Designing impactful online learning for civil society organisations

In an interconnected world, learning opportunities are accessible to civil society organisations (CSOs) worldwide through online webinars, workshops and learning events.

Yet, delivering learning effectively is no easy task, especially when addressing a wide range of audience needs. How can we ensure that research messages become engaging learning experiences? And what does it take to deliver a successful online learning event to a global audience?

In this blog, we outline the key elements of NFER’s approach to delivering its first global learning event for Education Out Loud, a fund from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) that strengthens civil society networks to shape education policy in favour of local and marginalised groups.

NFER is one of Education Out Loud’s four Global Learning Partners for 2024-2026. Our work supports strategic research across the Education Out Loud portfolio, contributing to the generation of knowledge and evidence-based learnings around gender equality and social inclusion (GESI), with special attention to fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

Delivering learning to a global audience online

NFER delivered the global online learning event in June 2025 to share key learnings that support civil society organisations in influencing education policy, with a focus on gender equality and social inclusion. It drew on an NFER research piece that reviewed evidence on advancing GESI through advocacy within Education Out Loud. The scope included global data on education access and outcomes for marginalised learners, alongside selected CSOs’ practices in GESI across low- and middle-income countries.

Interactivity was central to the design and planning of the event to ensure it met the diverse needs of participants from CSOs supported by Education Out Loud. The session received positive feedback from attendees during and after the event. Here’s what contributed to its success:

1. Collective reflection to generate learning

To make the content engaging and relevant, we encouraged attendees to reflect on how the research findings resonate within their own contexts. We did so by designing a learning experience around a core presentation. As part of that, we selected key findings and framed them within broader reflections around intersectionality and GESI data use, which were relevant to the participants. In addition, by blending quantitative and qualitative findings, we captured a broader range of experiences and strengthened the key messages of our research. These strategies helped ground the learnings in what mattered most to the participants.

2. An understanding of the audience

Understanding the context in which participants operate was essential to making their experience engaging. This meant being mindful of linguistic and cultural differences, while carefully managing logistics to accommodate participants’ varying levels of access to and familiarity with digital tools. In doing so, we drew on our extensive experience communicating with education CSOs across the Global South.

We also integrated these considerations into the event planning by preparing pre-event materials and providing live support during the event in several of Education Out Loud’s key working languages: English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. We worked closely with the Education Out Loud’s Secretariat at Oxfam Denmark as well, who acted as a sounding board for refining the event to best suit participants.

3. Maximising accessibility

With attendees connecting from a variety of devices, we chose platforms that worked across smartphones, computers and tablets. We also offered flexible participation options, enabling both speaking and typing, and with or without video, to suit different devices, communication styles and levels of comfort.

Language accessibility was top priority. AI-powered captions offered real-time translation across dozens of languages while our team provided live chat facilitation in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

To facilitate engagement, we used a mix of tools that worked well across device types. This included an embedded Q&A function for participants to share questions and comments in a structured way, and online polls and word clouds for gathering participants’ insights and experience in GESI.

As with any event, some challenges emerged as a few attendees had issues navigating the multiple functions of the platforms. While we had team members ready to help, this would be best addressed by streamlining the number of tools and opting for apps that are more familiar to the participants, making the event even accessible and engaging.

Shaping future learning events

We made a deliberate effort to turn research findings on gender equality and social inclusion in education into engaging learning experiences, which has taught us valuable lessons. NFER is now preparing to deliver two more online learning events for Education Out Loud grantees by 2026, which will offer an opportunity to refine the ideas trialled in the first event.