Online training development in low-income countries

Creating a guide for inclusive online training development through a case study which empowers young Nigerian women to launch their agent banking business

Master thesis (2022)

Authors

T.J. Nieuwendijk Industrial Design Engineering

Contributors

J.C. Diehl Design for Sustainability - IDE (mentor)
S.C. Mooij Responsible Marketing and Consumer Behavior (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Industrial Design Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering
Copyright: © 2022 Thomas Nieuwendijk
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Published Date

18-03-2022

Language

English

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Faculty

Industrial Design Engineering

Abstract

The amount of online training programmes is booming worldwide, especially as the demand has grown during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this growth, the relevance and convenience of online training programmes have been noticed by Bopinc, an innovation agency based in Utrecht which focuses on innovation in low-income countries. Firstly, Bopinc wants to keep up with the rising need for online training in low-income countries by providing online training programmes and the tools so clients can develop it independently by themselves as well. Here the problem is that Bopinc misses the in-house knowledge and tools to provide that. Secondly, Bopinc needs to design an online training programme for a client, Innovectives, in Nigeria. This training programme tackles the lack of vocational skills in agent banking among young Nigerian women.
The thesis uses the design case in Nigeria as design research input for a development guide for online training in low-income countries. From that development guide, a part of the online training programme for the client in Nigeria is designed. The main design approaches to design these deliverables are remote design research and iterative creative problem-solving. Literature research is done from home, succeeded by remote empirical design research with a local partner in Nigeria. This empirical design research consists of collecting observations from practice, formulating design opportunities, creating digital prototyping and testing these by pilot experiments. Concluding from that a selection of promising training methods for the development guide and the online training programme in agent banking is made.
Since the training methods are tested with positive outcomes in the context of Nigeria, which is a low-income country, these are defined as promising. This leads to a basis for the development guide which can be used in future projects by Bopinc’s employees and clients. That means that Bopinc now can design more qualitative online training programmes in less time, with the result that they can help more clients and so impact more low-income consumers’ lives positively, like the design case in Nigeria illustrates.