This use case focuses on how to fastly harness digital transformation to gain a competitive advantage within learning and development efforts.

IsraAID is an Israeli humanitarian aid NGO, that aims to be the first in disaster sites and crisis areas by providing humanitarian aid fast.

Due to COVID19, their teams faced limitations to travel worldwide, so they developed a strategy to innovate by delivering their know-how in Mental Health Psycho-Social Support (MHPSS) as an educational tool with a new approach called Education as a Service (EaaS), promoting self-help to communities during uncertain times.

How did blended learning actually become a competitive advantage for IsraAid?

Client problem:

״We are looking for a digital solution for educating community leaders worldwide on humanitarian aid guidelines״.

‘We were always first onsite for disaster relief but due to flight restrictions reality changed for us, we need to adapt”.

End-User problem - Activists, community leaders, and public servants worldwide.

״We need an effective way to train and provide assistance in our community fast״.

Client Challenges:

• Enriching our experience in rich content development for further purposes in a learn-by-doing set of mind.

• User-centered focus - The target audience is often located in remote places with no stable access to the internet, video needs to be served in 'small bites' and compressed in low weight.

• Authentic clear language:

  • Editing text from presentation form to a fluent spoken form in order to increase understanding and empathy.

  • Take in mind that English is a second language for most users, keep a simple yet professional level of English.

  • Subtitled for bad sound scenarios, at first step English-to-English and English-to-Spanish, Plus dubbed into Spanish for LATAM audience.

• Short schedule - Plan for pilot deployment during Jan 2022 requires an 8-week marathon.

Suggested solution:

Development of a blended-learning course, when the starting point of the client is:

✅ Client took care of an instructional plan with a professional consultant and in-house.

✅ Chosen LMS Platform.

Skills Used:

• UX research

• Project Manager

• Video producer

• Content Localization

Team members:

Client - Molly Bernstein Innovation and Communication for Development Manager.

Production Coordinator - Tamar Lewis

Designer and Animator - Yarden Zilberstein

Studio location - “Studio B” (Rushes Tel Aviv)

Multicam technician & operator - Uri Allon

Presenter - Josh Beller

Subtitles: Brian, Johan Restrepo

Dubbing Spanish (Male): Gherald De Fonseca

Dubbing Spanish (Female): MJ Cubero

A roadmap into blended learning

Through our journey, we went through the following pillars:

Organizing and editing content

Re-writing, and scripting PowerPoint presentations into content that can suit video purposes.

Pre-Production

Designed various graphic assets according to branding guidelines, took care of casting of a presenter, and rehearsal.

Production

For this job, we hired a Multicam technician after learning about ATEM mini pro allowing affordable live multi-cam editing (even live-streaming). Also hired a small soundproof studio for video recording days, working with a teleprompter to make shooting days very efficient.

Post Production

Thanks to the Multicam, video editing efforts weren’t needed too much, so the designer took care of all animations so videos will be much more engaging for the course participants.

Accessibility and Localization

We also took care of accessibility and content localization for English and Spanish, which included subtitles and dubbing, uploading all content online.

Additional assets

Finally made additional graphic assets and audio recordings to enhance the course experience even more interactive thanks to production efficiency.

Aftermath of blended learning

This is the first project that I fully managed “digital by design”.

Collaboration of internal team sync and reviewing with the client, execution of all milestones, deadline all done with monday.com including their easy automation for fast updates.
Documenting on notion.so making a nice self-service hub for the client-side onboarding, outsourcing with fiverr.com service for business, and all deliverables are stored on google drive.

Combining all these SaaS solutions in a complex content project made everything quite efficient for me as a lead, keeping multiple processes and team members working while I’m able to keep all on track.

I would say that if neither of the team members nor clients is hands-on on this kind of tool, training should be provided as part of the training process and always should work in mind that tools should be comfortable for those expected to use.

As for the product - blended course. There’s an ongoing pilot to learn from their experience and improve. For now, it’s a job that I’m really proud of.