A few links I came across that could be of interest:
http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/index.asp
The Campbell collaboration is the social science equivalent of the Cochrane collaboration "that aims to prepare, maintain, and disseminate high-quality systematic reviews of of studies of effectiveness of social and educational policies and practices"
International Political Economy course syllabus and links from UC Berkeley
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Egobev/ipe/syllabus.html
Online dictionary of the social sciences
http://bitbucket.icaap.org/dict.pl?alpha=A
The social research methods knowledge base (a great reference site): "The Research Methods Knowledge Base is a comprehensive web-based textbook that addresses all of the topics in a typical introductory undergraduate or graduate course in social research methods."
http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/index.php
Friday, February 22, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Musings on GK3 in Kuala Lumpur, December 2007
Looking back at GK3, I was, at times, disappointed with GKP’s focus on marketing spin rather than substance, especially considering this was an opportunity to take a step back and look at 10 years of activity in our domain and focus on what we have learned since GK1 in Toronto. This is key to ensuring our area maintains credibility in the development and academic arenas. That said, we work in a domain where there are large country donor and private sector interests and some of the trade-show marketing hype can be attributed to that. Looking back at some of the plenary events, I sometimes felt like much of the “hype” was aimed at those particular segments rather than the "geeks", “researchers” and “activists” who are at the heart of much of what we do, which may have led to some of the backlash observed in the blogosphere.
It should be stated, however, that holding this type of large event has innumerable advantages for IDRC. Amongst the key ones are the possibility to disseminate research, network and build the capacities of our partners. Many of my team members, as well as key PAN partners, went above and beyond their usual duties and put in long hours to make sure this would happen. The evaluation workshop and the Panacea training workshop on methods and outcomes were perfect examples of this.The amount of work that goes into these types of activities is often not appreciated and I would like to commend my team members for having done a great job.
With regard to the GK3 conference itself, it included key discussions on the way forward, important thinking about useful public and private interventions, discussions of lessons and opportunities in the area of health care, governance and other key development sectors. One person mentioned to me that the most useful sessions were those that discussed sectoral issues, where there is evidence that ICTs can improve sectoral interventions, rather than the ones that focused more on the technology itself or on access, which were generally superficial. I can also point to certain concrete outcomes such as a desire amongst partners in the US, South Africa and Asia to collaborate on open standards for data collection systems for the health sector; a collaboration on supporting the survival of minority languages through localization efforts in Africa and a potential collaboration around using ICTs to increase the agency of sex workers through the use of ICTs: all issues that are related to important development problems. These are of course just a sample of the outcomes related to GK3. They are, however, generally intangible, and hence difficult to measure, but we certainly need to continue trying.
However, one key question remains for us: was this the appropriate event to focus on to achieve those outcomes or are there other events or venues that might have helped us meet our objectives without dealing with some of the transaction costs that came from working with GKP? I recently sent out a trip report on the Internet Governance Forum in Brazil that gives some insight into this. There is no easy answer. But, after having been to both events, if we want to play in the “global venues”, which seems warranted considering our leading role in this sector, we may want to focus on the events that could afford us more opportunity to disseminate research to influential actors and, maybe, produce change. From my observation, I believe more influential actors were at IGF than GK3. IGF included a greater number of key global and national policy-makers and practitioners who could act on or be part of our research development process. Moreover, I believe there would be engagement at a substantive level from the organisers of IGF events.
It should be stated, however, that holding this type of large event has innumerable advantages for IDRC. Amongst the key ones are the possibility to disseminate research, network and build the capacities of our partners. Many of my team members, as well as key PAN partners, went above and beyond their usual duties and put in long hours to make sure this would happen. The evaluation workshop and the Panacea training workshop on methods and outcomes were perfect examples of this.The amount of work that goes into these types of activities is often not appreciated and I would like to commend my team members for having done a great job.
With regard to the GK3 conference itself, it included key discussions on the way forward, important thinking about useful public and private interventions, discussions of lessons and opportunities in the area of health care, governance and other key development sectors. One person mentioned to me that the most useful sessions were those that discussed sectoral issues, where there is evidence that ICTs can improve sectoral interventions, rather than the ones that focused more on the technology itself or on access, which were generally superficial. I can also point to certain concrete outcomes such as a desire amongst partners in the US, South Africa and Asia to collaborate on open standards for data collection systems for the health sector; a collaboration on supporting the survival of minority languages through localization efforts in Africa and a potential collaboration around using ICTs to increase the agency of sex workers through the use of ICTs: all issues that are related to important development problems. These are of course just a sample of the outcomes related to GK3. They are, however, generally intangible, and hence difficult to measure, but we certainly need to continue trying.
However, one key question remains for us: was this the appropriate event to focus on to achieve those outcomes or are there other events or venues that might have helped us meet our objectives without dealing with some of the transaction costs that came from working with GKP? I recently sent out a trip report on the Internet Governance Forum in Brazil that gives some insight into this. There is no easy answer. But, after having been to both events, if we want to play in the “global venues”, which seems warranted considering our leading role in this sector, we may want to focus on the events that could afford us more opportunity to disseminate research to influential actors and, maybe, produce change. From my observation, I believe more influential actors were at IGF than GK3. IGF included a greater number of key global and national policy-makers and practitioners who could act on or be part of our research development process. Moreover, I believe there would be engagement at a substantive level from the organisers of IGF events.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)