Workshop reports

Webinar on SfC February 2021 by Cecilia ÖMAN
Report by Millicent SIFUNA (with comments by Cecilia ÖMAN)

Workshop Summary
This report summarises the February 2021 webinar hosted jointly by HR&S Sweden and HR&S RISE Support Centre Kenya. The training was given online by HR&S Sweden and was supported and coordinated locally by HR&S RISE Support Centre Kenya.  Early career researchers and postgraduate students from Kenya attended. HR&S Support Centres from other countries were also in attendance. The workshop aimed to support scientific institutions and researchers in the generation, dissemination, and implementation of scientific findings. A  participant-centered approach was used because the researchers were better positioned to identify existing weaknesses, strengths, and the need for change. We invited participants to plan an overview presentation outlining their goals and challenges and a strategy for addressing them.
The workshop focused on the necessary conditions to bring about change. The participants compiled ambitions and related challenges. We worked with the participants and agreed on strategies for addressing the challenges. We gathered different activities that we projected to lead to an expected impact. The participants thus covered a spectrum of the HR&S Strategy for Change (SfC) and advisory areas (Annex 3). At the end of the training, participants developed an HR&S Strategy for Change (SfC) drawn from individual commitments to implement the training for a change. HR&S RISE Support Centre Kenya prepared the report for circulation to participants. The information is also intended as a resource for those interested in the workshop content but could not attend.

Background
Human Rights & Science brings together scientific researchers, technicians, scientific institution management, users of scientific findings, innovators, and social entrepreneurs from Sub-Sahara Africa for lectures and discussions to provide opportunities for them to bring positive change and development.  Research management consists of any action that an institution can take to improve the effectiveness of its researchers, but which is not part of the research process itself.
Africa faces some of the world’s most pressing health and development issues, but its scientific capacity is insufficient to address them. We agree that research should operate in an atmosphere that encourages researchers to concentrate on their work, which is only possible by organisations with good research management. Then, using our HR&S SfC tool, we develop systemic methods to develop research management systems in these areas further, building on existing initiatives.
We strongly believe that organizations should drive them in these regions for these efforts to be meaningful and sustainable. But we also want our efforts to be collaborative, putting together best practices and experiences from around the world. Therefore, we hope that research agencies, individual research managers and the private sector from all over the world will be interested in joining us. 

Objectives
The overall purpose of the workshop was to support scientific researchers and institutions with generating, disseminating, and implementing scientific findings. Also, forge closer collaborative links among researchers and provide space to engage with peers to discuss challenges, share ideas, and capture lessons learned.
The specific objectives were to: i) Explore options for raising our ambitions and profile as a group, and agree on an action plan for the research development in Kenya and other Sub-Sahara African countries. ii) Adopt the HR&S Strategy for Change tool (SfC) in plan implementation for institutions and individual researchers.

Date and venue
The training workshop took place 22-26 February 2021 online (zoom).

Training team
Cecilia ÖMAN, the CEO, HR&S Sweden, delivered the workshop with the support of HR&S Support Centre team members from Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda.

Agenda
The training team agreed on a draft plan before the workshop (attached as annex), which the participants approved.

Participants
Twenty (20) participants from Kenya attended the training workshop. These were early career researchers and postgraduate students from three different universities; the University of Nairobi, Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology, and the University of Eldoret. We have attached the list of participants as annex 4. Each participant introduced himself/herself. We set ground rules, participants outlined their expectations and shared. We shared the workshop schedule (Annex 2). We also shared an assessment of participant’s ambitions and challenges. See Annex 5 for compiled responses. These formed a significant part of the training.

The training- workshop
Ms. Millicent SIFUNA, team-leader at HR&S Support Centre Kenya opened the session by welcoming the participants, asking participants and trainers to introduce themselves, and establishing the ground rules. She clearly outlined the expectations from the workshop. The organisation of the workshop, she said, resulted from HR&S offering to present their own, unique and innovative tools ROPE (Real-time, Outcome Planning & Evaluation) and SfC (Strategy for Change) for capacity building and improvement in research infrastructure across institutions. The workshop facilitated interactions among participants. Participants were requested to ask any questions and outline their expectations from the workshop. Describing the methodology for this session, she explained that the current workshop had been structured around evaluation planning. Evaluation planning, she said, explains how we monitor and evaluate how we address our activities and how we intend to use evaluation results for activity improvement and decision-making. Participants introduced themselves and described their current responsibilities and expectations briefly from the workshop. We conducted the workshop in English. Cecilia ÖMAN proceeded with introducing the Strategy for Change (SfC) to participants. She talked about change an carefully explained the different elements of the Strategy for Change. Her sessions lasted nine hours, three days with three hours per day. Each participant was able to outline his/her challenges and ambitions. We discussed these in interactive sessions.

Challenges
Some participants had serious network issues thus could not attend the workshop consistently.

Conclusion
The participants appreciated the programme. Most participants had never attended such type of training.  Participants were enthusiastic about putting what they had learned into practice. Each participant who managed a 10-hour training and presented a SfC that they had developed for their ouw situation, received a certificate.

Recommendation
Participants indicated the following as some of the general workshop recommendations:

• Need for more workshops.
• A little shorter; perhaps a 2hrs per day workshop would have been suitable.
• More speakers. Participant comment “The workshop could have involved more than one presenter in guiding the participants through discussion topics that the participants could gain more than one point of view of explanation.” “Maybe we could have more facilitators.”

Evaluation of the training
Lastly, each participant evaluated the training session, and the details are in annex 1. The evaluation aimed to get participants’ views on training and their recommendations for future training. There were four questions in which question 1 asked participants to provide the impact of the training while question 2 requested participants to cite limitations of the training, and question 3 asked for changes that we could adopt for similar training in the future. Question 4 invited participants to rate the training. We collected ten evaluation reports at the end of the training. Based on the responses from various questions, participants stated the following strength of the training;

• Most participants stated that the methodology was very interactive with a lot of practicum, which enabled full participation and grasping of the content. They noted that the approach was an “eye-opener” on their shortfalls. The reflection encouraged them to apply what they had learned.
• Various participants also mentioned that it was great networking with other participants.
• The lectures and group discussions were at par.
• Some echoed that the workshop helped them get more explicit guidelines on planning and carrying out a research project.

Although most respondents stated that we conducted the workshop well, however, some challenges constituted the weakness attributable to the training. Some participants expressed dissatisfaction in a sense that;

• The number of participants could have been more. One comment was that “it would be interesting if HR&S increases the number of participants so that more people can benefit from such an eye-opening workshop.”
• Participants should be involved in deciding the best time that suits them.

We asked the participants to suggest changes that could be cooperated in the future when conducting similar training. The following were some of the suggestions that;

• “We should reduce the number of training hours per day and days increased to ensure thorough delivery of the content.”

Comments by Cecilia on the evaluation statements from the participants
The webinar was generously offered free of charge by HR&S CEO Cecilia ÖMAN, for the purpose of sharing knowledge about the HR&S tools. HR&S is a social entreprise and not an aid insitutions and thus does not receive aid donations. The HR&S ambition is to encourage academic institutions to request and pay for such training in the future.  We still requested each participants to pay EUR 10 and the fee was transferred to the HR&S Support Centre in Kenya in order to contribute small to the running costs of the Centre. The reason for asking for a small fee was, besides to contribute to costs, to filter out only the serious participants. The webinar was open and the maximum number was considered doable for an efficient webinar was around 40, but only 20 signed up. It will be difficult to convince other speakers to plan, implement and follow-up 10 webinars, free of charge, but a soon as the academic institutions agree to cover costs, more facilitators will be invited.

ANNEX 1: Evaluation form

1. What was most effective to you about the workshop?
2. What was least effective to you about the workshop?
3. Any suggestions for change you would like about the current workshop?
4. Overall, how would you rate the workshop?  Excellent, Very good, Good, Fair, Poor.

ANNEX 2: Research Management workshop schedule