Start a business
in Democratic Republic of the Congo
A step by step guide to get familiar with entrepreneurship
OVERVIEW
AUDIENCE
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Young unemployed Congolese citizens between 16 to 30 with an interest in creating their own company
ROLES
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Instructional Design
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Scriptwriting
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Elearning development
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Building communication with all the members of the Production Team
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Google Suite
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Professional CMS
TOOLS
The Problem
The course was commissionned by ANADEC, a national public structure striving to help entrepreneurs to kick-start their career in Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The customer was particularly alarmed by the rising unemployment rates among young people (16 to 30). They had begun a campaign to provide support to them and promote entrepreneurship. They needed a short and engaging course which could be completed on a phone at any time.
The Solution
I offered a solution to adress key soft skills to thrive as a business owner.
I wanted to strike a balance between transferable skills that the learner could transpose in any professional setting and some more technical competences pertaining to entrepreneurship.
The format of the course was rooted in the concept of granularity. The targeted audience was young, potentially anxious and often time poor. It seemed essential to create small learning units which would match a short attention span. The project required an extensive use of scriptwriting to make topics like taxes and legislation appealing to all learners.
The Process
I used ADDIE model to ideate the project.
I first sat down with the client and SMEs to conduct the need analysis. It allowed me to define clear learning objectives with Bloom's taxonomy. The interview was conducted in accordance with the Action Mapping approach in order to spot tangible actions to reach those objectives. ​​
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I designed a first text-based storyboard which was proofread and approved by SMEs and I proposed extensive visual mock-ups to the client.
During the Development phase, I scheduled regular meetings with our internal Production team to plan a live action video shooting. I was in charge of coordinating the integration phase on the CMS and assessing the course completion rates in the long run.
Learning objectives
The interview with SMEs led to two levels of learning objectives. Here's an extract of the process.
The learning objectives on the left unfold a chronological route to reaching the final course objective: "Create and manage your company". Each learning objective can be broken down into smaller actionable steps in the right-hand column.
Course 3 - Create and manage your company
1
Discover entrepreneurship and all its forms
1. Sort out the different forms of entrepreneurship
2. Discover the main legal structures
3. Recognize multi-member legal entities
2
Formalize your project
1. Understand why setting up your paperwork is at your best advantage
2. Dive in the administrative procedures
3. Reach out to key stakeholders to help you get settled
3
Gather some funds to start your business
1. Come across inventive ways to find financial ressources
2. Adopt proper debt repayment practices
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Case Study example
Text-based storyboard
The course was intended to be displayed on an app.
I needed a type of assessment which was user-friendly and allowed learners to track their own progress.
I opted for targeted quizzes in varied formats. Each course unit was introduced by an inductive survey to challenge the learner's initial assumptions before bringing up new information. After this first step, I aimed at encouraging the learners to consolidate their knowledge. Yes/no questions, single-choice and multiple-choice quizzes were quite effective to convey theoretical information. I also used hands-on formats to reach out to learners with a stronger self-learning mentality. Tap to select or tap to match quizzes were good options to organize and prioritize new pieces of information.
The final step consisted in creating a convincing real-life situation where the learners could figure out adequate solutions on their own. These case-studies appeared at the end of a course unit.
Takeaways
I felt lucky to have the opportunity to work on this project and perfect my instructional design skills.
This experience has stressed the importance of careful preparation before diving into the Development Phase of a course. I've become even more conscious that adaptive thinking and clear communication are key to satisfy both the clients and learners.
The course reached a fairly high completion rate and ANADEC was quite happy about the final result. I could have gone even further with professional tools such as Articulate Storyline to personalize the course content.
