113 – Research Methods Workshops and Trainings

[00:00:00] Lucie: Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. My name’s Lucie Hazelgrove Planel, I’m a Social Impact Scientist and I’m here with David Stern, one of the founding directors of IDEMS.

Hi David.

[00:00:17] David: Hi Lucie. What are we discussing today?

[00:00:22] Lucie: So next week we’re doing some workshops in West Africa for the West Africa community of practice of McKnight Foundation’s Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems, and we’re doing workshops about research methods. I think it’s going to be the first time, we’ll see if I’m there, but it’s the first time I’m aware of these types of workshops, but you say they used to happen every year or something. Anyway, I want to know more about the history.

[00:00:51] David: I’ve been doing them now… 10 years? I think the first one I was part of was almost 10 years ago now. And it was in Burkina Faso. I remember it quite vividly. Rick Coe was there and he came in and he was leading it. We brought people from all three countries together.

[00:01:13] Lucie: All three countries, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

[00:01:16] David: Exactly. And actually this is, in many ways for me, this is where R-Instat was born, that very first meeting, the research method support meeting in the region. And it was born because part of what we were trying to help people with was analysis of the data from their different studies. There’d previously been research method support meetings going back a long time, and they’d used software which was called GenStat Discovery and a lot of those, and that was no longer freely available, it was no longer available, and so a big question they had is what software should we use now?

And so as part of that workshop, 10 or so years ago now, I gave an R training. I said R is free. It’s open source. This is obviously a good idea for you. And at the end of that workshop, they had convinced me that R was not a good idea for all of them. That it requires elements of coding literacy, which are not needed. You shouldn’t need to be a coder to analyse your data. And it just puts barriers that were insurmountable in place, which distracted people from actually getting information out of their data.

And it was over then the next few years that R-Instat emerged, partly because I couldn’t give them a good answer to what software should we use? There wasn’t anything which I could say, yes, I’d recommend this given what I understood of their needs. But anyway, so that’s a little side note of my understanding of the need for R-Instat. One of its origin points was the first training I attended of this type.

Now I’d also attended similar trainings in the eastern African region before it was merged with the southern African region.

[00:03:04] Lucie: Okay.

[00:03:05] David: And so I’ve had this privilege of seeing these trainings happening in the two parts of Africa, which are very different. There’s huge diversity, of course, across the continent, but despite those differences, there were actually a lot of similarities that I was drawing and being able to take from one to the other.

And so over the next few years in West Africa, which is where I had my responsibility we went through a whole set of different research methods trainings.

[00:03:33] Lucie: Can I quickly stop you there? You’re saying trainings, but I think of them as workshops. The one that we’re planning now, at least I’m thinking of it as a workshop. It is a training workshop, when you’re saying trainings, it’s not formalised…

[00:03:44] David: It’s a really good question because actually the earlier ones, they were more specific. They were specific skills. And we had one where one of the major outcomes was helping people to use digital data collection and ODK. This was 10 years ago, it was not quite 10 years ago, but eight years ago, whatever, was a need where people were suddenly, at the point where we felt these technologies could help them.

That was a training where I still remember Baoua, who you know quite well and who is rather senior, he was the one who took it up and actually he himself really said, no, this is gonna change the way I do my research. And it did. And he used it with so many different projects that he was part of, it became part of that whole team and integrated in, because once they had the skill, it then changed the way they did the research, and how they were able to do monitoring of that research. So he was somebody who really, that particular training, and it was a real training, he took it and ran with it.

And this is part of, I think, where that evolution has happened, where, originally, I was going in and seeing gaps where training could be useful and trying to support the skills building. And very often those were basic skills because everybody needed them. Digital data collection was important for everyone and having open tools to do that which they could use and take and make their own, this was something which was universally useful for the projects, and because no one was really doing it, having a training for everyone on that made perfect sense.

And part of the challenge that we found is that now, of course, the needs are much more complex. There are people who still need those skills training, but we shouldn’t be spending our time doing that skills training. This is where we now have teams on the ground who can be doing this and giving this more specifically to individual partners on a needs basis.

And we need to be building out those trainings so that those tools can be given. And next week in Burkina, there is a training on data collection where ODK will be part of that.

[00:05:59] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:06:00] David: That ability to be able to use digital data collection is going to be essential to build the skills, in that case, it’s for a set of master’s students, but in general for our teams on the ground to be able to give these trainings is really important because those skills are needed at a scale which we as sort of outsiders coming in maybe once a year for the trainings can never achieve.

We did one on data visualization. It was wonderful. I’d love to give that training again in other contexts in other ways. It was really powerful because, actually, what was so interesting, I’ve since used the resources I developed for the training in data visualisation to teach doctoral students in data science. Because what was really interesting is, it’s again, the hard part for data visualization is the interpretation.

And actually what’s interesting is the agriculturalists who understood context well, they were able to do quite complex data visualization and interpretation in ways which are natural and normal and they have to do. And then I realised what happens if I give this to data scientists ?

[00:07:09] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:07:10] David: They did terribly. It’s interesting that despite having the data skills, the technical skills, that interpretation piece is really hard.

[00:07:21] Lucie: That’s interesting, yeah.

[00:07:22] David: And it’s hard for everyone, and it’s not taught that well, generally. And so that data visualization course became part of this problem solving in data science, which I teach to doctoral students in data science. And it’s really powerful the way that these ideas have evolved and emerged from the trainings that have happened in the regions.

And my big disappointment in some sense is that we’ve never been able to really have more than a drop in the ocean. We’ve increased the numbers that come to these workshops, as they now are by having them in country. So in this latest workshop, instead of having a one week workshop where people from three countries come to the central location, we’re having three two day workshops, so we can reach more people.

And it’s a rather gruelling travel schedule and it means you’ve got problems with visas.

[00:08:20] Lucie: Yes.

[00:08:22] David: And it means that there’s all sorts of other complications around this. But it does mean that more people can get involved.

[00:08:29] Lucie: And the complications are on our side as opposed to theirs. And we’re trying to make it easier for them to attend the workshops.

[00:08:35] David: Exactly. And also trying to now build up our teams in country to be able to offer a range of the longer sort of trainings. And this is where I’m making that distinction between the training and the workshop.

[00:08:48] Lucie: Yep.

[00:08:49] David: That I think the skills trainings we should be handing over.

[00:08:52] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:08:53] David: These are things that we shouldn’t have to do anymore because we have partners on the ground who have these skills, who can help share these skills, we can help, well, it’s not easy. We are trying to help build the resources and the skills on the ground to be able to provide the skills training. And we found this isn’t easy. We’ve tried this in a number of cases with the introduction to data course has been given now in, I suppose it is Mali, Burkina, was it?

[00:09:22] Lucie: Yes.

[00:09:23] David: And Niger as well or not?

[00:09:25] Lucie: Not yet.

[00:09:26] David: So these courses, the skills we’re trying to get people to be able to sort of share, it’s more scalable. That’s something which we can be working on with our partners.

[00:09:36] Lucie: And it’s more scalable also in the sense of it can be more directed to a specific project and to the way they work and it can suit that particular project or institution. Also one of the problems because of the way the CRFS works, the Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems, because you have projects that have, and participants, well, researchers who have been with it since over 10 years ago, they don’t want to be still having the same workshops, they want to be hearing new things, they want to be thinking of exciting new innovations and how to improve, how to continue improving.

[00:10:08] David: Yeah. And that’s where, if you think of our current workshop that we’re planning, this is much more about introducing a few new ideas, and in this case, particularly given your expertise we’re trying to bring out the qualitative skills, and how these integrate into add value to sort of research which is happening.

But a lot of this is about getting ideas to come out of the participants about their needs, their thoughts, it is very much helping them to work and to improve, rather than a skills focused workshop. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be doing skills based workshops, but I’m saying with the capacity we now have in the region, I hope that the skills based workshops can be happening at a bigger scale locally.

[00:10:54] Lucie: And I know our team members would love that too. I know that they’re already really motivated for it and eager for the opportunities.

[00:11:01] David: Yes, and a lot of this now is about being responsive to the needs of partners and to the trainings that people want. But we now are starting to have a team which could be offering many more opportunities for training, and sharing of skills.

[00:11:17] Lucie: And I’m curious, because I think there weren’t any workshops last year or the year before of this kind?

[00:11:24] David: Well, yes. So in some sense every year until COVID we had such a workshop.

[00:11:31] Lucie: Okay.

[00:11:32] David: It was either what we called a three country workshop, where everyone came together to a central place, quite often Burkina, because it is in the centre of Niger, Mali and Burkina, and it has direct flights and so on.

[00:11:45] Lucie: Yeah, I was just going to say, logistically for transport it also seems to be easier.

[00:11:51] David: It is much, much easier. But also we had these individual country workshops where as trainers, we’d go into each of the countries. And those two approaches were used consistently over I suppose it must have been a five, six year period or more, where every year we have such a workshop. Since COVID.

[00:12:15] Lucie: What about during?

[00:12:15] David: During COVID we couldn’t travel. But it was more than that. We’d reached the end of a cycle.

[00:12:23] Lucie: Okay.

[00:12:24] David: Broadly, we’d done a lot of the skills based ones.

[00:12:28] Lucie: I think at one point you were travelling to do data clinics or something like that? Were these the same things?

[00:12:34] David: No, these are different. Sometimes they were tied together, sometimes they were related, but no, data clinics were different again because they were more one on one time with individual projects with people working on their data. And that was different again.

But these trainings, which happened every year, we kind of reached the point just before COVID where we knew we needed this shift into something different. And last year we did try to do one.

[00:13:04] Lucie: We did?

[00:13:05] David: Yes.

[00:13:07] Lucie: Oh dear. Oh wait, the storytelling.

[00:13:10] David: Exactly. And then it became virtual. So the nature of that storytelling, originally it was conceived as going into the countries or having a central one, we weren’t sure which, but we were conceiving this storytelling exactly as being very much workshop focused. But again, the travel became problematic, the situation in Niger specifically meant that we ended up pushing this to be a remote series of events. But the original plan was that our workshop was going to be not just if you want us, but a set of partners all working together towards this storytelling and doing this in this sort of workshop approach.

The fact that that didn’t materialise in the form that we have used previously, was the nature of the challenging environment that we’re working in. And the fact that we’re able to have it this year is really wonderful. The fact that it’s still a challenging environment even to get visas, that’s a reality.

And so this happening again in this form is really exciting to me and I’m really looking forward to having this interaction in this way where we’re bringing people together and we are doing it in quite a different way.

[00:14:24] Lucie: Yeah, that’s really interesting. Yeah, I didn’t realise.

[00:14:27] David: I’m so excited in some ways that the idea of the current workshop is really to help the projects which are now looking at all these really complex agroecological problems, and it is this elevating of the qualitative methods that could help them, it’s not the only thing that we’re doing in these workshops, but it’s central to it.

And it’s so exciting to be bringing that to the fore in a way we haven’t done in the past. And it maps so well with this shift towards a workshop approach where a lot of this is coming from them. So I’m excited to see what happens next week.

[00:15:05] Lucie: Just one more question, though, because to me it feels like there’s a push towards thinking also more about how to do much more useful research, perhaps in not only just finding sort of small things which can create small changes, but things which can create larger transformations. Is that just my impression, or is that…?

[00:15:26] David: You’ve articulated that in a way which is maybe slightly different to how I would have articulated it, but I think you’re broadly correct. The push generally to be able to have useful research which is related to social impacts, that’s been there for a long time. The big change, which I think is more recent, is exactly as you say, to be thinking about not just the research being useful, but it being actually influential at scale, is maybe a way of framing it, which was not really the aspiration before.

That sort of policy influence piece, that global influence piece, it was felt that, this was beyond what we could expect, whereas that ambition has increased. And I think it’s increased correctly because the nature of what the projects are doing, the nature of how people are working together, what they’re achieving has increased.

And so, being more ambitious with the influence it can have, it’s also that sort of evolution of where this work is headed.

[00:16:37] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:16:37] David: I don’t know, nobody knows how this is going to evolve in the future, but I do believe that the partners we’ve been working with for so many years on this now are in a position where if they can use the knowledge, especially the sort of I’d argue the qualitative knowledge, the things which they haven’t necessarily been able to quantify, but that they have learned over the long experience they’ve got. I think those are the things which could help them actually leverage their learnings to achieve more and to be more ambitious.

But we’ll see. This is where I would argue this current workshop is focused on leveraging that qualitative component in people’s research. But I think it is all building towards that ambition towards being more influential at higher levels.

[00:17:34] Lucie: Well, it’ll be really interesting to see what comes out of the workshops. And perhaps we’ll discuss that then in a couple of weeks.

[00:17:42] David: Maybe I will say one more thing about just my memory of some of the previous workshops. And one of the things which I personally, found so enriching with these workshops, as I used to do them, was the relationships that got built with the different projects.

[00:18:03] Lucie: Between, sorry, between the projects or between you and them?

[00:18:07] David: Both, because it was interesting that, at the moment, or even for a long time, the main time when people come together is for the community of practice meeting, which happens once a year.

[00:18:21] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:18:22] David: But when you were also bringing people together for the research methods training, it wasn’t just about the training, it was a coming together of the community. So these meetings were often attended by people who might not get to go to the major meetings. We had more students who attended, we had other members of the community attending, but it was still a bringing together of the community. And so actually I really enjoyed over the years, these different ways of being in the community, with the community, through these trainings, through the inception meetings, through the community of practice meetings and the way these different coming together built human relationships. And what’s so interesting is, of course, COVID has been very tough on that, because there was a long period where we weren’t able to meet.

[00:19:14] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:19:15] David: And even since we’ve started meeting again, it’s never really been in that same community building way, because the community already existed. But I believe part of these trainings were part of building that community. And I think since then, the fact that the community has continued so well, through COVID and beyond, is partly because the community had been built through these joint activities.

And that’s something else which I feel is really interesting for me to reflect on, is not only the role that these trainings and workshops played in introducing skills, in, I suppose, capacity building, but it was also in community building. And that’s a really interesting observation, because this will be lost if we just have our local counterparts giving trainings to individual organisations, projects, institutions.

I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what we should do or think about it. But I do think it is interesting to reflect that the community was built also partly through these workshops or these series of workshops, which were happening regularly and which were bringing members together.

[00:20:35] Lucie: But as far as I’m aware researchers always have a need and an interest in discussing how their research can be improved, what the next steps are. To me, it’s not an either or.

[00:20:48] David: No, absolutely.

[00:20:49] Lucie: That the workshops are taking a different form, but we’re not losing the sort of pointed skills based trainings.

[00:20:57] David: But I think the point you’re making, which is so interesting is that if these do continue as workshops, they could more explicitly focus on community building than we have in the past, you know, this has been an implicit part of what they are doing. Whereas now, because we’ve got the skills components, which can be done differently and separately, it might be that these workshops actually become a more explicit community building activity. I don’t know, these are all questions for us to grapple with in the future.

And I suppose the last thing to say is that I really appreciate the longevity of these approaches, to be able to go through these iterations and to be able to have this evolution of activities, community, emerging. That’s so powerful.

[00:21:51] Lucie: I think everyone appreciates that, yeah, within the community.

[00:21:54] David: Yeah, exactly, but it’s worth saying, it’s worth making explicit, because there aren’t many funders who fund like that. And so this is a sort of a hats off to McKnight and to the programme for actually taking this approach, which is so valuable.

That’s probably a good place to finish.

[00:22:15] Lucie: Okay. Thank you very much, David.