Virtualizing training processes were necessary for many organizations seeking to continue with their projects during the pandemic. Being face-to-face was not possible and they had to look for alternatives to continue advancing.
Fundación Bien Humano faced this challenge. Face-to-face activities were restricted when they developed the Con-Sentimiento Continuing Education Certificate, an educational project that seeks, through participatory methodologies, to intervene on the individual, family, and socio-cultural variables that affect the phenomenon of adolescent pregnancy.
The limited proximity of the work team with the digital platforms and the interaction with the participants through screens and technological devices had to be resolved so that the Continuing Education Certificate could continue from virtuality. “First we surveyed the teachers because we wanted to know how they had their technological devices, how they were on the subject of connectivity, what time they had to tackle a process, and from that diagnosis, we identified what we required,” says Alexandra Carmona, from the area of Social Management of Bien Humano.
With the support of MAKAIA, the Foundation evaluated the platforms that would allow all the activities that were carried out in person to be transferred to the digital environment, finding the best alternative in Classroom and using other virtual tools to build their content.
Applying the methodology of learning by doing, Educima, Educaplay, Canva, Kahoot platforms, among others, were explored, which served to adapt the contents that were previously on paper to digital resources and, in this way, upload the Continuing Education Certificate to Classroom and continue developing it with the participants.
For Alexandra, the most relevant of the virtualization process of the Continuing Education Certificate was the learnings they obtained. “To learn that we had another possibility to reach our population. Learning that we could choose all the content that we wanted to share so that people could access it (…) For the teachers, it was two way learning: learning of sexuality education and learning on the use of Classroom, because it was necessary to support and accompany them step by step so that they understood how the platform worked and how to work with it. Almost 30% of the teachers we have are older adults so for them, virtuality was a bit difficult ”.
The migration of the Continuing Education Certificate to digital was successful and for this year, the Foundation plans to replicate this exercise with other short courses for teachers in various towns of Antioquia, taking the contents to Classroom and with the Continuing Education Certificate Multiplying Agents for the prevention of adolescent pregnancy.
“The work was very interesting because not only did they develop what we had as the objective of our Con-sentimiento program, but they also appropriated the Educaplay games and other platforms … It was great, we feel like we fully learned and internalized all of the knowledge provided by MAKAIA because we had the opportunity to offer teachers the knowledge to set up their Classroom with the students ”, Alexandra concludes.