Libya’s Roadmap for Distance Learning

This document was produced in response to a request from the UNICEF Libya team that was submitted to the EdTech Hub Helpdesk in October 2021. The UNICEF Libya team requested that the EdTech Hub Helpdesk team contribute to the co-creation of an agreed upon roadmap for distance learning in Libya.

To achieve this result, the EdTech Hub Helpdesk team, with the support of UNICEF Libya, organized two workshops in November. The overall goal of the two workshops was to set in motion a collaborative process where the Libyan Ministry of Education (MoE), UNICEF, and the EdTech Hub Helpdesk team would work together to co-produce a distance learning roadmap which speaks to Libya’s context and has high levels of buy-in from the relevant departments of the Libyan MoE.

A situation analysis workshop was organized first with the goal of developing a clear understanding of past and ongoing initiatives, as well as outline the bottlenecks related to distance education in Libya by bringing together the Ministry of Education’s relevant departments to present their different engagement with distance education in the past years.

The second workshop’s goal was to establish the ministry’s distance learning priority area for the next 6 months, around which the distance learning roadmap would be developed. The participants in the prioritization workshop were asked to discuss possible priority areas according to the following four criteria:

• Alignment with Libya’s national objectives
• Feasibility and practicality
• Sustainability (the extent to which the priority area is a long-term objective)
• Suitability of distance learning to address the priority area

The priority area which was agreed upon in the workshop was developing a distance learning system that provides support to children in grades one to six in case of school closures. This priority area forms the starting point around which this roadmap builds its analysis and recommendations.

This document has three main purposes:

• To establish the rationale for Libya to focus on distance learning and the development of a distance learning roadmap
• To provide examples that can serve as inspiration for a distance learning strategic vision for Libya, including different types of distance learning interventions which the Libyan MoE could consider undertaking
• To suggest next steps for the Libya MoE (e.g., digital mapping, user research) to implement distance learning initiatives