Peter Huppertz
Head, IT and eLearning
Peter Huppertz is Head of the IT and eLearning team at the Basel Institute on Governance. In this role he is responsible for the strategic and operational management of the Basel Institute’s IT unit, which covers eLearning, websites, visual design, IT support and other related products and services.
Peter is also co-lead of a cross-cutting training and learning platform initiative and a member of the Extended Management Team.
Peter plans and develops eLearning courses in cooperation with internal and external experts, manages the development of the Basel LEARN and Basel Open Intelligence tools, and is responsible for the IT-related development of the Basel AML Index. He also oversees, coordinates and manages project-specific IT tools, visual design and internal web/IT projects.
He holds a Master of Arts in Educational Media from the University Duisburg-Essen in Germany and a Diploma in Media Technology from the University of Applied Science, Mittweida, Germany.
Prior to joining the Basel Institute, Peter worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Education in Freiburg. There he conducted training courses on creating and using media in educational scenarios, developed software environments to support learning and worked on a research project involving the use of interactive video for teacher training. During his studies, Peter worked for several IT companies, advertising agencies and movie post-production companies.
Publications
Quick Guide 8: eLearning for asset tracing and financial analysis
Someone once said that the more knowledge is freely shared, the more it grows. Our free eLearning courses on asset tracing, intelligence gathering and financial analysis exemplify this idea.
Peter Huppertz, Team Leader IT and eLearning, explains some of the benefits of online courses for financial investigators, analysts and others who need to acquire and practise these complex skills.
View the quick guide online here.
About this Quick Guide
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. It is part of the Basel Institute on Governance Quick Guide series, ISSN 2673-5229.
News and blog
A perfect blend: how tech powers learning and training at the Basel Institute
At the Basel Institute we connect our IT, eLearning and training activities closely. The result is more effective and efficient capacity building that takes advantage of technological advances while keeping trainees’ learning experience at the centre. How do we do this? In the hope it is of use to other organisations working to build capacity to counter corruption and recover illicit assets, the short blog below outlines our experiences and approach. For more about the benefits of eLearning in general, see my previous quick guide. Covid: Virtual learning proves its worth We introduced our online knowledge and training hub Basel LEARN in early 2020, just as the Covid pandemic was bringing the world to a standstill. Basel LEARN was initially developed to host our self-paced eLearning courses on financial investigations, asset recovery and related topics. Overnight, it also became our primary platform for instructor-led online training. In cooperation with our International Centre for Asset Recovery ICAR Training Team, we created online versions of our on-site training programmes. These allowed us to continue building capacity even when it was not possible to travel or conduct in-person workshops with groups. Moving participatory workshops online ICAR’s training programmes are based on a practical case exercise in which participants work together as investigative teams. Step by step, they investigate financial flows, discover new pieces of evidence and build a corruption and money laundering case against a corrupt public official. The discussions among teams and with the workshop facilitators are a centrepiece of our training methodology, as explained in this quick guide by former Head of Training Phyllis Atkinson. To bring this experience to the digital world, we use password-protected activities which can only be unlocked if the group collects sufficient evidence and asks the facilitator the right questions. We also introduced simulated databases such as land registries, financial intelligence reports and internet searches. These allow the teams to discover evidence on their own when they look for the right keywords. In combination with video conferencing tools, Basel LEARN thus allowed us to translate the active and participatory approach of our on-site training to the virtual world. Blended learning: here to stay Fast forward to 2024 we have more than 40,000 registered users on Basel LEARN. Our newest course, on open-source intelligence investigations, has become the most popular with 6,500 completions since its introduction in 2022. In-person training feels normal again. But even in their on-site workshops, our Training Team continues to use Basel LEARN’s interactive features. Trainees tell us they are a great enhancement to the learning experience and closer to the real-life tasks of investigators. And providing material digitally saves a lot of printing and paper, too. Fuelled by the positive feedback about our eLearning courses, we have introduced more and more blended learning elements. For example, participants are often asked to take self-paced eLearning courses before attending an on-site training. This allows the participants to learn new skills and explore international best practices before applying these “live” in their own contexts during the in-person training. Blended learning thus maximises the benefit they gain from the in-person training and discussions with our Training Team. Synergies and evolutions At the Basel Institute, the synergy between Training and IT is a longstanding tradition. Many of the eLearning courses we offer are based on on-site training modules. Trainers have supported the development of eLearning courses as subject matter experts. In turn, the IT Team has developed tools to help customise and enhance the in-person training programmes. The team has also supported the Basel Institute’s partner agencies in integrating eLearning courses into their own virtual learning websites and professional development curricula. Basel LEARN was a continuation of this tradition, not the start of it. IT evolves fast. Not all technology trends are useful for training purposes and can even distract learners from acquiring skills – like meaningless animations or forcing users to listen to automated read-outs of the content before they can progress. But we continuously explore new technologies that prove themselves to be effective and that support interactive, hands-on and practical training. Already this year, we will start the development of an artificial intelligence-enhanced training programme on interviewing skills for financial investigators. New eLearning courses in 2024 will include an advanced two-part course on data harvesting and analysis and an introduction to investigating crypto assets. Stay tuned for the next steps in our development of more integrated and tech-enhanced ways to learn new skills to fight financial crime. And in the meantime, why not try an eLearning course for yourself?
Peter Huppertz’s quick guide to eLearning for asset tracing and financial analysis
Someone once said that the more knowledge is freely shared, the more it grows. Our free eLearning courses on asset tracing, intelligence gathering and financial analysis exemplify this idea. Here are some of the benefits of online courses for financial investigators, analysts and others who need to acquire and practise these complex skills. The flexibility of eLearning Any manager will tell you how difficult it is to arrange an onsite training course that everyone in the team can attend. People are on holiday, unexpectedly sick or called away for an urgent meeting, working from home, travelling for business… eLearning solves all of these issues. Online courses can be taken at any time and from any place with a computer and an internet connection. Moreover, some staff need to keep working while their colleagues are being trained. For both employers and employees, it is therefore far easier to reserve shorter timeslots split up over a longer period of time. Our eLearning courses are split into sessions that take 15–30 minutes each to complete. Alongside the benefits for scheduling and time management, studies indicate the effectiveness of shorter periods of learning over a longer time. Particularly in the age of digital distractions and short attention spans. Cost is no longer a barrier to learning Onsite courses have high fixed costs, especially if they are high-quality, tailored courses with experienced trainers. Rooms, refreshments and travel have to be booked and paid for. And the more courses you have, the more it costs. With eLearning, it’s the opposite. Once a course has been developed, 10, 100, 1,000 or 1 million people can take it without adding to the cost. This is an essential point for public institutions with limited funds for training and relatively high rates of staff turnover. It is even more crucial in developing and transition countries, where lack of funds is a barrier to building long-term capacity. Open access to knowledge and skills In the case of our eLearning courses, individuals don’t need to be part of an organisation to take the course and benefit from it. They are freely open to all. In fact, we originally designed the courses – some in collaboration with the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units FIUs – with the public sector in mind. Yet we seeing more and more use by individuals and the private sector, including lawyers, bank staff, tax advisors and AML consultants around the world. eLearning courses can fairly easily be translated into different languages, overcoming the language barrier more easily than onsite courses. Our core Operational Analysis course, for example, is available in English, Spanish, French, Russian and Latvian, with more languages on the way. Self-paced learning for different levels Think back to a recent training course you attended, or even to your school days. How often were you bored and frustrated by the slow place of the class? Or overwhelmed because the topic was over your head? Everyone has different levels of experience and learns at different speeds. eLearning courses allow participants to take control over their learning experience. They can take breaks at any time, skip quickly over parts they are already familiar with, and repeat parts that are new or challenging. eLearning also gets over the fact that some people are shy in larger groups and tempted to hide behind others during an onsite training. Streamlining internal coaching and mentoring In many organisations, new staff learn through one-to-one coaching by colleagues or a senior staff member. This takes time – which many senior staff don’t have – as financial investigations are complex procedures that require doing , not just reading and nodding. It also risks leaving important gaps in knowledge. eLearning can streamline this internal mentoring and coaching process. If staff members all take the same eLearning course, they gain the same baseline knowledge and skills. Coaching and mentoring can then focus on the organisation- or country-specific aspects. How to develop an effective eLearning course I can tell you how to develop an ineffective eLearning course: just upload a PDF or video to the internet and add some multiple-choice questions. Our eLearning courses are not like that. We work with subject matter experts from our International Centre for Asset Recovery ICAR and Egmont Group of FIUs to make the course content as relevant as possible to the work of the participants. And while the eLearning courses are based on our successful onsite training programmes, they are transformed by eLearning specialists to make them engaging and easy to use. The focus is on practising skills by doing interactive exercises that closely resemble the task in real life. For example, in our Operational Analysis course, participants conduct a real analysis of a fictional case. They have to plan a strategy to collect the information, collect the information from various sources, then evaluate and collate it. They then have to do the analysis, write a report and disseminate it. It mirrors exactly what financial investigators and analysts need to do in real life. Benjamin Franklin once said: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn”. No doubt he would have approved of the concept behind the eLearning courses. What is “blended learning” and how does it work in practice? The benefits of eLearning are clear, but it is true that eLearning cannot take the place of a high-quality onsite training course with experienced and knowledgeable trainers. Our Head of Training ICAR, Phyllis Atkinson, explains what makes an effective onsite training course in her own quick guide. We have seen positive results from our Advanced Onsite Operational Analysis course, which “blends” modules from the eLearning course with a customised onsite component. LEARN more The Basel Institute’s LEARN platform offers a suite of self-paced eLearning courses and other practical guidelines on asset tracing, intelligence gathering and financial analysis. All of our self-paced courses and guidelines are freely accessible – simply register and start learning. Courses include: Operational analysis and the intelligence cycle. This course was co-developed with the Egmont Group. Financial analysis using Excel How to visualise cases and flows of money using the free software yEd The Source and Application technique for gathering financial information to calculate the potentially illegal income of a suspect A course on Terrorist Financing co-developed with the Egmont Group later in 2020. Practical guidelines include: Guidelines for the efficient recovery of stolen assets, co-developed with the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative of the World Bank/UNODC in the context of the Lausanne Seminars Guide to the role of civil society organisations in asset recovery, co-developed with partners in the context of the Arab Forum on Asset Recovery AFAR The LEARN platform is also used for online delivery of some our instructor-led training programmes, including those offered by our ICAR training team. Download a PDF of this quick guide.
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