Improving access, availability and governance through a self-paced learning programme
Dr Rick Stapenhurst and Ms Brooke Prater, in Washington. A new internet-based training system is now available for parliamentary staff.
Dr Stapenhurst and Ms Prater are with the World Bank Institute in Washington,DC.
Introduction After two attempts to develop a par- liamentary staff training course in the late 1990s and early 2000’s, the World Bank Institute’s (WBI) Parliamentary Strengthening Programme requested guidance from its Evaluation Unit and the Quality Enhancement Group (QEG) to revise and help make its course more effective.The resulting team was comprised of pedagogical and subject area experts who exam- ined the programme’s goals, objec- tives and delivery options and sug- gested a framework for web-based training which has subsequently been developed by WBI in collaboration with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), with guidance on programme con-
tent provided by the CPA’s earlier study group on Parliamentary Staff Training.
The course – now largely devel- oped and in the pilot phase – com- prises a series of 13 learning modules aimed to support Parliaments in ful- filling their role in the governance process. It responds to the unique and evolving needs of parliamentary staff who seek to advance democracy by enhancing good governance, strengthening budget oversight, reducing poverty, improving public participation in the policy process, and reducing corruption, among other goals. As it is publicly available on the
internet, the programme aims to reach a greater share of the world parliamentary and development com- munities than those who participate in the more traditional face-to-face and moderated web courses alone. This paper aims to explain the
background, rationale and future of the parliamentary strengthening learning programme and to evaluate its effectiveness by considering early versions of the course, the evolution towards the current learning pro- gramme, the pedagogy of computer- based learning, current course con- tent, recent and planned course deliv- eries and the proposed mechanisms for long term programme assessment.