Reviewing important pillars and mechanisms of our work:
Sandbox / towards a CoP and opening up
Innovation fund
ILRI, IIED, IDRC work?
Other partners and actors to influence and work with / what roles to target etc.? E.g. Prolinnova, Jolisaa and other systems actors.
Advisory group?
Guidelines and case studies necessary
Funding
How to move forward: priority activities, milestones, events...
Updates on sandbox (wiki, Yammer, other networks) and keeping others in the loop
Review / read data management guidelines from CCAFS
Wednesday 26 June:
Present where we're at
Working on various bits (50 tips, definitions, case studies etc.)
Strategy chat with Peter: Reviewing work from yesterday with Liz
Updates on sandbox and keeping others in the loop
(optional) additional hands-on writing
Thursday 27 June:
09.00 Discussing ideas of ACIAR/CSIRO social learning with Mario Herrero
Implementing changes agreed / working on various bits
Presenting our work back
Reflecting back on our mechanisms (if not addressed before)
Summary of the plan-and-writeshop
Three days to take stock of the past year's work and to plan the next phase of CCSL work. Here are the highlights:
Vision for the next phase
Based on all the work we've done and resources collected, we want to take CCSL to direct action/implementation. Our vision is that social learning contributes to smarter, more effective institutions (process) and helps them achieve more sustainable, smarter development outcomes (results). We want to test that vision and document as much evidence as we can on the process and results of social learning. In order to do that we will particularly work through three main initiatives:
CCAFS ongoing programmes (where we will particularly look at development outcomes) - and will among others encourage endogenous development of innovative capacity through social learning, building upon, e.g. PROLINNOVA's experience, but at a slightly broader scale;
The upcoming IDRC/DFID-led CARIAA programme (which will design a social learning approach from the get-go and consider particularly the process side of things);
The CSIRO-ACIAR programme which will look at both aspects of social learning
In addition, there might be smaller activities that take place to collect additional evidence and aim to achieve more effective results (e.g. ILRI work on Nile Basin Development Challenge - part of the Water, Lands and Ecosystems CRP)
In 2 years' time, we think that we will have collected enough evidence to understand much better where social learning works or not and to understand all aspects of the process that make or break social learning approaches.
A key instrument in our vision, building upon our legacy of work so far, is a set of practical guidelines that will help anyone working with us to use the best available knowledge, information and tools to implement and document social learning initiatives. Even those that do not work with us will still be able to use these guidelines for their own benefit (but without guidance and joint work in this case).
Next steps:
Finalise the vision with the process and results, the initiatives included, how the guidelines fit in this (BH / PB??)
Develop and implement programme of activities for CCAFS, CARIAA, ACIAR/CSIRO (PT / WF / PK / BH)
Implement programme of activities for ILRI work (ELB)
The guidelines
Following the example of the data management guidelines that CCAFS developed, we will develop practical guidelines that help our staff and partners (or whoever) find guidance to implement and document a social learning initiative. These guidelines cover the following steps:
Baseline / self assessment (to understand if you need social learning, if so what type and if you already do it, how well you do it);
Social learning guidance: to have more information and practical guidance on how social learning approaches that seem useful for your initiative should be implemented;
Process facilitation guidance: to make sure you collect feedback and properly follow a social learning approach (and how to facilitate it properly);
Documentation and collection of evidence (to ensure that you are indeed documenting your initiative and how helpful it is);
Analysis and action (to decide what to do with the evidence gathered, both for your initiative as for the CCSL group and its quest to test our overall hypothesis);
Communication and dissemination of these results (to ensure these lessons learned reach whoever is supposed to use them).
In the process, you can either work with us on this around the deal that we provide expertise and support to help you run your social learning initiative against the promise to document it and to participate to a learning event to bring your evidence and consolidate it with more people involved in other social learning initiatives.
A central mechanism to coordinate the match-making process and transactions with us and all is the CCSL sandbox. Next steps:
Develop web page for the guidelines and add links to all existing relevant resources (ELB)
Fill guidelines with existing information (ELB / CJ / PC?)
The CCSL sandbox
The sandbox has been running for 9 months and is in the process of being reviewed, on the basis of a survey. It is 78 members strong (as of 27 June 2013) and has been growing organically. We want to keep it this way rather than open it up broadly and lose our focus and dynamics. Events are key threads to bring people around this sandbox and to structure their interactions. We think facilitation could entail more attending to participants' active presence and questions, and that we could try and find out more what people expect from the sandbox, what benefits some of them have gotten out of co-creation on the sandbox etc.
As in 2012, the sandbox has (limited) funding to kick-start or support ongoing activities financially, but it will be complemented by the innovation fund, which is complemented by an incubator idea.
Run the survey among all sandbox users including feedback from our group (CJ / PC)
Add or invite potentially interesting members that are not yet part of the sandbox to it (All)
The innovation fund 2013-2014 and the incubator idea
In 2012 we talked about setting up an innovation fund but it didn't happen. This year we'll try to get it going via the sandbox, identifying who might be interested in developing that idea further.
We also discussed an idea to support the work of local innovators by bringing their work to the next level, where they pull hands together to develop their innovative capacity through social learning. We'd like to set up small events in different countries to bring together these innovators and get them (in an Open Space type approach) to work together to find ideas to develop their capacity and resources to innovate, which we would then support financially. These incubator workshops and pilots would then be supported by us for ongoing documentation of the social learning process and would add much to the evidence base, from the perspective of endogenous (thus more sustainable) initiatives.
Next steps:
Identify potentially interested sandbox members to develop ToR and process roadmap for the innovation fund (PK)
Develop short concept note on innovation incubator idea (PB / ELB)
Contact potentially interesting innovators and incubators (ELB / BH)
Run incubator learning workshops (ELB / BH)
Set up contracts and work process for incubator projects (ELB / BH)
CCSL advisory committee
Another track that was not pursued through. We will revive this as all potential advisors approached last year were interested in this. These advisors could also join the CCSL sandbox and could comprise someone from IDRC or someone that is not there yet but should be (e.g. Georgina Cundill). Next steps:
We have case studies about social learning scattered across various publications and places. We'd like to keep track of these in one neat collection, and also keep track of a very few excellent cases that can really act as selling arguments. We will make sure we organise and characterise these case studies, add them to the CCSL guidelines and keep track of live cases as we document our new body of work along the way (these new, live, case studies are even more important to us). Next steps:
Contact all CCSL authors to collect their cases (BH)
Sub-contract, via the sandbox, someone to collect and characterise these case studies and add them on the sandbox (ELB)
Background ideas
Finalising Phase 1 outputs (2/3 of the writeshop)
CCSL strategy document and guidelines
CCSL strategy finalised – plans for sharing, blog, website etc. - Sent around to CCAFS team. Nothing substantive. --> PT + MvE to finalise and write - PK on blog post --> Strategy done. Blog post to come up.
Agree on guidelines – current list of potential components (different products, different audiences?) --> All to read data management guidelines,BH to identify backbone.
Definition of SL (and boundaries) within CCSL - ELB to lead with MvE to put it on the wiki
Infographic on SL families and glossary - (2ndary priority if time)
Glossary of SL - develop as we go along - ELB to set up wiki page and all to update it as we go along
50 tips to do CCSL better – Do's and Don'ts; tools; mainstreaming; etc. - BH to work along on the basis of paper, as a table format? --> BH to add some of this (principles) in the guidelines
Why CCSL – evidence of added value to achieve development outcomes - PB & PK to work on original narrative --> worked on by BH as part of the dual-track --> create a new wiki entry on the wiki.
When to do SL and when not to - covered by guidelines
Series of interesting cases to develop - PB which cases were gold standard cases? --> BH to contact partners on this and perhaps we'll subcontract someone to do it from the Sandbox.
M&E and documentation of SL: evaluation criteria / questions to assess SL, templates for documenting, etc. --> BH & ELB & MvE to work on a checklist of questions?
Effective process facilitation --> Covered in KM4Dev journal and through annotated bibliography...
Stakeholder engagement and partnerships - this is the whole body of work + will be addressed in partnerships discussion
Institutional arrangements - same as above
Processes for upscaling – what, how, tools - covered through next steps... --> addressed partly under incubator idea / work on next steps.
ICTs in CCSL - not a priority
Other CCSL issues to explore further (e.g. From initial 5 change areas) - PB to cover and addressed in strategy + in working paper BH/LC --> we have to make sure some of this stuff comes back in the framework for action. We don't have to come back to action points but we should include these areas in our new framework for action. MvE to look at action points.
Improve Sandbox (wiki and yammer) to...
Look back at original sandbox objectives and comparing with existing work - Survey being prepared by Carl etc. and results expected to be processed within 6 weeks from now --> develop inputs for survey (all)
Offer entry points to different audiences
Structure and populate resources pages
Update projects pages
Improved Yammer
Monitoring usage for reporting
ELB to add CG Space collection link to wiki -
CCSL page on the CCAFS website – what is where, design page, plan for updates, etc. --> ELB + PB to contact Vanessa on this + part of strategy discussion. PT to ask Laura to get this started.
Get clear idea of completion dates for Phase 1 Working Papers (Julian, Alison, Blane, etc.) and CCSL Learning Briefs (CCSL brief, strategy, narrative, gender, maize) and finalise what can be finalised by this group – also plan for blogs to announce products on CCAFS website --> to start after lunch
Jorge's work
Lessons from Shamba Shape Up, Prolinnova, etc.
Meta-synthesis CCAFS Report (or journal article) of CCSL activities, lessons, working papers, etc. ??
Planning Phase 2 (1/3 of the writeshop)
Vision and key strategic activities for CCSL moving forward (and how this fits into CCAFS Phase 2)
Sandbox – towards a CoP
Guidelines and materials for different target groups
Innovation fund
Comparative case studies at CCAFS sites
Revisiting advisory group plan?
Etc.
Key partners and how to engage moving forward – aligning agendas
CCAFS
ILRI
IDRC
IIED
IDS
Others – incentivising others to take part and share findings
Mobilising funding and human resources
GIZ (e.g. Small grants upcoming deadline)
CIM (TORs to negotiate)
CSIRO (joint appointments?)
Etc
Plan of action moving forward, including milestones, events, etc.
Other bits of work
Communicating results of the writeshop and engaging Sandbox for concrete activities
Full notes
Visioning discussion
(Phil Thornton, Patti Kristjanson, Peter Ballantyne, Blane Harvey, Marissa van Epp, Ewen Le Borgne) 26/06
Looking longer term we need to have a body of evidence, who needs to be involved, top-down vs. bottom-up etc. How does it operate within particular institutional settings e.g. IDRC, CARE, CGIAR... Looking at issues of governance, or learning as an operationalised set of activities. How deep are we willing to go? There is a spectrum of options e.g. facilitating others' learning processes (to adapt e.g. cropping methods), opening up your institutional set up to scrutiny.
How does this relate back to the 3 loops? Are we transforming our relationships?
Finding examples of where institutions have changed themselves as a result of being part of such processes would be extremely useful.
Guidelines should be diagnostic questions to help establish where it's useful to do some kind of social learning. This also relates to the 3 learning loops in the sense that the diagnostic questions. We have to develop a series of indicators for various time horizons e.g. 3, 6, 9 years etc. One initiative that could be useful to look at is the participatory scenario development one e.g.: to what extent did we have increased adoption of forecast for decision-making, increased value of involvement in the Kenyan Meteorological Department [KMD] (per $ invested, KMD reaches x more people in that region), changes of practices based on insights gathered and attraction of additional investments. This initiative started in 2009.
We could follow a dual approach with a large programme that includes that design and thinking etc. from the start and in the meantime build business cases that we can look at as pretty good examples of what good practices look like.
Who's engaged in this at different levels, from donors to end-users? What are potential changes at their level, as a result of taking up such approaches?
Communication has dropped out of our discourse - but our assumption is that it's related and connected to social learning. Perhaps it's an easier sell?
Farmer field schools are not always very strong on social learning etc. Perhaps we could develop a kind of spider diagram with the different characteristics (e.g. learning focus, transformational, involving multiple knowledges, conscious about collective efforts, certainty access, type of goals [predetermined, closed etc.], type of intervention from linear to complex, resource access [hard results e.g. concrete products vs. soft results] etc.) that assess the relative depth of social learning of any initiative.
This relates to 'from knowledge to action'. CCAFS has its overarching theory of change (ToC) with site-specific ToC. CCAFS is working from top down and bottom us and we might have a problem in the middle. CCAFS sees SL as an outcome pathway and possibly, on the side, a means to work. CARIAA on the other hand, is about working with funding institutions to see how they are learning together and transforming themselves. We can look at the differences that this kind of approach brings about.
Essentially, social learning is aiming at stimulating smarter institutions to deliver smarter results. Resilience and adaptive management provide interesting avenues for the indicators we could develop. Social learning widens our pathways to outcomes, it deepens our ability to achieve them and eventually helps us achieve these faster. CCSL for wider, deeper, faster system level / long term outcomes. Pacing might be as important as timescales.
How do we keep our boundaries to make sure we have a narrower focus and to avoid getting too diffuse.
Our vision
A set of guidelines developed with tools, approaches, principles etc. to help people take decisions about when/where to do this, with different options for entry points either questions (I want to have a more effective learning event, research project etc.), either around the functional profile (e.g. farmer, NGO, research institute), either around the type of outcomes that you're interested, either the scale at which you work etc.;
Possibly part of these guidelines are a quadrant typology of social learning initiatives...
Another part could be a spider diagramme of sorts about the characteristics of a social learning initiative, which helps assess where/how to boost social learning of any given initiative
We have tested two different hypotheses that give us different kinds of evidence about social learning to a) design better research and achieve better outcomes or b) become more of a learning set of institutions that evolves more effectively over time.
We have some cost-benefit analysis data (quantitative data) to show how social learning helps e.g. cutting costs on crop modeling by bringing people together;
We have a broader evidence base that looks at efficiency, effectiveness, side benefits (e.g. more trust, better partnerships, more sharing, better learning etc.)
People have a better sense of when/where this type of approaches is helpful, they believe in its potential and know its limitations;
And they are capable (they have the capacities, institutions have the capabilities) of planning, implementing, assessing/monitoring social learning approaches or initiatives;
Social learning sharpens institutions and their relations/links and it yields better development outcomes (better research);
How to achieve that vision?
We follow 2 hypotheses for our work:
SL is a great way to achieve outcomes (documenting the CCAFS work)
SL is a great way to conduct a program / to be an institution (documenting the CARIAA work)
Have a learning event that would bring together staff from CCAFS and CARIAA to share their lessons about their initiatives and have evidence to share.
We develop a ToC that brings together the 2 different objectives (institutional outcomes about the roles e.g. CARIAA track and development outcomes about the results e.g. the CCAFS track).
Sandbox:
77 people.
It takes a while for people to get the hang of the sandbox and the difference between Yammer and the wiki.
Are we at the stage where the sandbox ought to become a Community of Practice (CoP)? There's a group of insiders who showed up at the various CCSL events. Outsiders who join may want to share but they may not have a very clear sense of agenda etc. They may not motivated to contribute with so many people involved.
Having a shared sense of vision and ownership would help ease in participation. Perhaps the Yammer space could articulate that more clearly. The CoP is looking at a common set of practices and the community of interest is made of a wider group of people that like to think about social learning.
Do we want to limit it to people who are in the programme or not? Peter B thinks we should keep this with a (somewhat) limited but dedicated group rather than anyone potentially interested but not active.
The guidelines could be a backbone to structure conversations. Events could also be used as key moments to ensure that the circle of Yammer talkers/users expands and grows (in depth)...
At the level of practices etc. we have to direct the dialogue through Yammer.
What we should do:
We should welcome members personally. We would like to have more conversations than postings. Encourage people to leave comments on the wiki also - On the wiki we could make it clearer that each page is commentable. Perhaps we should get on with other people that could really benefit e.g. CCAFS gender folks on this. We collectively seem to agree that we should go for the steady growth rather than opening up. When CARIAA starts we could bring on more SL-focused people. We should send personal emails to people from the CCSL sandbox to invite them to share and react etc. We should ensure that the people who are in the sandbox are interested in the 2 main questions/assumptions from our new ToC.
Possible questions to add to the sandbox survey:
What do you understand the Yammer site is meant for? (e.g. for CCAFS to share their activities, to discuss our common agenda etc.)?
How did you benefit from co-creation on the sandbox (e.g. asking that to Andy etc.)?
Are there people who aren't on it and should be in it (and would be interested in contributing to conversations)?
Innovation fund
Prolinnova has its country innovation fund processes but these are very specific. This is a truly bottom-up approach, which is the beauty of it. By having them present on the CCAFS sites it would be easier to track the various initiatives.
If CCAFS is interested in piloting social learning at local level, should it all go through Prolinnova? Or through a broader call?
In 2014, CCAFS could support this further, and perhaps retain some budget to have someone (help) run this fund. The current Prolinnova fund could be one strand of a broader Fund. Action: Patti to share this on the sandbox and to find out if someone is interested in thinking about it and developing ToR + process, in line with guidelines and tools - and of course shared and co-created on the sandbox.
If CCAFS gets extra funding they could further support this.
Advisory group
We contacted them all last year, everyone (Axel Weiser, Abigail Mulhall, Manuel Flury, Petra Tschakert, Valerie Brown + ?) said yes but we never sent a letter to them. There were simple ToR developed for these members.
We have a nice advisory group on the sandbox. But there are other people (e.g. Georgina Cundill) who could also just join the sandbox. Action points:
PB to dig out ToR
Blane finds someone from IDRC to join
PB sends an update to everyone
PK / PT send a joint email to follow this up and to ask them to join the
Case studies from the past
E.g. cases from Julian's paper, from first round case studies, the 5 from the new working paper by Blane and Liz etc.
This wouldn't be just a case of sorting out existing cases but also assessing them - based on the list of factors/characteristics that help assess the depth of social learning.
We could ask someone from the sandbox to synthesise these and assess them with some sort of rating etc.
Action points:
Blane to ask all authors to share their best case and to share that enquiry on the sandbox
If that doesn't work Ewen / sandbox facilitators to check if anyone is interested in synthesising these.
Tomorrow we'll work on guidelines and materials for different target groups
Monitoring and assessing social learning
What we suggest: following a cycle.
These are the things we need and what we already have at our disposal.
Stage
What We Need
What We Have
Next Steps
1) Baseline / social learning assessment
'Where are we at?'
Questionnaire/checklist
Spider diagram self-assessment
Decision-support tree
Introductory materials
Whiteboard video Booklet Narrative 2.0
2) Social learning guidance and resources
'What can we do?'
Social learning toolkit (online, with individual pages for each approach)
Julian Gonsalves’s database Working papers and annex with 100+ approaches
Library of resources
Wiki (build on this)
Case studies (selected and categorized)
Julian Gonsalve’s, Alison Shaw’s, 2 working papers, cases in “library” resources
Principles
? RoI/Cost-benefit analysis
3) Process facilitation guidance
'How to do it right with all?'
Existing CoPs and support networks
Wiki resources (to build on)
Guidance on engagement tools and approaches
Knowledge sharing toolkit (develop a CCSL focused subset toolkit from it) IDS Participatory toolkit
Facilitation and engagement helpdesk
CCSL Yammer Facilitators (Pete Cranston & Carl Jackson)
4) Data gathering and documentation
'How do we gather evidence'
Monitoring and documentation tools and approaches (selected for CCSL)
RAPID publications IDRC Evaluation Unit Process documentation publication and examples
Forms (tailored for CCSL)
Forms from above
Protocols (tailored for CCSL)
Protocols from above
Examples and case studies of M&E documentation
IRC and IDRC examples
5) Analysis and action 'What do we do with this evidence?'
Learning workshop
Monitoring officer on evidence
Web-based learning/teaching materials
6) Communication of results 'Who should know what about this work?'
A big idea: Incubate and document collective local innovation and learning
We notice that much local innovation is individual. We also see much local experimentation with different participatory, social learning, and communication approaches, tools etc. We may want to tap into this and help it scale up and out.
Opportunity:
Bring together some of these people and initiatives in an 'incubation' environment to catalyze novel social-learning enabled collaborations that can scale ideas and innovations related to CC, A and FS...
Aims:
Identify existing innovators and people doing innovative things, link and connect innovators, incubate smaller-scale innovative collaborations/cooperatives, micro-fund and catalyze promising collaborations using social learning approaches, document the social learning for the wider good (using the CCSL framework and tools)... Spin-of for CCSL is to widen our network of local innovators/collaborators and deepen involvement of some existing partners.
How?
Convene small well-focused, well-facilitated face to face events in geographic hot spots (eg, ethiopia, kenya, tanzania, uganda,bangladesh, india). Convenors from any of the CCSL partners, similar approach for each.
- 1.5 days (?)
- local partners of, eg of prolinnova
- partners of CCAFS regional programs
- buzz, incubate, broker, pitch, learn
- facilitate match-making and encourage participants to propose experiments/pilots to take existing ideas one step further/too scale ...
- generate micro-project collaboration ideas / pilots
- fund some of these (<$15K?)
- require social learning and documentation
These small pilots would follow a social learning approach that would target their own institutional learning process and/or development outcomes they hope to reach. The objective would be to have these innovators develop their innovative capacity and we have to make sure that they build something different to what they were doing so far. We might want to bring in professional private sector incubators to facilitate that incubation process...
Timeframe:
several processes held and 'completed' in 2013
Partnership and outcome mapping
For CCAFS, the key partners that should be on board with us on this stuff are CARE and PROLINNOVA. For CARIAA, the key partners would be... For the CSIRO-ACIAR track, the key partners would be... We can't really hold this discussion without regional reps from e.g. CCAFS programmes involved...
Other actors and networks that could contribute to CCSL are: Farm Radio (partners and engage with them to help shape their work), IIED's partners in e.g. CBA projects, ILRI teams and projects e.g. NBDC/Africa RISING/IBLI.
Guidelines for CCSL work, funding and getting this forward.
The work on M&E and documentation of CCSL work will shape up the guidelines - we need to develop an online menu for it with links to specific resources and sub-pages under it. We need to get going with this online menu.
In terms of funding, CCAFS, CSIRO etc. have enough funding to take some activities forward. We want to have a framework of action (the dual track) that is encompassing enough to allow other activities to come along, but we should focus on this dual track and that picture rather than anything. Our focus remains climate change, agriculture and food security. We have to ensure that we do not get thrown in all directions because we miss boundaries. The danger is that anyone interested in social learning comes to us and pulls it in another direction.
Action planning
Turn the dual approach (the work) into a concept note that works as a framework, based on the picture we have;
Write pages on the guidelines to explain what we want to do with it;
Set up guidelines online with all resources etc. developed;
CCSL Plan-and-Writeshop Agenda and Notes
Table of Contents
Objectives
Agenda
Tuesday 25 June:
Wednesday 26 June:
Thursday 27 June:
Summary of the plan-and-writeshop
Three days to take stock of the past year's work and to plan the next phase of CCSL work. Here are the highlights:Vision for the next phase
Based on all the work we've done and resources collected, we want to take CCSL to direct action/implementation. Our vision is that social learning contributes to smarter, more effective institutions (process) and helps them achieve more sustainable, smarter development outcomes (results). We want to test that vision and document as much evidence as we can on the process and results of social learning. In order to do that we will particularly work through three main initiatives:- CCAFS ongoing programmes (where we will particularly look at development outcomes) - and will among others encourage endogenous development of innovative capacity through social learning, building upon, e.g. PROLINNOVA's experience, but at a slightly broader scale;
- The upcoming IDRC/DFID-led CARIAA programme (which will design a social learning approach from the get-go and consider particularly the process side of things);
- The CSIRO-ACIAR programme which will look at both aspects of social learning
In addition, there might be smaller activities that take place to collect additional evidence and aim to achieve more effective results (e.g. ILRI work on Nile Basin Development Challenge - part of the Water, Lands and Ecosystems CRP)In 2 years' time, we think that we will have collected enough evidence to understand much better where social learning works or not and to understand all aspects of the process that make or break social learning approaches.
A key instrument in our vision, building upon our legacy of work so far, is a set of practical guidelines that will help anyone working with us to use the best available knowledge, information and tools to implement and document social learning initiatives. Even those that do not work with us will still be able to use these guidelines for their own benefit (but without guidance and joint work in this case).
Next steps:
The guidelines
Following the example of the data management guidelines that CCAFS developed, we will develop practical guidelines that help our staff and partners (or whoever) find guidance to implement and document a social learning initiative. These guidelines cover the following steps:- Baseline / self assessment (to understand if you need social learning, if so what type and if you already do it, how well you do it);
- Social learning guidance: to have more information and practical guidance on how social learning approaches that seem useful for your initiative should be implemented;
- Process facilitation guidance: to make sure you collect feedback and properly follow a social learning approach (and how to facilitate it properly);
- Documentation and collection of evidence (to ensure that you are indeed documenting your initiative and how helpful it is);
- Analysis and action (to decide what to do with the evidence gathered, both for your initiative as for the CCSL group and its quest to test our overall hypothesis);
- Communication and dissemination of these results (to ensure these lessons learned reach whoever is supposed to use them).
In the process, you can either work with us on this around the deal that we provide expertise and support to help you run your social learning initiative against the promise to document it and to participate to a learning event to bring your evidence and consolidate it with more people involved in other social learning initiatives.A central mechanism to coordinate the match-making process and transactions with us and all is the CCSL sandbox.
Next steps:
The CCSL sandbox
The sandbox has been running for 9 months and is in the process of being reviewed, on the basis of a survey. It is 78 members strong (as of 27 June 2013) and has been growing organically. We want to keep it this way rather than open it up broadly and lose our focus and dynamics. Events are key threads to bring people around this sandbox and to structure their interactions. We think facilitation could entail more attending to participants' active presence and questions, and that we could try and find out more what people expect from the sandbox, what benefits some of them have gotten out of co-creation on the sandbox etc.As in 2012, the sandbox has (limited) funding to kick-start or support ongoing activities financially, but it will be complemented by the innovation fund, which is complemented by an incubator idea.
The innovation fund 2013-2014 and the incubator idea
In 2012 we talked about setting up an innovation fund but it didn't happen. This year we'll try to get it going via the sandbox, identifying who might be interested in developing that idea further.We also discussed an idea to support the work of local innovators by bringing their work to the next level, where they pull hands together to develop their innovative capacity through social learning. We'd like to set up small events in different countries to bring together these innovators and get them (in an Open Space type approach) to work together to find ideas to develop their capacity and resources to innovate, which we would then support financially. These incubator workshops and pilots would then be supported by us for ongoing documentation of the social learning process and would add much to the evidence base, from the perspective of endogenous (thus more sustainable) initiatives.
Next steps:
CCSL advisory committee
Another track that was not pursued through. We will revive this as all potential advisors approached last year were interested in this. These advisors could also join the CCSL sandbox and could comprise someone from IDRC or someone that is not there yet but should be (e.g. Georgina Cundill).Next steps:
Case studies, past and future
We have case studies about social learning scattered across various publications and places. We'd like to keep track of these in one neat collection, and also keep track of a very few excellent cases that can really act as selling arguments. We will make sure we organise and characterise these case studies, add them to the CCSL guidelines and keep track of live cases as we document our new body of work along the way (these new, live, case studies are even more important to us).Next steps:
Background ideas
Full notes
Visioning discussion
(Phil Thornton, Patti Kristjanson, Peter Ballantyne, Blane Harvey, Marissa van Epp, Ewen Le Borgne) 26/06Looking longer term we need to have a body of evidence, who needs to be involved, top-down vs. bottom-up etc. How does it operate within particular institutional settings e.g. IDRC, CARE, CGIAR... Looking at issues of governance, or learning as an operationalised set of activities. How deep are we willing to go? There is a spectrum of options e.g. facilitating others' learning processes (to adapt e.g. cropping methods), opening up your institutional set up to scrutiny.
How does this relate back to the 3 loops? Are we transforming our relationships?
Finding examples of where institutions have changed themselves as a result of being part of such processes would be extremely useful.
Guidelines should be diagnostic questions to help establish where it's useful to do some kind of social learning. This also relates to the 3 learning loops in the sense that the diagnostic questions.
We have to develop a series of indicators for various time horizons e.g. 3, 6, 9 years etc.
One initiative that could be useful to look at is the participatory scenario development one e.g.: to what extent did we have increased adoption of forecast for decision-making, increased value of involvement in the Kenyan Meteorological Department [KMD] (per $ invested, KMD reaches x more people in that region), changes of practices based on insights gathered and attraction of additional investments. This initiative started in 2009.
We could follow a dual approach with a large programme that includes that design and thinking etc. from the start and in the meantime build business cases that we can look at as pretty good examples of what good practices look like.
Who's engaged in this at different levels, from donors to end-users? What are potential changes at their level, as a result of taking up such approaches?
Communication has dropped out of our discourse - but our assumption is that it's related and connected to social learning. Perhaps it's an easier sell?
Farmer field schools are not always very strong on social learning etc. Perhaps we could develop a kind of spider diagram with the different characteristics (e.g. learning focus, transformational, involving multiple knowledges, conscious about collective efforts, certainty access, type of goals [predetermined, closed etc.], type of intervention from linear to complex, resource access [hard results e.g. concrete products vs. soft results] etc.) that assess the relative depth of social learning of any initiative.
This relates to 'from knowledge to action'. CCAFS has its overarching theory of change (ToC) with site-specific ToC. CCAFS is working from top down and bottom us and we might have a problem in the middle. CCAFS sees SL as an outcome pathway and possibly, on the side, a means to work. CARIAA on the other hand, is about working with funding institutions to see how they are learning together and transforming themselves. We can look at the differences that this kind of approach brings about.
Essentially, social learning is aiming at stimulating smarter institutions to deliver smarter results. Resilience and adaptive management provide interesting avenues for the indicators we could develop. Social learning widens our pathways to outcomes, it deepens our ability to achieve them and eventually helps us achieve these faster. CCSL for wider, deeper, faster system level / long term outcomes. Pacing might be as important as timescales.
How do we keep our boundaries to make sure we have a narrower focus and to avoid getting too diffuse.
Our vision
How to achieve that vision?
Sandbox:
77 people.It takes a while for people to get the hang of the sandbox and the difference between Yammer and the wiki.
Are we at the stage where the sandbox ought to become a Community of Practice (CoP)? There's a group of insiders who showed up at the various CCSL events. Outsiders who join may want to share but they may not have a very clear sense of agenda etc. They may not motivated to contribute with so many people involved.
Having a shared sense of vision and ownership would help ease in participation. Perhaps the Yammer space could articulate that more clearly. The CoP is looking at a common set of practices and the community of interest is made of a wider group of people that like to think about social learning.
Do we want to limit it to people who are in the programme or not? Peter B thinks we should keep this with a (somewhat) limited but dedicated group rather than anyone potentially interested but not active.
The guidelines could be a backbone to structure conversations. Events could also be used as key moments to ensure that the circle of Yammer talkers/users expands and grows (in depth)...
At the level of practices etc. we have to direct the dialogue through Yammer.
What we should do:
We should welcome members personally. We would like to have more conversations than postings. Encourage people to leave comments on the wiki also - On the wiki we could make it clearer that each page is commentable. Perhaps we should get on with other people that could really benefit e.g. CCAFS gender folks on this. We collectively seem to agree that we should go for the steady growth rather than opening up. When CARIAA starts we could bring on more SL-focused people. We should send personal emails to people from the CCSL sandbox to invite them to share and react etc. We should ensure that the people who are in the sandbox are interested in the 2 main questions/assumptions from our new ToC.
Possible questions to add to the sandbox survey:
Innovation fund
Prolinnova has its country innovation fund processes but these are very specific. This is a truly bottom-up approach, which is the beauty of it. By having them present on the CCAFS sites it would be easier to track the various initiatives.If CCAFS is interested in piloting social learning at local level, should it all go through Prolinnova? Or through a broader call?
In 2014, CCAFS could support this further, and perhaps retain some budget to have someone (help) run this fund. The current Prolinnova fund could be one strand of a broader Fund.
Action: Patti to share this on the sandbox and to find out if someone is interested in thinking about it and developing ToR + process, in line with guidelines and tools - and of course shared and co-created on the sandbox.
If CCAFS gets extra funding they could further support this.
Advisory group
We contacted them all last year, everyone (Axel Weiser, Abigail Mulhall, Manuel Flury, Petra Tschakert, Valerie Brown + ?) said yes but we never sent a letter to them. There were simple ToR developed for these members.We have a nice advisory group on the sandbox. But there are other people (e.g. Georgina Cundill) who could also just join the sandbox.
Action points:
Case studies from the past
E.g. cases from Julian's paper, from first round case studies, the 5 from the new working paper by Blane and Liz etc.This wouldn't be just a case of sorting out existing cases but also assessing them - based on the list of factors/characteristics that help assess the depth of social learning.
We could ask someone from the sandbox to synthesise these and assess them with some sort of rating etc.
Action points:
Tomorrow we'll work on guidelines and materials for different target groups
Monitoring and assessing social learning
What we suggest: following a cycle.These are the things we need and what we already have at our disposal.
'Where are we at?'
Booklet
Narrative 2.0
'What can we do?'
Working papers and annex with 100+ approaches
'How to do it right with all?'
IDS Participatory toolkit
Facilitators (Pete Cranston & Carl Jackson)
'How do we gather evidence'
IDRC Evaluation Unit
Process documentation publication and examples
'What do we do with this evidence?'
'Who should know what about this work?'
A big idea: Incubate and document collective local innovation and learning
We notice that much local innovation is individual. We also see much local experimentation with different participatory, social learning, and communication approaches, tools etc. We may want to tap into this and help it scale up and out.
Opportunity:
Bring together some of these people and initiatives in an 'incubation' environment to catalyze novel social-learning enabled collaborations that can scale ideas and innovations related to CC, A and FS...
Aims:
Identify existing innovators and people doing innovative things, link and connect innovators, incubate smaller-scale innovative collaborations/cooperatives, micro-fund and catalyze promising collaborations using social learning approaches, document the social learning for the wider good (using the CCSL framework and tools)... Spin-of for CCSL is to widen our network of local innovators/collaborators and deepen involvement of some existing partners.
How?
Convene small well-focused, well-facilitated face to face events in geographic hot spots (eg, ethiopia, kenya, tanzania, uganda,bangladesh, india). Convenors from any of the CCSL partners, similar approach for each.
- 1.5 days (?)
- local partners of, eg of prolinnova
- partners of CCAFS regional programs
- buzz, incubate, broker, pitch, learn
- facilitate match-making and encourage participants to propose experiments/pilots to take existing ideas one step further/too scale ...
- generate micro-project collaboration ideas / pilots
- fund some of these (<$15K?)
- require social learning and documentation
These small pilots would follow a social learning approach that would target their own institutional learning process and/or development outcomes they hope to reach.
The objective would be to have these innovators develop their innovative capacity and we have to make sure that they build something different to what they were doing so far.
We might want to bring in professional private sector incubators to facilitate that incubation process...
Timeframe:
several processes held and 'completed' in 2013
Partnership and outcome mapping
For CCAFS, the key partners that should be on board with us on this stuff are CARE and PROLINNOVA.For CARIAA, the key partners would be...
For the CSIRO-ACIAR track, the key partners would be...
We can't really hold this discussion without regional reps from e.g. CCAFS programmes involved...
Other actors and networks that could contribute to CCSL are: Farm Radio (partners and engage with them to help shape their work), IIED's partners in e.g. CBA projects, ILRI teams and projects e.g. NBDC/Africa RISING/IBLI.
Guidelines for CCSL work, funding and getting this forward.
The work on M&E and documentation of CCSL work will shape up the guidelines - we need to develop an online menu for it with links to specific resources and sub-pages under it. We need to get going with this online menu.In terms of funding, CCAFS, CSIRO etc. have enough funding to take some activities forward. We want to have a framework of action (the dual track) that is encompassing enough to allow other activities to come along, but we should focus on this dual track and that picture rather than anything. Our focus remains climate change, agriculture and food security. We have to ensure that we do not get thrown in all directions because we miss boundaries. The danger is that anyone interested in social learning comes to us and pulls it in another direction.
Action planning