On Thursday March 22, we had the first meeting of the ICCO-Alliance Learning Facilitators and some other people involved in the Capacity Development Programme (CDP). It was quite an intensive and sure interesting day. After a short introduction about the state of the art of the programme we talked about the already ongoing activities in the field of learning. It appeared that it was so much that we needed much more time than foreseen. By itself very good, because it means we have already have lots to go further on. Anyhow there was much to tell each other and to discuss as for example differences in approaches and ways of working. So, much work will have to be done to get us all working in a coherent IA-learning system (by which I do not mean necessarily everything along one model!).
This all meant the programme had to be changed. It was good in the way things went, but it was a pity that we had to skip the theoretical/conceptual presentation and telling a little bit about the available tools for learning networks. But OK, next time we will concentrate on those two parts and make good use of the detected needs during this meeting.
For myself I have some difficulties to give a final opinion about the day. I hoped we would get a little further on the practical aspects, but on the other hand it was very good to get to know more about the thoughts, activities and ideas of colleagues. And one of the lessons for me was that I should have included at least some words about the concept of learning and capacity building which are used as the basis for the programme design. By not doing so, the “state of the art” was not sufficiently clear because there was no (common) “reference”. But anyhow we know now much better how to proceed.
Of course I am also very curious to know what thoughts you, the other participants in the workshop, have about that day. So I think it really would be very good if you would spent some time to write down your ideas (not necessarily in English) and post them on this blog.
By the way, the day before I was in a workshop about learning organised by Euforic and Wotro. There it became clear all organisations are looking hard on how to foster learning within their organisations and with and among their partners. So we surely are not the only ones wondering around in this “learning field”. It also became very clear that the research institutes (departments) of e.g. Wotro and DGIS are also looking for collaboration with other types of organisations, for example like ours. So I think that is something we should be working on too (as soon as the researcher of the CDP has taken her place).
1 comment:
Blog blog who is there!
I found out how to get here and it not that difficult. I am veryy curious how many learning colleagues will follow. I think the day was an interesting start-off for learning from each other what learning actually is. It became clear that a lack of conceptual framework leads to confusion about what a learning network actually is. However, it was interesting to see all the different perceptions we have on learning networks, and to make a small start with linking the networks. I think the next meeting should start with an introduction of the concepts before trying to find intruments and tools as to how to implement learning in an organization. Within my own network, the postdoc-network, we have made a start trying to grasp what a learning organization actually is. With the views of 33 persons from all kinds of Dutch NGO's and the ministry we made a list of 16 characteristics of a learning organization. Besides the characteristics, we tried to develop indicators as to how to 'measure' whether the organization learns. The document is not finished yet but it might be interesting to see. I will try and put it on this weblog somehow.
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