- “Knowledge Sharing in Research” Project: A year in the life of six pilot projects
- Online Learning Resources: the way forward
- KS Workshop runs, runs, runs with FAO
- Google Apps case study ended and the users are satisfied with this new experience!
ICT-KM supports events and conferences
"Making Our Research Outputs Available - the AAA Approach"
Co-organized with FARA, this event will look into methods and systems to ensure research outputs are available, accessible and applicable. Tentatively scheduled to be held December 1st 2008 during the CGIAR 2008 Annual General Meeting in Maputo.
"Knowledge management- Why and Who for?"
The session will look into the "why" of knowledge management and sharing and discuss the challenges and opportunities afforded by implementing knowledge management techniques. The sessions is tentatively scheduled December 2nd, 2008 during the CGIAR 2008 Annual General Meeting in Maputo.
"Knowledge Management and Sharing: How?"
This all day event will specifically look into different strategies and methods and the benefits and or shortcomings. Scheduled for December 4th 2008 in Maputo
Read more about the Knowledge Sharing in Research project in the September issue of CGIAR e-News.
For more information on ICT-KM activities and events, visit our website and blog at http://ictkm.cgiar.org/
Snippets
Are you setting comfortably? Farmers share knowledge through storytelling
"My story with farming began when I was a child," says Mahmoud Shlash, whose village lies near the ancient city of Aleppo in northern Syria. "At that time, the rainfall was high unlike the rainfall this season. I watched my father when he collected spikes (barley seedheads) from here and there and brought them home. I asked him, 'Why are you collecting the spikes and nothing else?' Now I realise that he was doing the same as ICARDA is currently doing with the farmers."
For more information, please visit: http://www.new-ag.info/08/05/develop/dev2.php
Strengthening Partnership through increased collaboration: ICT-KM and FARA
Working with partners to increase effectiveness continues to be an important aspect of the ICT-KM Program. With this in mind, the ICT-KM Program, represented by Enrica Porcari recently participated in the CGIAR-FARA (Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa) consultation held in Accra 2-4 September 2008. The consultation aimed at increasing this strategic partnership and harmonizing research in Africa.
Taking into consideration past successful collaborations, representatives of FARA (Myra Woopereis-Pura and Francois Stepman) discussed with Enrica ways forward to increase ICT-KM/FARA partnership and joint activities.
More information about the consultation can be found at http://farastaff.blogspot.com
/2008/09/cgiar-fara-consultation.html
Pilot projects paving innovative paths to sharing information
The Institutional Knowledge Sharing project is supporting three pilot activities in three CGIAR centers in order to contribute to institutional innovation, and learn about the effectiveness of KS approaches. Two of the pilots have now made available their products.
“Recovering from natural disasters” A ‘Storymercial’ by WorldFish
“The storymercial is e a combination of video, audio and images. At the heart of the storymercial is the story; the oldest most proven way humans learn and remember information.” says Helen Leitch, Pilot Project Leader. “Despite a huge investment in communications, awareness of the CGIAR Centers’ work and contribution to development is often low. Since knowledge products with more mass appeal are needed, this project examined the role storymercials can play to attract our donors and partners to knowledge, thus increasing the uptake of research outputs”. Have a look at: http://www.worldfishcenter.org
/v2/rehabilitate%20livelihoods.html
Best Practices in Research data Management (IRRI)
“There is still little experience in using wiki technology within CGIAR. The openness and visibility of a wiki is often seen as a risk, rather than an opportunity for increased participation and collaboration in communities of practice.” states Thomas Metz, Project Leader. This project developed, collected, recorded, and applied good practices in research data management, and initiated a communities of practice for research data managers. It is enabling scientists to produce better quality research and release their primary data as global public goods that will be available and usable for future secondary use. See the wiki at: http://cropwiki.irri.org/everest/
ICT-KM Homepage
“Knowledge Sharing in Research” Project: A year in the life of six pilot projects
by
Nadia Manning-Thomas, KSinR project Leader
The pilot projects supported through the Knowledge Sharing in Research project (KSinR) are capturing by example real lessons for future application. Initiated with the goal to improve the effectiveness and impact of CGIAR research by providing options and lessons around good practices of knowledge sharing in research, KSinR’s main learning vehicle has been six on-going CGIAR research projects which are piloting various knowledge sharing approaches integrated into different stages of the research process. The pilot projects began with an Inception Workshop held in August 2007 at IRRI in Los Banos, the Philippines where the projects all refined their planning using the Impact Pathways approach. Now with a little more than one year later, the projects have undertaken a number of activities, produced useful outputs and generated valuable lessons and knowledge.
Such examples include:
- Challenges and benefits of operating a collaborative, multi-stakeholder framework for conducting more coordinated research to action processes as being tested by IWMI through its use of the Learning Alliance approach in the ‘Wastewater, Agriculture and Sanitation for Poverty Alleviation’ (WASPA) project.
- The ICARDA-lead Pilot has held its main activity- an International Farmers’ Conference- in which 53 farmers from 7 different countries attended and presented stories on their experiences, needs and knowledge in barley breeding. This successful event resulted in audio, video and text versions of stories from farmers indicating their priorities, needs and innovations which are useful to other farmers and researchers to use and learn from. Small video clips were loaded onto mobile phones of farmers and by showing them how to send them to other farmers it set up a farmer to farmer type extension system. All stories and other information about the conference will be available on a soon to be launched website.
- CIFOR has been leading a Pilot Project on behalf of the System-wide consortium on priority assessment with the aim of exploring good ways to share research priority assessment methodologies and experiences around using them. The main approach it has been focusing on is the collation of experiences across the CGIAR and also some partner groups in the form of a compendium. All chapters have been written, reviewed and are ready to be developed into the book during the last part of this year. The publication of the book will be followed up with online access to the information as well as a virtual discussion forum.
- Another Pilot Project from IWMI, working on Wastewater research in West Africa, has been working on more diverse methods for research delivery to a wide range of target groups to improve uptake and adoption of valuable technologies and practices which are designed to improve agricultural productivity and livelihoods. This Project has been developing and using radio programs, training videos and flip charts with printed messages and visuals to get across good practices in using wastewater across to farmers, caterers and extension agents.
- The IRRI-lead Pilot is moving steadily along with its proposed development of a Laos Rice Knowledge Bank (LRKB) as a mechanism to make research from the area accessible for extension agents to use with farmers. The Project held in the beginning of the year a workshop with various stakeholders to identify key research knowledge and technologies to be developed into ‘information packets’ to be included in the LRKB. To further support the process as well as build buy-in and capacity, the Project sponsored an in-house traineeship program for a person from the Laos Ministry of Agriculture. The on-the-job-traineeship at IRRI HQ was aimed to integrate personnel from a partners institute into working on the development of the technical and content sides of the LRKB to build their capacity and gain buy-in.
- The WorldFish Centre Pilot Project has been trying out alternative monitoring and evaluation and impact assessment methodologies in its ‘Community-based fish culture in seasonal floodplains and irrigation systems’ (CPWF35) project with the aim of learning together with stakeholders throughout the research process. Initiated through a training workshop in February 2007, Outcome Mapping(OM) and Most Significant Change(MSC) were chosen as the methodologies to be piloted. The workshop in February generated some interesting and useful results about the potential benefits as well as challenges of using these approaches in this project and country setting. A paper on this experience was presented at the ILAC/PRGA/ILRI organized ‘Rethinking Impact’ workshop held in Colombia in March of this year. Just this month a visit to the field sites in Vietnam was made with the aim of moving further on the integration of OM into the project. Visions and strategy maps were developed with various Boundary Partners of the project.
Lessons learned and challenges to overcome
Lessons emerging from the KSinR Project as a whole are that using these knowledge sharing approaches in research requires adequate funding, time, and personnel, which sometimes are beyond what is currently available within projects and even Centres. Beyond this, however, knowledge sharing is providing a number of benefits for these projects. Better insights are being gained into problems on the ground helping to improve relevance of research, greater buy-in is being achieved through working more closely with stakeholders, more is being learned through knowledge sharing with stakeholders, and greater access to knowledge through more appropriate ways to share knowledge with target groups is leading to increased uptake and use of research-generated knowledge and technologies.
Synthesis of the results across KSinR and all of its Pilot Projects and other activities will be documented in a variety of media including the KS website (www.ks-cgiar.org), the KS blog (available on website), and through the development of practical how-to documents to be made widely available and presented at upcoming CGIAR and other fora.
Contact person: Nadia Manning-Thomas, KSinR Project Leader, n.manning@cgiar.org;
IWMI Nile Basin and East Africa office, ILRI Campus, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Back
We welcome feedback on the ICT-KM News, so please feel free to contact us at ictkm@cgiar.org