Settle+In!+-+Lessons+Learnt

Some of the challenges and lessons learnt: =Camtasia= We had a lot of technical difficulties with the editing software we were using (Camtasia), mainly because of problems with our institution's server, and this slowed production considerably and caused quite a lot of frustration. It put us behind schedule in terms of getting the products on-line so that our learners could use and evaluate them within the project time-frame. We learnt that it is important to make sure the institution's IT infrastructure is up to the task and that the IT support personnel are on board with the project. It is vital to get advice from them BEFORE starting about the feasibility of what's intended. We actually learnt this from last year's project and thought we had done the necessary groundwork with IT support - but it clearly wasn't enough!

=Continuous Enrolment= Because of our program's policy of continous enrolment we anticipated the challenge of conducting project-based learning with groups of learners who may change classes or exit the program mid-way through. This challenge was increased by staff changes and movements during the project. We feel that this challenge was managed satisfactorily but it underlined the need to keep the projects small and achievable within a short time-frame - ideally 3-4 weeks. We also learnt that it is important to try to ensure that a core group of personnel is assured for the length of the project BEFORE you start.

=Access to Interpreter-Translators= An important target group for the settlement information resources was very newly-arrived humanitarian entrants and a number of the resources were translated into the languages of the current humanitarian intake communities - Karen Burmese and Bhutanese. Interpreters for these emerging communities are overloaded and it was very difficult to get access to them to make the translations within the project time-frame. There isn't actually much we could have done about this but it would have helped if we could have got the videos and podwalks finished a lot earlier in the project.

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