National Individual Consultancy UPSHIFT Cycle 1 Roll-out coordinator

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BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

Turkey’s adolescents and youth population (aged 10-25 years) totaling 20,592,926 continues to experience many employability skills challenges denying them opportunities for economic inclusion and better transitions to work- rates of those not in education, employment or training (NEET) is at 34.0%, with females more disproportionately affected (34.0%) compare to males (18.3%) and women’s labor force participation among the lowest in the OECD at 56.6%

In line with its new Country Programme Document (2021-2025), UNICEF through its collaboration with Ministry of Youth and Sports (MOYS) and partners will be developing and implementing activities aimed at enhancing the participation of adolescents and young people to address community challenges while at the same time equipping with key transferable skills necessary for their transitions into the world of work and entrepreneurship.

UNICEF and partners will roll out the UPSHIFT initiative-a youth social innovation and social entrepreneurship programme, designed to build skills and opportunities for young people including those who are disadvantaged. The programme combines social innovation workshops, mentorship, incubation and seed funding, to equip young people with the skills and resources they need to identify problems in their own communities and design solutions for them. While young people build skills for life, employment and social entrepreneurship through UPSHIFT; their wider communities benefit from the solutions they create.

UPSHIFT is highlighted within Generation Unlimited (a multi-stakeholder initiative championed by UNICEF aimed at ensuring every young person is in school, learning, training or in employment by 2030) as a solution which should be scaled to address transferable skills, and the World Bank’s Solutions for Youth Employment Impact Portfolio as a promising solution to address youth unemployment. It was also used as the basis for the design of the Generation Unlimited Youth Challenge  -now in its second year.

UPSHIFT will be implemented collaboratively with Ministry of Youth and Sports and will be deployed across an initial 162 youth centres. Approximately 70,000 Adolescents and young people aged 10-25 will be equipped with key skills and enabled to lead their civic engagement in their communities by the end of 2022. As the scale-up efforts of UPSHIFT has been prioritized by UNICEF and partners, thus the digital content development and finalization using open source web-based Learning Management System (LMS) publishing is required and a key component of the roll-out strategy.

PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The overall objective of this consultancy is to task lead activities towards the development of a unique web-based learning management portal that will be used in the delivery of the UPSHIFT learning and conduct of youth innovation challenges. The portal will be based on dynamics of a Learning Management System (LMS) and be developed by a third-party contractor or partnership (ongoing scoping)

All planned UPSHIFT content development and open source publishing will be based on the existing Social Innovation Modular-based Curriculum (Introduction to Social Innovation, Phase 1 and Phase 2 and the bootcamp guide)

The proposed platform is aimed at providing an interactive, living knowledge, discovery and learning space on UPSHIFT and the overall concepts of ‘Design Thinking’ and ‘Social Innovation’. The platform will be equipped with tools, guidance and practices for and from a community of young innovators, mentors, trainers and key adolescent and youth service providers.

The assignment will include liaison with the contractor (or partner) and other partners who will be involved in the development of the existing UPSHIFT resources into SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) standard packages, developing the Content Management System (CMS) and corresponding Learning Management System (LMS)

LMS development will cover the functional modules, admin panel and front-end pages.

The LMS is required to be produced in line with an adaptive and responsive design ensuring cross-browser and mobile compatibility. Design of the user interfaces are expected to be in line with the latest trends in Material Design principles and also user-friendly from the functional aspect, in this regard, consultation and engagement of young people on the UI (UX) will be facilitated once a beta test is ready

The organic (new) LMS to be developed is expected to support asynchronous e-learning using e-learning objects produced in SCORM standards.

METHODOLOGY

This consultancy requires strong technical expertise and understanding of the UPSHIFT concept and its objectives in enhancing the engagement of young people.

The consultant will engage with UNICEF (project team that will include ADAP and IT Units), LMS development contractor and partners including young people during the select youth specific engagement sessions (conceptualisation, testing and launch phases of the project)

All key aspects of the initiative (content analysis and development into SCORM packages, storyboards, course structure and all milestones across the 3 phases) will be decided on participatorily involving MOYS, UNICEF and partners and young people.

The e-learning objects’ formats to be used are HTML animations, HTML interactions, interactive question scenes, quiz / survey scenes, static information scenes, explainer videos and/ or live shot video formats. Gamification types (points, levels, badges etc) will be considered throughout the design to maximise competition and engagement of learners s they undertake the courses and activities.

The consultant will coordinate (convene and lead) collaborative “target tracking sessions” involving the contractor and UPSHIFT partner tasked with ensuring the pedagogy, story boards and flow of the activities is in line with the objectives of the LMS design.

 

NB: This consultancy needs to be in sync with the contract of the LMS developer, as such will be activated asynchronously once the LMS developer is contracted.

PROCESS AND TIMELINE

The UPSHIFT consultant shall work under the guidance of the UNICEF Adolescent Development and Participation (ADAP) Specialist with support from the Information Communication and Technology Unit following the structure of tasks as outlined below:

PHASE 1 DELIVERABLES:

Tasks 1: Preliminary discussions with UNICEF, government counterparts, partners and youth and other relevant stakeholders (to be identified with the support of UNICEF) to ensure a mutual understanding of UPSHIFT and the development of the learning portal.

 Phase 1 Start-up (Months 1-2)

Scoping

1- Participate in Participatory project scope definition (ongoing)

2- Ensure availability of training materials – UPSHIFT materials to both UPSHIFT partner and LMS contractor (already available at UNICEF)

3- Identify and agree (UNICEF, contractor and partners) on the key and essential activities within each module to be developed for the LMS

Phase 1 report: Highlighting elements identified in ‘Start-up phase’

Phase 2 Content design (Months 2-3)

A.  Training Content Analysis (Instructional Design)

1- Collaborative design of the structure of each selected activity (flow)

2- Collaborative design of storyboard templates to be used to deliver the content 

3. Alpha testing of story boards by developers

4. Beta testing of story boards with youth innovators (select MOYS centre youth)

5- Collaborative user interface Beta testing with youth innovators (select MOYS centre youth)

Phase 2 report: Highlighting elements identified in content design and development and all Phase 2 milestones

Phase 3 Content development (Month 4)

B.   Content Development

1- Review the content and approach of each activity and story board developed by contractor

2- Review proposed storyboard elements (drawings, photos, explainer animations, videos etc) for the Activities

Phase 3 report: Highlighting elements identified in content development and all Phase 3 milestones

TIMELINE

It is estimated that the consultant will work up to 81 working days in total between July 2021 and 30 January 2022. (See Table 1 for a tentative work calendar)

The start date will be synchronised with the LMS development contractor start-date, to enable the coordination function between the actors to be undertaken.

 

Table 1. Proposed timeline

#	TASKS	WORKLOAD	TIMELINE
START-UP / PHASE 1 DELIVERABLES:
1	Preliminary discussions with UNICEF, contractor and partners (MoYS, other stakeholders, etc.)	5 days	5-9 July
Payment deliverable	Phase 1 report on completed milestones	2 Days	10-15 July
Phase 1 total days		7 days
PHASE 2 DELIVERABLES:
3	Training content analysis	20 days
4	Session boards development	5 days
5	Collaborative Beta testing (session board template)	5 days
6	Development of all activity session boards	20 days
Payment deliverable	Phase 2 report on completed milestones	5 Days	16-20 August
Phase 2 total days		55 days
PHASE 3 DLEIVERABLES:
6	Co-review developed LMS content	14 days
Payment deliverable	Phase 3 report on completed milestones	5 days	27-30 September
Phase 3 total days		19 Days
Total days		81 days

 

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS AND SPECIALIZATION REQUIRED:

University degree in creative/ visual arts, audio-visual (media) and / or art-based learning

At least five years of professional experience in the areas of tele-communications, (video, photography) and leading e-learning especially for young people

Have proven experience in project management and coordination of actors

Have excellent written and oral communications skills in English and/ or Turkish language

Have contextual knowledge of government structure and functioning, with a particular focus on understanding national youth eco-system in Turkey, planning and implementation processes.

Have proven experience in developing e-learning/ skills development online platforms for young people and delivering remote youth learning an advantage.

LOCATION         

The assignment will take place in Turkey (virtual collaboration mainly) working in close coordination with the UNICEF ADAP, IT teams and key actors in the programme.

SUPERVISOR

Jairus Ligoo, ADAP Specialist, UNICEF Turkey Country Office

REMARKS AND RESERVATIONS

UNICEF reserves the right to terminate the contract and/or withhold all or a portion of payment if the rules and the regulations regarding confidentiality, ethics and procedures of UNICEF and the partners are not followed, the performance is unsatisfactory, or work/deliverables are incomplete, not delivered or fail to meet the deadlines.  

The consultant must respect the confidentiality of the information handled during the assignment. Documents and information provided must be used only for the tasks related to these terms of reference.

The assessment report and other deliverables will remain the copyright of UNICEF and UNICEF is free to adapt or modify them in the future. The consultant may not use the data for his/her own research purposes, nor license the data to be used by others, without the written consent of UNICEF.

COST

Payment schedule: UNICEF will issue a contract in TRY. The payment will be done in instalments upon deliverables as per contractual agreement and will be executed in TRY.

 Candidates are required to specify their daily rates and the total amount as per the number of anticipated working days for each deliverable in the financial proposal and provide the breakdown of the lump sum amount for each deliverable as well as incidentals of each deliverable in TL. It is up to the team how to divide number of working days within the team.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Applicants are expected to submit to UNICEF the following documents:

 

CV

A sample or reference of past related undertaking

Financial Offer

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.