Online Field Courses
Video Intro to the Online Courses
Cursos en Línea sobre desarrollo—en español
OL 2.1 From the Ground Up: Designing Community-Centered Projects with Sustainable Solutions. PDF
March 2, 2010 - May 3, 2010: 8 Weeks
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From the Ground Up: You will leave this course with practical field tools and develop a range of skills: needs assessments, community workshops, and discovering evidence-based activities. The course is designed to be used as a vehicle for you to develop a real project, in real time, during this course. |
To learn about course fees and to register please go to the bottom of this page.
From the Ground Up is a course in international development where we will each develop our own project—hopefully a real one—from the ground up. We will connect class assignments to your field work by encouraging you to conduct a participatory needs assessment, share your preliminary project concept with your community, and share a draft version with a donor.
You will learn to incorporate community-identified need into the design of your project and research project activities that have shown evidence of having worked.
In the next course in the module, OL 2.2: Project Architecture, you will transform your project with the real management tools of logframes and fact sheets into a project ready to share with a donor.
You will only need to have functional knowledge of Word, Excel, email, and the Internet. A 4 to 6 hour per week time investment is expected. There are no books to buy—all course materials can be linked to, or downloaded from the course site.
Some of the assignments below suggest doing them in a community. This is not a requirement if it impractical for you, but this is where partnering with a classmate in the field can add depth to your experience.
If you have a question don't hesitate to contact us at: Online.Learning@csd-i.org .
What Students Think About the Online Courses
Course Syllabus
Week 1. Learn to navigate course website, download the week's documents, and form partnerships.
Week 2 & 3. Read the document on participatory needs assessments and conduct an informal assessment with a few community members to uncover a real challenge. List the needs identified and organize them into a clearly described challenge—a development challenge that you are going to solve with your project design. We want this as real as possible.
Week 4. We will clarify your project’s challenge, develop a theory of how you plan to solve it, and research 3 intervention activities that would fulfill the premise of your theory.
Week 5. Research one peer-reviewed paper for each of the three activities and see if scientists have found evidence that they are effective in solving your project’s challenge. Write a one paragraph summary of the papers’ findings.
Week 6.
1. Share your proposed project concept locally with colleagues to gain feedback and constructive criticism.
2. Return to the community with your project concept and get their feedback and hopeful buy-in.
3. Pick one of your evidence-based activities and write a simple one page guide on how a field staff person could implement it.
Week 7. Write a workshop lesson plan for introducing this activity into a community, and then make an illustrated, How-to card to give to community members.
Week 8.
1. Share your project with someone that you would like to sell it to: a donor, your boss, your professor, someone in the development world for feedback.
2. Lay out your challenge, proposed solution, activities and the materials that you will need to launch the project into a simple matrix that I will supply. This will prepare you for the next course: OL 2.2 where you will transform your project into something that can formally be presented for funding.
In Summary
From the Ground Up will give you an insight into contemporary methods of developing community-centered, impact-oriented projects. You will leave the course with practical field tools and develop a range of skills: needs assessments, project design, community workshops, and discovering evidence-based activities. The course is designed to be used as a vehicle for you to develop a real project, in real time, during this course.
Course Fees
The 6-week course is $75.00 for citizens of developing nations living in a developing country, and $125.00 for citizens of developed countries if paid before February 19th. If you hold a passport from a developed country, please don't create the embarassing situation of asking for the $75.00 rate
Choose which price fits your profile and look for the corresponding number (1., 2. 3., etc.) in the dropdown payment menu. If you have a question about this, don't hesitate to contact us at: Online.Learning@csd-i.org .
1. $75.00 for developing country citizens: register by February 19th, 2010
2. $100.00 for late registration after February 19th
3. $125.00 for developed country citizens: register by February 19th, 2010
4. $150.00 for late registration after February 19th
Registration and Payment
To pay by bank transfer or Western Union, please write us for our transfer information.
To pay by debit or credit card, select the correct course cost below, enter your nationality, and click 'Add to Cart.'
When you are ready to pay, click ‘Proceed to Checkout.’ PayPal membership is not required to submit the payment; in the lower left you will see 'Don't have a PayPal account?' Click 'continue' and you will be linked to a form for non-PayPal members.
You will be sent your Login username and password, and instructions for starting the course on Monday, March 2, 2010. We look forward to meeting you.
The online course will be led by Tim Magee, CSD’s Executive Director, who has over 30 years experience in both working with nonprofits and leading training workshops.
If you have a question don't hesitate to contact us at: Online.Learning@csd-i.org .
Registration closes on March 5, 2010. Space is limited.