a (policy) brief story

A major project that I am working on at my internship is a national e-learning program for Kenya, which aims to equip all public primary schools (starting with grades 1 & 2) in the country with tablets and laptops so that students can learn essential ICT skills for the 21^st century.

As I mentioned in the previous post, before coming to Kenya, I had written my policy brief on this particular project in order to familiarize myself with the national context. It turned out that my host organization had signed an agreement with the government to help with teacher capacity development for this national e-learning project. As a result of this partnership, I was involved in this project as soon as I started the internship – attending meetings with ministers, content developers, teacher trainers and other partners, going through project documents, and preparing for a teacher training workshop that is going to take place next week. Thanks to the policy brief, it didn’t take long before I understood the current progress of the project. It also didn’t take long for me to discover some discrepancies between what had been planned and what had actually been implemented. As my recommendation section has pointed out, and I cite (Guo, 2016) :-), insufficient capacity is a major barrier to timely implementation of the plan.

I asked my supervisor some questions I had about the project. As he was surprised that I seemed to know something about it, I told him I had actually written a policy brief on it. Then of course he asked to read it. Then of course I got nervous and told him that “my online research might not be comprehensive enough” (so-called: managing expectations). He said it’s fine he just wanted to see a fresh perspective. So I emailed the paper to him, thinking that was probably the end of the story.

Several days later, at our team meeting, a colleague working in the Education sector greeted me:”I read your policy brief and I like it!” Surprised, I saw my supervisor giving out printed copies of my paper to the team. He commented that it was a good research which correctly pointed out many challenges the project is experiencing – thank you Dr. Wagner and your ICT M&E framework – “as if written by someone in Kenya”. He also suggested that it would be even better if the ICT competency framework (developed by my host organization) was included as one of the recommendations.

A few days later, I went with my supervisor to town for a meeting with education experts from a partnering nonprofit organization. The meeting was about teacher training and the use of ICT in Uganda, where the partner organization has done work. They are now looking in Kenya to see if they can find existing models to learn from. When the meeting was over, my supervisor suggested to them that I had written a policy brief on the Kenyan ICT project, and they expressed interest in reading it. Then of course I got even more nervous. Unexpectedly, my email sending the policy brief was responded within just half an hour with remarks complimenting on the review, analysis and references – “these references are always useful to have – so your research is great for all of us”.

That was indeed one of the moments I felt I was #AddingValues – being able to contribute academically to the work of the practitioners, as well as knowing my Master’s capstone does not remain as merely a school assignment.  #ThankyouIEDP

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As of now…

My supervisor and I recently had a conversation about my scope of work for the remaining weeks, and he said:

“I like your writing, so I am going to exploit you a little more by giving you an extra assignment – I want you to write a project document for us before you leave.”

#ThankyouIEDP

(Now where did I save the technical proposal….??)