Using the UNDP's Electronic Platform for Learning
"Boosting performance and staff development. Achieving the programme
priorities [of UNDP] depends on improving management and accountability
and expanding opportunities for
learning and career development."
Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Administrator
As discussed above, the UNDP Learning Framework, published in 1998, represents a milestone in UNDP training and learning policy shift. It seeks to contribute to the overall efforts currently underway in UNDP to move towards a learning organization. It focuses on individual learning in support of staff development and as such seeks to clarify the roles individual staff, managers and the Office of Human Resources/Learning Resource Centre will play to promote individual learning. The framework also outlines several new functions for the OHR/LRC in support of UNDP's transformation into a learning organization.
Following the issue of the Learning Framework, the UNDP Learning Resource Centre developed an Electronic Platform for Learning. The platform currently offers over 500 topics or categories in an "el-Tree". Each topic or category is described and linked to a specific Learning Resources Matrix, which suggests a multiplicity of resource links from books to on-line courses to coaching.
Under the same platform, a communication space - MyLearningPlace - provides a private learning environment in which Learning Managers discuss the issues they face in their office, provide assistance and receive coaching. Learning Managers can also help staff to take advantage of this space by creating or joining topics for discussion, storing and exchanging knowledge, taking on-line courses and accessing the Internet through a search engine. Last but not least, the Electronic Platform for Learning offers also access to the UNDP Learning Resource Centre's Virtual Development Academy.
These tools can be used by the JPOs to find training courses and other learning opportunities.
