps. The platform is an ideal complement for the missions, both online and the on-site ones in the future. Its use is simple and in a lot of ways intuitive, incorporating contents in pre-established blocks that can be modified for the needs of the course. As a conclusion, and always from my point of view, it is a useful tool that adds to the missions and that undoubtedly has a multiplying effect on the knowledge exchange with the beneficiary institutions.”