Lifestyle Africa SMS system training and technical assistance
EVENT
The research team developed a variety of materials to assist in training SA and domestic SMS managers for enrolling participants and monitoring the system. This included extensive training manuals that the domestic technology developer helped create, printed FAQ sheets, and step-by-step troubleshooting guides. Web-based training videos were developed and hosted on a private cloud-based service as a primary training tool for SMS managers to watch. Web-based video was selected, as in-person training of SMS managers in SA was not possible from afar in the US; even live-streaming video calls needed to be minimized because they were hampered by significantly different time zone differences and internet stability issues.A chain of technical assistance was implemented so SMS managers would have real-time help if any problems emerged with the system. SMS managers would reach out to a dedicated email or phone number monitored by research team staff. If research staff could not alleviate the problem, they would triage the issue to the technology developer, who provided proactive technical assistance to address questions very quickly (most times within a few hours). In the event a particular program group had to cancel or postpone a session, SMS managers were also in charge of activating the “delayed holding pattern” generic messages for that specific group, and then re-starting session specific messages when normal programming resumed.