By defying distance to connect with each other, practitioners expand the realm of what they are able to know beyond their local boundaries.
Listening to these diverse voices and experiences is critical to inform programming, policy and decision-making and build bridges across sectoral silos and other boundaries, by providing:
A direct, unmediated connection to the priorities and challenges of frontline staff, as well as their perceptions of key obstacles and enablers of progress.
Impactful learning and knowledge building by and for frontline responders and practitioners.
A “reality check” to assess whether current global assumptions match those of frontline workers.
A “test bed” to co-design, develop and pilot tools or resources.
Thousands of ideas are turned into action, results, and impact
In every TGLF programme, practitioners develop action plans and then report to each other as they implement, documenting results, outcomes, and impact to help each other.
Such peer accountability has proven more reliable, in some cases, than conventional monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
For individuals, TGLF enables:
Increased knowledge of low-cost digital tools for learning and networking at scale.
Opportunities to blossom as a leader, no matter who you are or where you are.
Sense of community across system level, sectoral, geographic and institutional boundaries.
Measurable impact in countries:Examples of outcomes tracked in immunization since July 2019
Following up on finding and vaccinating zero dose and defaulting children
Tracking and vaccinating migrant populations
Setting up a Missed Opportunities in Vaccination (MOV) system to ensure eligible children present at outpatient/other PHC “stations” in a facility receive vaccinations
Improving geographic equity by increasing outreach sites in hard- to-reach areas
Increasing frequency of services in higher volume urban facilities
Using community engagement approaches to bring on board leaders to support immunization, who were previously opposed.
In its first years of operation, the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) built digital infrastructure to foster and support several global networks and platforms connecting practitioners.
Communities supported included: • immunization and primary health care professionals, • humanitarian workers advocating gender equality during disasters and other emergency operations, • doctors, other health workers, and communities addressing neglected needs in women’s health, and • health workers tackling neglected tropical diseases.
This digital infrastructure enabled TGLF to rapidly respond to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the first two years of the pandemic, a team of three people developed and implemented…
We empower practitioners to tailor learning experiences that fit their own needs to drive change: Participants do not stop work to learn, every step of the process is embedded in and focused on their daily work.
Typical learning events include:
“Hackathons”: 2 to 4 days fast-paced context and challenge analysis and idea generation
“Peer learning exercises” : 2 to 4 weeks, on and offline facilitated learning among and between practitioners and international experts, including knowledge sharing, situational analysis and action planning.
“Full Learning Cycles”, a nurturing space for learners and leaders over several months to explore and take action together, identifying common challenges, generating and sharing ideas, testing innovative solutions, and implementing action plans.
Our approach based on intrinsic motivation, continuous learning and problem–solving leads to impact. Practical implementation with peer support accelerates progress to get results and document impact.
In the final stage of a comprehensive TGLF learning programme, alumni implement action plans they have developed together.
We compared the implementation progress after six months between those who joined this final stage and a control group that also developed action plans, but did not join.
As developed by our founders, the TGLF learning-to-impact pathway draws on the best available evidence and our own practice in the learning sciences and multiple other disciplines.
TGLF’s diagnostic instruments rapidly identify the most effective strategies to develop people, teams, and networks to drive change and performance.
Working with our network of founders and advisors, our approaches are continually honed and improved to ensure their effectiveness.
For example, TGLF co-founder Karen E. Watkins, working with Victoria Marsick, developed the framework proving the strong correlation between learning culture and organizational performance. This evidence-based framework is central to the Foundation’s learning-to-impact pathway.
Marsick, V.J., Watkins, K.E., 2003. Demonstrating the Value of an Organization’s Learning Culture: The Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire. Advances in Developing Human Resources 5, 132–151. https://doi.org/10.1177/1523422303005002002
What we do and how we do it have both changed rapidly since we launched the Impact Accelerator, the key component Geneva Learning Foundation’s learning-to-action pathway.
We catalyze large scale peer networks of frontline actors facing critical threats to our societies.
The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) unique approach, rooted in decades of research and experience in learning science, uses the spark of intrinsic motivation to inspire individuals to link up and lead change.
TGLF develops and implements learning experiences that reach people in 137 countries. Our programmes scale quickly to connect thousands of learners and leaders working on the frontlines of conflicts, poverty, and other inequalities. We catalyze local expertise into innovation, action, and results.
The insights generated by and with learners are gathered, analyzed, and shared, for the benefit of communities and partners to scale and develop truly ground-tested and evidence-based policies and programmes.
A digital human knowledge and action network of health workers: Challenging established notions of learning in global health
When Prof Rupert Wegerif introduced DEFI in his blog post, he argued that recent technologies will transform the notions and practice of education. The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is demonstrating this concept in the field of global health, specifically immunization, through the ongoing engagement of thousands of health workers in digital peer learning.
As images of ambulance queues across Europe filled TV screens in 2020, another discussion was starting: how would COVID-19 affect countries with weaker health systems but more experience in facing epidemic outbreaks?
In the global immunization community, there were early signs that ongoing efforts to protect children from vaccine preventable diseases – measles, polio, diphtheria – would suffer. On the ground, there were early reports of health workers being afraid to work, being excluded by communities, or having key supplies disrupted. The TGLF quickly realised it had a role to play in ensuring that routine immunization would carry on in the Global South during the pandemic and then to prepare for COVID-19 vaccine introduction.
Peer learning vs hierarchical, transmissive learning models
Since 2016, TGLF had been slowly gaining traction in the world of immunization learning, with its digital peer learning programmes for immunization staff. These programmes reached around 15,000 people in their first four years, before the pandemic, about 70% of whom were from West and Central Africa, and about 50% of whom work at the lowest levels of health systems: health facilities and districts.
The TGLF peer learning programmes were developed as an alternative to hierarchical, transmissive learning models, in which knowledge is developed centrally, translated into guidance by global experts, which is then disseminated through cascade training.
In the hierarchical model, health workers are merely consumers at the periphery of the process. COVID-19 brought the inadequacies of this approach into sharper focus, as health workers dealt with challenges that had not been foreseen or processed through existing guidance.
No technical guidance could address every scenario health workers faced, such as reaching the most marginalised communities or engaging terrified parents at a time when science had few reassuring answers. They needed to be creative and empowered to find their own solutions. Health professionals learned to rely on each other as peers, learning from each other how to negotiate many unknowns, without waiting for the answers provided by formal science.
The TGLF approach quickly demonstrated its usefulness in connecting peers during the pandemic. In 2020, the number of platform users doubled to 30,000 in just six months (compared to four years to gain the first 15,000 users) and has now trebled to 45,000.
Adoption doubled from 15,000 pre-pandemic users to 30,000 users in the first six months of the pandemic. It now stands at 45,000 in 2022.
Addressing Covid-19 impacts through challenge-based learning
The foundation of the TGLF approach was the COVID-19 Peer Hub, an 8-month project based on challenge-based learning, which challenged individuals to give and receive feedback as they collaborated to:
Identify a real challenge that they were expected to address in their everyday work
Carry out situation analysis, and
Develop action plans that are peer-reviewed and improved.
The Peer Hub was inspired by the works of several of academics who helped create the Foundation: Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, and their technological implementation of “New Learning;” George Siemens’ learning theory of connectivism; and Karen E. Watkins and Victoria Marsick’s insights into the significance of incidental and informal learning.
The Peer Hub demonstrated the creation of a “human knowledge and action network” formed through both formal and informal peer learning combined with ongoing informal social learning between participants. The network was built on the principle that participants were themselves experts in their own contexts, and creators, rather than consumers, of knowledge. Front-line health workers suddenly had the legitimacy and ability to share experiences with their peers and experts from around the globe.
In the first ten days, COVID-19 Peer Hub participants shared 1224 ideas and practices through the Ideas Engine, an online innovation management tool.
Results of peer-led, challenge-based learning interventions
More than 6,000 health workers joined the TGLF COVID-19 Peer Hub, where they:
Documented and shared 1,224 practices and ideas to maintain routine immunization through the Ideas Engine;
Developed 700 peer-reviewed action plans, informed by ideas and practices shared through the Ideas Engine;
Learned to support each other in implementing these plans during a four-week “Impact Accelerator Launchpad;”
Assessing the value of peer-led learning in a global vaccine education programme
The next challenge for TGLF was how to document and capture the value of this? Most of what was shared between peers was not new or innovative at a global level – but this did not make it less useful to the individual practitioner who had not encountered it before. How to account for the sense of identity, community and solidarity arising from peer learning that gives health workers the confidence and motivation to try new things? How to make a link between investment in peer learning, and children immunized?
“Participation in the Peer Hub has motivated me to organize my district to implement actions developed. It has also encouraged me to invite many Immunization Officers to learn the experiences from other countries to improve country immunization sessions”
Peer Hub participant
Tracking movement of practices and ideas shared through the Ideas Engine between countries
Because while health workers responded positively to opportunities to connect, learn and lead with one another, TGLF is very much a new entrant in a well-established institutional learning environment for global health. Here are some questions we’ve developed as TGLF challenges established norms and ways of working:
How would you feel as a global expert if you were asked to give up your role as ‘sage on the stage’ to be a ‘guide on the side’ to thousands of health workers?
Can self-reported data from thousands of health workers evaluated by peers be trusted more or less than a peer-reviewed study?
What does ubiquitous digital access mean for training programmes that have previously incentivised learner participation in face-to-face events through payment?
“I can actually broaden my vision and be more imaginative, creative towards new ideas that have come up to improve overall immunization coverage.” – Peer Hub participant
Working with DEFI and other similar institutions, TGLF looks forward to:
Exploring and demonstrating the credibility of what we do through critical independent research and commentary
Developing a bigger picture of how other sectors are adapting to the affordances of digital learning technologies;
Meeting others innovating in digital learning to be inspired and cross fertilise.
We look forward to fruitful dialogues!
Ian Steed, Associate, Hughes Hall Ian works as a consultant in the international humanitarian and development sector, focusing on the policy and practice of ‘localising’ international aid. In addition to his work with TGLF, Ian is involved with financial sustainability in the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement and is founder and board member of the Cambridge Humanitarian Centre (now the Centre for Global Equality). He studied German and Dutch at Jesus College, Cambridge, and has lived and worked in Germany and Switzerland.
Immunization Agenda 2030 or “IA2030” is a global strategy endorsed by the World Health Assembly, aiming to maximize the lifesaving impact of vaccines over the decade from 2021 to 2030.
It sets an ambitious vision for a world where everyone, everywhere, at every age, fully benefits from vaccines for good health and well-being.
The strategy was designed before the COVID-19 pandemic, with the goal of saving 50 million lives through increased vaccine coverage and addresses several strategic priorities, including making immunization services accessible as part of primary care, ensuring everyone is protected by immunization regardless of location or socioeconomic status, and preparing for disease outbreaks.
IA2030 emphasizes country ownership, broad partnerships, and data-driven approaches. It seeks to integrate immunization with other essential health services, ensuring a reliable supply of vaccines and promoting innovation in immunization programs.
Watch the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) inaugural lecture by Anne Lindstrand (WHO) and Robin Nandy (UNICEF)
What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030?
The Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030, on the other hand, is a collaborative, community-driven effort to operationalize the goals of IA2030 at the local and national – and to foster double-loop learning for international partners.
It emerged in response to the Director-General’s call for a “groundswell of support” for immunization and combines a network, platform, and community of action.
The Movement focuses on turning the commitment to IA2030 into locally-led, context-specific actions, encouraging peer exchange, and sharing progress and results to foster a sense of ownership among immunization practitioners and the communities they serve. It has:
has demonstrated a scalable model for facilitating peer exchange among thousands of motivated immunization practitioners.
emphasizes locally-developed solutions, connecting local innovation to global knowledge, and is instrumental in resuscitating progress towards more equitable immunization coverage.
operates as a platform for learning, sharing, and collaboration, aiming to ground action in local realities to reach the unreached and accelerate progress towards the IA2030 goals.
In April 2021, over 5,000 immunization professionals came together during World Immunization Week to listen and learn from challenges faced by immunization colleagues from all over the world. Watch the Special Event to hear practitioners from all over the world share the challenges they face. Learn more…
What is the difference between the Agenda for IA2030 and the Movement for IA2030?
Scope and Nature: IA2030 is a strategic framework with a global vision for immunization over the decade, while the Movement for IA2030 is a dynamic, community-driven effort to implement that vision through local action and global collaboration.
Operational Focus: IA2030 outlines the strategic priorities and goals for immunization efforts by global funders and agencies, whereas the Movement focuses on mobilizing support, facilitating peer learning, and sharing innovative practices to achieve those goals.
Engagement and Collaboration: While IA2030 is a product of global consensus and sets the agenda for immunization, the Movement actively engages immunization professionals, stakeholders, and communities in a bottom-up approach to foster ownership and tailor strategies to local contexts.
What is the role of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF)?
The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) plays a pivotal role in facilitating the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030). A Swiss non-profit organization with the mission to research and develop new ways to learn and lead, TGLF is instrumental in implementing large-scale, collaborative efforts to support the goals of IA2030. Here are the key roles TGLF fulfills within the Movement:
Facilitation and leadership: TGLF leads the facilitation of the Movement for IA2030, providing a platform for immunization professionals to collaborate, share knowledge, and drive action towards the IA2030 goals.
Learning-to-action approach: TGLF contributes to transforming technical assistance (TA) to strengthen immunization programs. This involves challenging traditional power dynamics and empowering immunization professionals to apply local knowledge to solve problems, support peers in doing the same, and contribute to global knowledge.
Peer learning scaffolding and facilitation: TGLF has demonstrated the feasibility of establishing a global peer learning platform for immunization practitioners. This platform enables health professionals to contribute knowledge, share experiences, and learn from each other, thereby fostering a community of practice that spans across borders.
Advocacy and mobilization: TGLF calls on immunization professionals to join the Movement for IA2030, aiming to mobilize a global community to share experiences and work collaboratively towards the IA2030 objectives. This includes engaging over 60,000 immunization professionals from 99 countries.
Governance, code of conduct, and ethical standards: Participants in TGLF’s programs are required to adhere to a strict Code of Conduct that emphasizes integrity, honesty, and the highest ethical, scientific, and intellectual standards. This includes accurate attribution of sources and appropriate collection and use of data. Movement Members are also expected respect and abide by any restrictions, requirements, and regulations of their employer and government.
Research and evaluation: TGLF may facilitate the connections between peers, for example to help them give and receive feedback on their local projects and other knowledge produced by learners. Insights and evidence from local action may also contribute in communication, advocacy, and training efforts. TGLF also invites learners to participate in research and evaluation to further the understanding of effective learning and performance management approaches for frontline health workers.
Excerpted from: Victoria J. Marsick, Rachel Fichter, Karen E. Watkins, 2022. From Work-based Learning to Learning-based Work: Exploring the Changing Relationship between Learning and Work, in: The SAGE Handbook of Learning and Work. SAGE Publications.
Reda Sadki of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), working with Jhilmil Bahl from the World Health Organization (WHO) and funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, developed an extraordinary approach to blending work and learning. The program started as a series of digitally offered courses for immunization personnel working in various countries, connecting in-country central planners, frontline workers, and global actors. The program was designed to address five common problems in training (Sadki, 2018): the inability to scale up to reach large audiences; the difficulty in transferring what is learned; the inability to accommodate different learners’ starting places; the need to teach learners to solve complex problems; and the inability to develop sufficient expertise in a timely way to ensure learning is greater than the rate of change (Revans, 1984).
The approach grew out of work with Scholar, an innovative learning platform, developed at the University of Illinois by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. As the technology implementation of their ‘new learning’ theory, Scholar emphasized seven affordances of learning in a digital age that look at how new technologies change the way knowledge is created and how people connect and socialize (Cope & Kalantzis, 2016). The elements of the Scholar approach include: community-building functions and resources, such as dialogue area surveys and social media; and knowledge creation functions, including a collaborative publishing and critiquing space and tools such as language checkers, annotation functions, and a number of analytics including grade-level writing scores (see Figure 11.3).
Figure 11.3. Scholar pedagogy framework Source: Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis, “Assessment and Pedagogy in the Era of Machine-Mediated Learning,” pp. 350–74 in Education as Social Construction: Contributions to Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by Thalia Dragonas, Kenneth J. Gergen, Sheila McNamee and Eleftheria Tseliou, Chagrin Falls OH: Worldshare Books, 2015.
Learning in this digital milieu is very different, not because it is new (given decades of experience with the internet), but because of the rapid rate of change compared to traditional courses that rely on a fixed understanding of how we learn when we share physical space. Published work is often generated by the learners themselves either from their existing libraries or what they produce within the course – which may also become available to other courses; from internet searches, source documents within their work, etc. Project-based learning is not new either, but the scale, the speed, and the meaning of such connections (i.e., how they are experienced) are. Learning contributions of this kind reduce the need for subject matter experts and are both convincing and situated in real-life contexts. Complex cases demonstrate the problems at the center of the course. Group dialogue and the development of proposals to solve real problems build a shared knowledge base. Participants develop action plans of how they will address the problems that are in their workplace. Finally, peer critiquing and support enable everyone to improve their plans from whatever starting place.
Deliberate efforts are made to create a learning community using tools that are already embedded in daily practice (keeping in mind that these tools are constantly changing) and structured activities like randomized coffee trials (Soto, 2016) through which learners meet outside of class to get to know one another socially (i.e., ‘to be human together’). Learning is scaffolded by a human knowledge network (Watkins & Kim, 2018) with peer review, staff support, expert resources, and a unique Scholar alumni cadre of former students who volunteer as ‘accompanists’ to support new learners in navigating the technology and whatever else creates a barrier for novices. Peer review is based on an expert rubric and facilitated by the Scholar team. This approach is scalable, with more than 800 learners in each cohort and 400 alumni volunteering to serve as accompanists. A small project team manages multiple cohorts at a time, with a duration of six to 17 weeks, depending on the course.
Recently, the Scholar team developed the Impact Accelerator, an extension to the courses that supports the implementation of course projects and encourages participants to develop new initiatives through collaboration. The Accelerator combines weekly webinars and assemblies, regular check-ins on implementation status, and support for developing in-country teams. Participants share best practices and challenging problems, for which peers provide help, responding as a culture without requiring prompting or intervention to do so. Initial findings from an evaluation of the Accelerator indicated faster implementation of action plans and improved collaboration among participants.
Over 20 country groups formed. In a short time, alumni documented that, as a result of what they learned and implemented, immunization coverage in their region improved. Learning involves a unique blend of a traditional format – an e-learning delivery platform – and consistent and deliberate use of actual work challenges and plans to generate improved workplace performance through a combination of peer support, healthy peer competition, and mentoring and coaching.
Sadki’s approach has been called ‘magic’. He disagrees. He says: ‘Learners are transmuted into teachers, leaders, and facilitators. In some countries, learners are self-organizing to take on issues that matter to them, evolving course projects into a potentially transformative agenda.’ He says success comes ‘from modestly intersecting the science of learning with real, lived learning culture and from reframing education as philosophy for change in the Digital Age. That, and a lot of elbow grease’ (Sadki, 2019). Sadki believes that impact is possible – even tangible – when educators connect the dots among the course, the individuals, and their context. His approach combines informal and incidental learning with conscious restructuring of context. The goal of his courses is knowledge creation focused on creating change in the workplace. The approach has gained sufficient momentum that ‘Scholar’ is more a movement than a learning approach. Sadki, a lifelong social entrepreneur and activist, has invented a new approach to learning and changing individuals and organizations. Table 11.2 summarizes features of the initiative map against the framework of learning in terms of separation, coterminous, seamlessly integrated or learning based work.
Cope, B., Kalantzis, M., 2016. Conceptualizing e-Learning. Common Ground Publishing, Chicago.
Revans, R. (1984). The origins and growth of action learning. London, England: Chartwell- Bratt.
Sadki, R. (2018). Peer learning support capacity building with Scholar. Poster presented at the Teach to Reach Conference, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Sadki, R. (2019). Magic. Retrieved from: https://redasadki.me/2019/03/25/magic/
Siemens, G. (2007). Connectivism: Creating a learning ecology in distributed environments. In Hug, T. (Ed.). Didactics of micro- learning. Concepts, discourses and examples (pp. 53–68). Munster, Germany: Waxmann verlag GmbH.
Soto, M. (2016). A simple tool to help M&A integration: Randomized coffee trials. Retrieved from: https://blogs.harvard.edu/ msoto/2016/01/26/a-simple-tool-to-help-ma-integration-randomised-coffee-trials/
Watkins, K. & Kim, K. (2018). Current status and promising directions for research on the learning organization. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 29(1), 15–29. doi:10.1002/hrdq.21293
