Partner FAQYour guide to
collaborating with atingi

How can I get started on atingi and which services does the atingi team offer?

The atingi customer success team offers different services at various stages of the partner journey with atingi:

If you are interested in partnering with atingi, please send an email to help@atingi.org. We will then share our atingi screening questionnaire with you. Based on your project’s thematic focus, language, and region, our team will evaluate your answers and select the most suited Account Manager for your project. However, please be aware that due to limited capacities of our colleagues, it might take longer until we can find a meeting slot if you only speak one language (other than English).

Within one week upon receival of the questionnaire your assigned atingi Account Manager will get in touch with you to schedule a first introductory meeting. If for some reason you haven’t heard back from us within two weeks, please write a message to help@atingi.org.

We individually prepare every meeting based on the answers you provided in the questionnaire. The time in the meeting can be used most productively if you have already informed yourself about atingi, for example by watching our short videos about atingi and partnering with atingi. We also invite you to register for free on atingi and already explore the platform. In the 30 to 60 minutes meeting, we will present the most important features of atingi and our services to you and answer any questions regarding course development on atingi.

After the meeting, we provide you with the most important links, resources and additional information. If you are a GIZ project and require additional consultation regarding e-learning content creation, ToR development and recommendations for service providers and/or consultants, we can connect you to our colleagues from the Sectoral Department (FMB) who can offer those services.

Please note that all advise that can be offered by the atingi team itself is on a platform specific, rather ‘technical’ level – this means that we cannot advise partners on any questions regarding the actual content or creation (such as thematic scoping or storyboarding) of the e-learning. However, we are happy to share best practices and experiences from other partners.

If you decide to continue your e-learning journey with atingi after the introductory meeting, we kindly ask you to scope out the concrete plans and goals for your e-learning course in our atingi scoping document. You can fill out the scoping document and send it back to your atingi account manager whenever you know who is going to be responsible for your e-learning project as ‘Category Manager’ on atingi, what your estimated timeline is, what skill level and topics your course content covers, etc. After you have submitted the scoping document, we can give you administrative access to your own category (the space where you can develop your own courses in) on atingi. We additionally offer a technical onboarding of 45 to 60 minutes. In this session, your account manager shows you the most important settings in your course and the quality criteria that need to be implemented in all courses on atingi. If you already have a good knowledge of basic settings, you can also send more specific questions in advance, and we will focus on those instead.

With the category access you (or your service provider/e-learning consultant) can start to work on the course implementation and/or development on atingi. During the development phase only you and the colleagues you have invited to work on the course can access it. In addition, everyone with an editing role on atingi will automatically be enrolled to our Partner Support Centre atingi, where you can find help resources and additional material. If you can’t find the answer to your question(s) in our resources, you can always reach out to your account manager via email.

Please note that we all have normal working times and do not work on Saturday and Sunday and are sometimes absent due to trainings, vacation or illness. If you have an urgent matter that blocks the course development and your account manager is absent, you can reach out to the atingi team via help@atingi.org. In this case, please remember to put your account manager in CC and provide all necessary information that help us to quickly solve the issue, such as course link, screenshots, or affected users in the email.

The last phase before the launch is all about ensuring the quality of your course. We usually schedule a quality assurance (QA) meeting well in advance that should take place at least one week before the envisioned launch date. Once the course is ready from your side, you conduct a final test run and fill out atingi’s quality assurance checklist based on the course.

Please send the completed QA document back to your atingi account manager least 14 days before your envisioned course launch date. Your account manager will then provide additional feedback and make sure that the course is working as expected. The feedback is discussed in the quality assurance meeting after which you have 7 days to make final changes. Whenever the course is quality assured, it can go live on the envisioned launch date.

If for whatever reason, you are unable to meet the planned timeline, just let your account manager know via email so that the meeting and launch can be postponed.

For the actual course launch, your atingi account manager makes sure that for a public course, learners can enrol themselves and all topic and language filters are working correctly. For a non-public course, we offer guidance on how to enrol participants and are available in case of any difficulty with registration, log in or course enrolment. If you have additional marketing measures planned, you can let us know in advance so that we can support you in promoting your course(s).

After the launch, we can share reports with you or – if needed – prepare a handover of your courses to another party together. You can read more about those topics below. Of course, your account manager and the atingi team will still be available in case of any questions. We are also always very happy to receive feedback from partners and learners, that we can use to improve the platform and make atingi more accessible for all users.

How long does it take to launch a course on atingi?

The timeframe for developing an e-learning on atingi depends on various factors:

the (digital) content you have already produced,
the e-learning expertise in your own team,
the capacities you have in your own team or respectively the budget you can spend on an e-learning consultant, and
the format of your e-learning and the library (public / non-public) you want to publish it in on atingi.

As a baseline you should always plan at least one month from first contact and first meeting with us, to deciding to use atingi and getting administrative access to your own course area. Afterwards, you can start with the actual implementation of the e-learning. Here, the time frame can vary between a minimum of 3 and up to 15 months.

Let’s look at different scenarios:

The course launch phase takes less than two weeks. Once the course is ready from your side, you conduct a final test run and fill out atingi’s quality assurance checklist based on the course. At least 14 business days before your envisioned course launch date, you send the completed list to your atingi Account Manager, who then provides additional feedback and makes sure that the course is working as expected. The feedback is discussed in a last quality assurance meeting after which you have 7 days to make final changes. Whenever the course is quality assured, it can go live on the envisioned launch date.

However, we always recommend an additional buffer, which you can leverage to test-run your course for any final tweaks, or just have more time to upload and edit your course. Especially, if you are planning launch events, social media campaigns etc., we recommend that marketing measures are only scheduled to take place a few weeks after the launch in case of any delays during the course implementation.

You should always keep in mind that the phases of conceptualizing your course, tendering service providers for the content development, and then developing, iterating, and piloting the content can take many months. The more interactive and overall high quality your course is intended to be, the longer it takes to develop.

How much does it cost to develop an e-learning course?

We cannot provide general cost estimates as the cost of developing an e-learning course always depends on multiple variables, such as: 1) desired content quality and complexity, 2) content interactivity level, 3) course length, 4) course format, 5) hourly rates of the content development service provider / in-house staff (instructional designers, subject matter experts, graphic designers, videographers, voice artists, etc).

The cost to produce one hour of e-learning “seat time” with a relatively low degree of interactivity can range from approximately 4,000 EUR in Latin America or Africa to 20,000 EUR in Western Europe and North America. For e-learning with a higher degree of interactivity and complexity, the cost for one hour of seat time can go up to 60,000 EUR.

For a detailed cost calculation of a digital learning, GIZ projects can have a look at the E-Learning Standards and Operational Toolkit in the Context of German Development Cooperation of the GIZ Sectoral Department.

Does atingi charge or require “ZAS” for its services?

atingi and its are free of charge for all learners and partners. Therefore, we neither require GIZ projects to pay in “ZAS”, nor charge external organisations or projects for any consultation received by the atingi team.

However, GIZ projects that are in need of a consultation with the Sectoral Department (FMB) are being charged in “ZAS” for those sessions.

How can I make sure that our project’s course meets atingi’s quality assurance criteria?

We want to make sure that every course on atingi meets certain quality standards, which we have developed over time based on our experience and expertise working with learners, partners, and courses. We share those criteria with every partner at the beginning of their journey so that the course(s) can be developed based on the quality standards. If your project intends to use a service provider, we always recommend sharing the form with the provider before the course development starts.

To make it easier for our partners to have a good overview over the standards that have to be fulfilled, we have developed a quality assurance (QA) checklist. This way, your project can go through the list once the course is ready to be launched and confirm that all items have been implemented and our atingi account managers can use the list to double check the course and provide additional feedback.

The QA checklist consists of three main parts: 1) visual requirements, which ensure that our learners have a similarly structured user experience from one course to the next, 2) technical requirements, which ensure that your course activities and reporting function properly, 3) basic didactic requirements, such as gender sensitivity, accessibility, and course navigation.

If you read through the list carefully and use it from the start of your course development, it is quite easy to meet all quality standards. Especially if you hired a professional service provider, they should make sure that your course(s) are of a high quality in general.

What can we monitor and report about our learners on atingi?

Since monitoring and evaluation is a very important part of every GIZ project, atingi offers various way to track and report learner activities and demographics while at the same time complying to data protection regulations.

If you have your own course and administrative permissions, you can track data such as number of participants, activity and course completions, course logs, submitted feedback and performance in assessments.

Some activities on atingi provide additional reporting features. For example, in our webinar tool BigBlueButton, you can track how many people attended the webinar, but also how many messages have been sent in the chat window to gauge engagement.

In addition, we have developed our own dashboard solution that can track the number of learning unit completions and participants per course and category. User data can be broken down into anonymized data about the gender, employment status, level of education, and country of residence of your learners. If you are in need of a report about your e-learning on atingi, just reach out to your atingi account manager.

What are the offline learning options available with atingi?

With atingi, we want to make learning opportunities accessible to a wide range of learners, some of whom don’t have regular (or any) access to the internet. Therefore, we are constantly working on offline learning solutions. At the moment, we offer support in preparing courses for the the atingi in a box solution for offline access and provide our atingi Android app with content download function in the Google Play Store.

The atingi in a box solution enables offline access to a selection of atingi courses in areas with no or low internet connectivity and unstable electricity for up to 15 browser-enabled devices simultaneously. The micro server computer with battery backup by Raspberry Pi is procured by the project that wants to use it, while we check the selected courses for compatibility and create a mirror image to be uploaded onto the device. Please note that due to recent demand surges in many countries the raspberry pi’s can be out of stock or the costs for one device can be as high as EUR 400.

Our atingi Android app allows learners to download modules and complete them offline. Whenever they re-enter an online environment, their course progress will be tracked. An iOS app version is not a priority for implementation at the moment, because Android tends to have 90% and above market share in the regions where our learners reside.

Certifying your learners’ acquired skills

There are two options to certify the skills and competencies which learners have acquired by completing a course on atingi: the atingi PDF certificate or Open Badges.

The atingi certificate is a simple, customizable PDF, which can be added to the course easily and is automatically issued to the learner upon course completion. The template is fully customizable but should at least contain the GIZ and atingi logo as well as fields for the course name, learner name, date, and verification ID. Learners receive their certificate on atingi and per email, where they can view, download, print and verify it.

If you wish to accredit your course certificates and make them more valuable for your learners and their future employers, please coordinate with your local partners and stakeholders to add their logo or signature. The downside of PDF certificates is that they often don’t clearly specify the skills acquired and are relatively easy to fake.

An Open Badge is a digital image that contains a unique link to a website which describes the competencies a learner acquired to earn it. Within an Open Badge, you can describe learning achievements, design the ‘badge’ image, and link it back to the actual proof of mastery. This allows for verification and endorsement from employers or institutions, collection and sharing on social media for learners. However, Badge description layout is currently not as customizable, and learners need to be tech savvy to navigate the world of digital badges.

Does atingi offer financial support to other projects?

atingi cannot offer financial support for GIZ projects or other organisations. Our provision of a 100% free learning management system, technical support, and basic didactic guidance however are in-kind contributions that are estimated to save GIZ projects with a LMS requirement up to EUR 280,000 for a three-year project.

Can we connect another platform to atingi or do an integration between courses?

In general, it depends on the kind of Learning Management System (LMS) as well as the progress of courses and learners on the LMS and the available technical resources on both sides, if a platform integration with atingi or course sharing is possible. If you or any of your partners have an own LMS but atingi contains courses that would be of interest (or vice versa) there are different options:

If the courses that will be shared haven’t started yet (on atingi or the other LMS) and the other LMS is Moodle based, a LTI integration can be done. This way, all reports are shared between the platforms once the courses integrated via LTI start and learners don’t have to register on both platforms.
If the other LMS isn’t Moodle based or the selected courses have started already, the integration can be done via API integration. This process can vary and is more complex to implement.

In general, the shared courses should be free of charge for learners and the to be integrated LMS preferably based on Open Source.

If LTI or API integration are not an option for whatever reason, another solution can be to just duplicate courses and host them on both platforms. This is again easier if the courses have been developed on another Moodle based LMS, however if the content is mainly SCORM files it is easy to integrate them from a different LMS into a “new” course on atingi as well. To do so, their content should be licensed under creative commons. If courses are copied from atingi to another platform, the parties involved should agree on ways to share selected data so that reporting is still possible.

If you or any of your partners already have an existing Learning Management System (LMS) but atingi contains courses that would be of interest, there is a way to link the two platforms via a technical integration. Your selection of desired courses from atingi can be mirrored and displayed in the library of your partner’s system, and learners on your partner’s system can take these atingi courses without having to register anew on atingi.

Vice versa, if your partner has a great course library but wants to reach more users with their content, we can mirror your partner’s courses in the atingi platform.

This is easiest to do if the pre-existing learning management system is Moodle-based, too. Otherwise, the integration might be a bit more complex and time consuming.

What is the difference between atingi and SADA and how can I decide which platform to use?

atingi is a learning management system based on Moodle which is commissioned by BMZ and implemented by GIZ. atingi’s vision is to provide relevant, accessible, inclusive, safe, and secure learning for all. Our platform is available to all learners aged 16 and older and especially meant for learners in partner countries of German development cooperation.

The Smart Africa Alliance is a key partner in the development of atingi and decided to launch a sister platform based on the atingi technology and infrastructure. The sister platform is called SADA which is short for Smart Africa Digital Academy. From a technological point of view, it functions as atingi, but focuses on a different target audience. SADA’s key target audience are policy and decision makers in Africa and course topics therefore are tailored to the needs in governance and policy making.

Depending on your course topic and your target audience, atingi or SADA might be the better fit for you. But there’s also no reason not to use both platforms to increase your reach. Courses can be featured on both platforms. They do function independently, so learners have to have two different user accounts/credentials to access both platforms.

The atingi and SADA teams work closely together, so don’t hesitate to reach out if you are unsure about which platform to use. You can reach the teams via help@atingi.org.

Are all courses on atingi required to be openly licensed?

No – we leave that decision up to you. However, in the spirit of achieving more impact collectively and sharing resources to do so, we always recommend licensing courses as a “Creative Common” (CC-BY), as that allows for them to be recycled and localized by other partners.

What happens with the courses when our project ends?

atingi aims to be a sustainable platform, where e-learning content can be stored and accessed even after a project ends or the stakeholders involved change. Therefore, we offer various options for the long-term storage of your courses:

If you are partnering with another organisation or project that would like to take over responsibility for the courses developed, we can conduct an official handover to them.
If there is no one from your project or partner organisations that can take over your courses and content, you can decide to hand it over to atingi. We maintain the content and either keep the courses in the public library or make their content available for other projects as an Open Educational Resource (OER). Please note that the re-usage of content is only possible if you make the course available under a creative commons license such as CC-BY, CC-BY-SA that qualifies it as an OER.
If your project ends and you do not want to make your content available for others or hand the course(s) over, you can request us to delete the course(s) and any data connected to it.

How can I promote (my) courses on atingi?

You have your own course(s) on atingi that you would like to promote? Or you have a target audience that would benefit from atingi and the existing courses on the platform? We offer marketing services to our partners to support you with course promotion activities.

The atingi marketing and communications team has years of experience in promoting atingi and specific courses to learners in many different partner countries of German Development Cooperation, and we are happy to share this knowledge with you. We are also always open to talk about opportunities for shared communication activities and campaigns.

To give you an idea of how we can support you, here an overview of some of our standard services:

Social Media: We can engage with your own posts and/or publish posts on our channels
atingi Website & platform: We can feature your course on our sites; we can publish a short news article
atingi Ambassador Community: We can promote your course among our ambassadors
Communication Campaigns: We can integrate your course into our campaigns (if suitable); we can plan joint campaigns
Micro-Influencer Campaigns: you can leverage our micro-influencer platform to promote course completions

Please note: there are requirements associated to the different service offerings. If and how you can use those services to increase your reach needs to be discussed on a case-to-case basis. If you are interested in learning more about our marketing services or would like to get some more general advice about how to plan your own communication activities, please feel free to reach out to us at help@atingi.org.