open knowledge sharing to support learning in agricultural and livestock research for development...
DESCRIPTION
Presented by Peter Ballantyne at the USAID-TOPS Food Security and Nutrition Network East Africa Regional Knowledge Sharing Meeting, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 11-13 June 2012TRANSCRIPT
Open knowledge sharing to support learning in agricultural and livestock research for development
projects
Peter Ballantyne
Food Security and Nutrition Network East Africa
Regional Knowledge Sharing Meeting, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 11-13 June 2012
Topics
Why we need learning – ‘business as usual interventions’ don’t work
ILRI and more effective development
Why share and learn – starting points for knowledge management?
Ways to share and learn – approaches we use at ILRI
What’s your main problem
FeedI’ll go find some
technology
Business as usual – Ask the farmers
What feed technologies
have you got?Planted forage
Urea treated strawBypass protein
OK, let’s try those
Business as usual – What’s on the scientists’ shelf
“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got.”
Mark Twain
“Our findings indicate that business as usual feed
‘promotion’ and interventions are not too
promising.”Alan Duncan (ILRI)
ILRI roles in program learning
ILRI as a ‘knowledge’ partner – in development projects Learning, M&E, impact assessment Knowledge, expertise, facilitation, CD Evidence, validation, …
ILRI as R4D ‘solution-finder’ with partners Participatory, multi-stakeholder … Explicit learning/knowledge focus …
ILRI’s ‘open’ research, knowledge and learning approach [local to global]
Some starting points
Together - researchers, communities, and development partners - know so much … How do we create, document and share this
knowledge? How do we support learning, and share the
results? How do we enrich these processes of
documenting, learning, and sharing? Can we do R4D better?
To increase the effectiveness of R4D!
Some ‘answers’
1. Co-create and co-learn in multi-stakeholder platforms
2. Document and mobilize knowledge from the (un)usual people
3. Make research knowledge, events, processes and platforms ‘open’
4. Engage, engage, engage …
1. Innovation platforms
spaces for diverse actors to engage in dialogue, and to jointly identify, learn about and address issues
Innovating with communities
2. Documenting (un)usual voices Community
perspectives Beyond reports
Listen and learn
Participatory video
Most significant changes
Any observable impacts?
Discussion support tools
Farmer focus Rapid value chain
assessment Participatory
‘FEAST’ feed assessment with communities
Technology prioritization with farmers (Techfit)
Discussion support tools
Results in: Promising feed
interventions that might work
Better understand why usual suspects often don’t work
Learning from communities
Solutions suggested by farmers Crops at backyard, around
fence, farm side Reducing the herd size Improving the utilization of
straws of different food crops Providing farmers with
continuous training
32%
22%
20%
14%
6%
6%
Contribution of livelihood activities to household income (as a percentage)
Agriculture
Livestock
Remmitance
Labour
Others
Business
3. Open the knowledge
Open research
‘Working out loud’
Open planning – events and thinking
‘Open’ events – all the discussions
Open projects – work in progress
Open sharing – gaps, weaknesses …
Open presentations
Open photos
Open reports and repository
Open for feedback
Working out loud!
“bringing activities out of closed repositories and applications [and events and processes], and pulling them into the open increases the likelihood of learning information earlier.”- Stowe Boyd:
http://blog.podio.com/2011/08/01/working-out-loud-make-work-open-to-make-it-better
WOL = Observable Work + Narrating Your Work Narrating Your Work: journaling what you are doing
in an open way for others to follow Observable Work: creating / modifying / storing
your work where others can see it, follow it and contribute to it, before it is final
5. Engage over time
Partners, collaborators
Relationships
Feedback
Open mindsets
Social learning
Social media
Challenges
Process versus products
Getting to open
Finding ‘facilitation’ and process expertise
Fear of new ‘tools’; fear of ‘overload’
Making time to learn and share
Contacts
KM and KS @ ILRI: Peter Ballantyne ([email protected])
Participatory video: Beth Cullen ([email protected])
Innovation platforms: Alan Duncan ([email protected])
http://infoilri.wordpress.com