|
MEL support to Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) |
Price on request
ID-1326 - For Sale
|
|
Our Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) advice to WFD’s the Political Party Officers (PPOs) ranged from the development and tracking of outcome maps, the design of new projects to tips on how to capture learning and adapt programmes accordingly. Together, we produced a feedback video from velfies (video selfies) sent by 12 participants in five countries from their African Liberal Network Women’s Leadership Programme. It provided, at the same time, evidence of outcome maps’ progress markers, feedback to adjust the programme and identification of case studies and stories to follow-up. The support was initially part of our partner’s INTRAC semi-independent Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Support Unit (MEL Support Unit). The experience of using video tools as part of data collection for MEL was unique. We summarize here the blog post Video selfies” are a winner amongst all the new virtual working tools written about the experience for INTRAC. “The feedback we gathered through reporting was often dry and difficult to put into context. Shifting to a visual format gave these women a voice to share their experiences in their own words, resulting in much more compelling and useful stories.”Graeme Ramshaw, Director of Research and Evaluation, WFDWhen the pandemic started, WFD was in the middle of their African Liberal Network Women’s Leadership Programme. As with all the training at the time, the face-to-face programme had to move into the online world. They had been collecting feedback from participants via standard surveys, but they wanted to probe participants’ experience of the transition more deeply and to have their input on the direction of the programme going forward. Our solution was to ask participants to film themselves in asynchronous velfies (video selfies) answering a set of questions we sent in advance. The end product is a 10 min video combining all participants’ answers. “The idea of capturing the participant’s feedback via velfies was both an obvious thing to do, but also a big step into the unknown for us. I found Isabela’s willingness to ‘learn-by-trying’ approach just what we needed to realise our ideas. In addition to a video that really captures the different personalities and reflections of the programme, Isabela provided an excellent Sense Learning analysis. We now have a feedback product that can have multiple uses and audiences, as well as some insightful learning from our Women’s Leadership Programme.”Adele Poskitt, Head of Multi-Party Office, WFDEven though videos have been used in evaluations and there is a vast literature base about participatory video evaluations (PVE), using video for more mundane and day-to-day tasks of MEL – such as collecting feedback – is not widely done. I hope that this feedback video inspires other practitioners and donors to explore new ways of carrying out MEL, making it more creative and useful to all involved. The advance of technology has given us the many tools we have today. Yet, despite having all this technology at our fingertips, it is easy to fall into the habit of using the same tools we have always used. The list below presents some of the advantages and disadvantages we found in capturing participants’ feedback via asynchronous videos (instead of via online surveys). ADVANTAGES
DISADVANTAGES
|