Master’s Course in Microcredit Management

Aims

The course strategic objective is that of enhancing the professional skills of those who are responsible for promoting financial intermediaries and their ability to meet the needs of populations that are kept at the margins of the finance system, paying particular attention to developing countries.
The course specific objectives consist in training financial brokers capable of managing projects aimed at enhancing financial brokerage mechanisms for those segments of the population who are outside the banking sector and at promoting production activities and as one of the tools to fight against poverty thanks to financial market opportunities.

The teaching-learning programme is designed to train specialised professionals that will find job and operational opportunities in the field of microfinance brokers in its various institutional form.

Teaching programme

The master course duration is one academic year corresponding to 60 ECTS credits including videolessons, seminars, practice work, conferences, tutoring, research activities, training periods. The master’s course includes 6 modules: the first three ones supply basic tools on how to learn about financial brokerage techniques. The following modules focus on issues related microcredit.

In order to be awarded the master’s course title, that will be delivered by the International Telematic University UNINETTUNO, the student has to prepared a final dissertation on a subject agreed on with the Master’s course Scientific Committee.
 

Module I: Managing financial brokers

Module II: Basics of statistics for empirical research, financial brokerage and economic development

Module III: Financial brokers in developing countriesS

Module IV: Microfinance: theory, typology, management principles, performanc

Module V: International cooperation and microfinance broker

Module VI: Marginal customers and micro finance in developed economies

Teaching method

The teaching method is based on the Internet and in the “Master” section of the portal www.uninettunouniversity.net, the first portal of the world where teaching is delivered in 4 languages: Italian, English, French and Arabic.

The psycho-pedagogic model that is characterised by the shifto:

• From teacher’s central role to the student’s central role;
• From knowledge transfer to knowledge creation;
• From a passive and competitive learning to active and collaborative learning.

Students play an active role in their own learning process and can study whenever and wherever they prefer to. Along their training path, students are supported by an online tutoring system that facilitate their training and web-based communication path and that supplies them with the tools the tools to carry out their study of a specific subject successfully.

Online tutoring is organised in classes of students and is based on a advanced system of agenda that can acknowledge any individual student and therefore customise and get the tracking of all training activities and qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the each individual student’s learning progress.

How to study

The didactic activities on the Internet unfold in the Web-based macro-area, called the Didactic Cyberspace. In the Didactic Cyberspace the training and learning process takes place and access profiles are diversified through customized logins and passwords based on the three different roles played by the actors of the learning process: Professors, Tutors and Students. These three categories of users can access the same information related to each course. In particular the Professors and Tutors can edit or replace training materials and add new ones for the whole course delivery period, whereas the student has at his disposal an area where he can enter data, information and personal notes.
The student can access:

• the Page of the Appointed Teaching Professor;
• the Page of the Tutor.

On these pages there are the Learning Environments where is possible to access:

Didactic Materialswhich represent the course contents: digitized video lessons including bookmarks allowing for hypertextual and multimedia linking to books, selected bibliographical references, texts of the exercises, lists of selected websites. The system of dynamic bookmarks gives the Internet-based videolessons a hypertextual character allowing different levels of navigation: from one lesson to the other one, among subjects of a single lesson, between the materials referring to the same subject.

Distance Tutoring.
he students enrolled in the Master’s course will be assisted in every step of their study path by Telematic Professors-Tutors. The Telematic Professor-Tutor, represents a guide as well as a constant presence along the Learning Process. The distance Tutoring activities may be carried out in two ways:

• in a synchronic manner, by using chats, videochats, video and audio-conferencing, implemented in the Didactic Cyberspace, but also the three-dimensional classroom created on the UTIU Island of knowledge on Second Life.
• in a diachronic manner, through tools such as e-mail and discussion forums on the Internet. The discussion forums, related to the topics of a given teaching subject, enable to enlarge dialogue and trigger a collaborative learning and give the opportunity for autonomous thinking on the issue being discussed and on the study activities carried on.

The virtual classroom in UNINETTUNO Island of Knowledge on Second Life
On UNINETTUNO (International Telematic University) Island of Knowledge we realised a 3D Auditorium devoted to the Master’s course. In this environment the students and professors/tutors’ avatars interact in the three-dimensional world of UNINETTUNO by their voice. Practice work, assessment tests and videoconferences with the protagonists of the European Union attending through their avatars are carried out, as well as real-time practice activities guided by the professors/tutors’ avatars.

In the virtual classroom of Second Life on the UNINETTUNO Island of Knowledge the students and the professors/tutors teach and learn in a collaborative and cooperative way; they build and share knowledge with people belonging to different political, cultural and religious settings, they dialogue, cultural differences are confronted, socialization processes are implemented as well as the creation of new knowledge.