Trainer of LMS Administrators

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization. UNICEF’s office is accessible to a certain extent, and employees are entitled to reasonable accommodations that are needed for ensuring equitable working conditions.

The worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 has exposed the weaknesses in the resilience of the education system in Serbia, and at the same time exposed teachers and students to digital tools, creating a stronger demand for the education system reform in order to strategically and purposefully embed digital technologies into the education practices. The pandemic has deeply disrupted the education system and forced all actors in the system to quickly turn to distance learning and use digital tools, but has also brought forward existing social inequalities and weakness related to the resilience of education system and its capacity to organise quality blended and online learning activities.

UNICEF in Serbia and the MoESTD, with the support from the European Union, are aiming to contribute to bridging the digital divide between the general population of students and those most vulnerable across the country, within the project “Bridging Digital Divide in Serbia for the Most Vulnerable Children”. The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the resilience of the education system to equitably serve all children’s access to learning during times of emergency, with a particular focus on Roma children. The intervention builds on previous achievements in the development of quality inclusive education and encompasses activities for further system strengthening at the national and school level, and builds on the lessons learnt from the past months during the response to the pandemic.

To support distance learning of students during COVID-19 response, a national platform for online learning Moja škola (My School, Learning Management System – LMS, Moodle platform) was established by the Office for Information Technologies and eGovernment and MoESTD. It is envisaged that each school in Serbia will have its own instance of learning management system – teachers will be able to administer the content of these local platforms, import data from the central location (Moja škola) and develop their own specific content. This kind of decentralized approach will enable schools to continue working in case of the future waves of COVID-19 pandemic, as it will guarantee technical independence of LMS in each school and provide easy way to create new content in emergencies. Each school will have its own local LMS administrator, taking care of operational performance of LMS.

Work Assignment Overview:

The purpose of this assignment is to develop an online training course for LMS administration and to implement the training for 1800 LMS school-level administrators. The training programme will need to focus on building competencies for administrating Moodle, as this is the LMS of choice of MoESTD, also used for the My School national learning platform.

Under the general guidance and direction of UNICEF Education Programme, MoESTD and the Institute for Education Quality and Evaluation (IEQE), the consultant shall be responsible to develop an online training course for LMS administration (Moodle platform), to train 1800 school-level LMS administrators and provide them with continual support.

Duration of the assignment: June – December 2021 (up to 46 workdays)

Detailed task description:

Task 1: Develop and implement an online training course on LMS administration (Moodle 3.8 platform) with accompanying training materials (on national My school platform). The training program should entail developing competencies in terms of:

1. creating courses, setting the language of the course, including tracking the completion of activities, enrolling teachers in courses, setting the course start and end, as well as the visibility of the course;
2. enrolment of classes in courses (online classrooms) of specific teachers – work with cohorts, disenrollment of students from the existing course, enrolment of new students in the existing course;
3. creating backup versions of courses and reinstalling them, inserting new modules into existing courses;
4. final test and practical task: work on the national My school platform school Moodle and reporting on what has been done.

The online training will be implemented with 1800 school-level LMS administrators (to be selected by MoESTD). Timeline: up to 14 working days until the end of September 2021.

Task 2: Provide support to school-level LMS administrators until the end of the calendar year 2021, particularly at the beginning of 2021/22 school year when new online classrooms need to be established and new students enrolled. The support will take place within the specialized thematic forums of the developed course for LMS administrators.

Timeline: up to 32 days until mid-December 2021

Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required:

• University degree in Science (including Social sciences), Humanities, Technology, or Mathematics;
• Professional experience in using Moodle platform as a teacher and as an administrator;
• Professional experience in developing and/or implementing training courses on using Moodle platform;
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills;
• Ability to meet tight deadlines through excellent time management and organization skills;
• Good knowledge of Serbian and English languages;
• Work experience with UNICEF and /or other international organizations would be considered as an advantage.

How to apply:

The application must include a financial proposal in RSD as a separate document, providing the following information:

1. Daily rate (all costs included, e.g. usage of mobile phone).

 

Important notes:

Incomplete applications will not be taken into consideration.

Only shortlisted candidates will be notified and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

For every child, you must demonstrate UNICEF’s core values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.