Category: Modules

In Module 2, the focus is on designing a MEL strategy. The trainers share concrete insights and tools to enable participants to draft their MEL strategy, including considerations on objectives, outcomes, outputs and indicators. They go over what planning for change entails and how to assess the results.

In Module 1, the trainers discuss the complexities of MEL for policy influence, highlighting what is unique about it. Next, they help participants reflect on the key questions that need to be asked to establish a successful MEL strategy: Why should you carry out MEL? How will the information be used? How much agreement is there on the value of MEL? These questions help participants gain a clearer overall understanding of how to approach MEL.

The literature on how to monitor, evaluate and learn (MEL) about policy influence is abundant. However, instructions on specific practices, particularly in developing countries, are quite scarce. This short course helps participants to sift through the key frameworks and look at benefits and challenges, in a way that is practical for their own organisation, big or small.

This is also an opportunity to think, rethink or formalise current MEL practices. Organisations should avoid seeing these as a luxury; it is not a practice that only those with large budgets or with the specific support of a donor can afford. Each organisation can trace its own unique path. MEL is an intelligent and promising investment, which will no doubt bear fruit sooner rather than later.

The second module session focuses on implementing advocacy strategies in practice. It considers: insider versus outsider approaches, defining and mapping stakeholders, identifying policy windows, developing actionable policy recommendations, and commonly used tools. The session ends with trainer sharing examples of how things can go well, as well as some common pitfalls and mistakes.

Module 1 looks at the basics of advocacy, moving from theory to practice. It revisits the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to advocacy, provides guidance on advocacy aims, introduces the basic elements of an advocacy strategy, and gives participants an introduction to planning and budgeting for advocacy campaigns, in particular: positioning, goal setting, and issue analysis.

Most think tanks consciously seek to influence what powerful institutions do. A few years ago, a prominent American politician left Congress to lead a large think tank because, he explained, working for that think tank would give him greater power to influence US politics and policy. However, many other think tanks struggle to influence public debates and institutional actions for a very broad variety of reasons. In a context in which donors are demanding to see ‘impact’ and a growing number of competing groups (from lobbyists to campaigning charities) aggressively push their own policy prescriptions, think tanks need to learn to effectively advocate in order to survive.

Think tankers from a broad variety of backgrounds – research, communications, proposal development, grants management – can benefit from this course if they bring along a passion for using research to influence people, politics and policies.

The third module focuses on how to make interactive visualisations with Tableau Public, covering the basic concepts and elements of Tableau Public and an example of creating an interactive dashboard.

The second module moves straight into practice, showing participants how to structure and manipulate data in Excel and Google Sheets. It looks at how to improve the charts produced using these common technologies to make sure they adhere to the design lessons covered in the first module.

The first module session has a slightly more theoretical approach and provides an introduction to data visualisation with further discussion about what makes a good, or effective, data visualisation.  This is illustrated with an overview of good and bad examples.

Data visualisations are playing an increasingly important role in today’s information-rich society. This is especially true among think tanks, where translating complex ideas and data into accessible and relevant information is at the heart of what they do.

This course explores basic data visualisation practice with design theory. It shares examples of how think tanks around the world have built data visualisations into their communication plans as well as examples of what not to do. It then moves into the practicalities of data visualisation with basic data structuring and improving basic charts in Excel and Google Sheets. Finally, participants learn how to make more complex interactive visualisations with Tableau Public.