Leveraging Portfolio Power in a Virtual World through Peer Learning
There’s been a lot of buzz about peer learning in many global sectors including climate change, humanitarian response, and international development. At its core, peer learning is about connecting people facing similar challenges to one another so that mutually beneficial learning can be exchanged. Within the context of international development, it has been lauded as a way to “do development differently” due to the way it centers implementers’ exchange with one another, flipping donor-oriented learning and communication models on its head and breaking down silos between, as well for the promise of better outcomes for aid investments.
When COVIDaction was launched, we structured the programme to go beyond the provision of funds. We assumed at the start of the work that a blended package of support where small grants were provided to innovators in conjunction with technical support would be key to generating catalytic impact. While all innovators received 1:1 coaching from a member of the COVIDaction team, most technical assistance was customized according to the needs of each sub-theme within COVIDaction. One of the approaches the COVIDaction team was eager to test was peer-to-peer learning. Each theme had different approaches to getting grantees to engage with one another. One of the approaches explored in the Resilient Health System (RHS) theme, where a large cohort were facing similar challenges, was an implementer-focused approach to peer learning with a formal methodology and curriculum to center sessions around common challenges.
Curriculum design
We knew we wanted to deliver sessions that provided much more than light, virtual networking — we wanted to facilitate shared learning. It seemed that a series of sessions, each 1–2 hours and held over Zoom, would work best for us. This kept things lean, we went with an approach that wouldn’t require a lot of staff time maintaining social media platforms, WhatsApp groups, or other ongoing methods of connection. Next came the challenge of figuring out what we wanted to learn about together. To identify topics for the peer learning sessions, we used a systematic approach to developing a learning agenda — which we’ll discuss later. We also decided that due to the technical nature of the learning questions, we needed to bring in some outside expertise.
So what did our final peer learning curriculum look like? We put together a series of four sessions which covered business model development, identifying customer needs and behaviors, and engaging governments to integrate new technologies into health systems.
Each session contained 3 elements:
1. An expert-led presentation that both introduced the topic and provided helpful tools and possible solutions to the common challenges in the particular subject area.
2. Presentations from RHS themselves on areas within their programming where they had learnings to share on the topic.
3. Networking opportunities through large and small group discussions in order to strengthen relationships in the RHS cohort.
As we went, we gathered feedback from grantees about what was working well — or not — in the sessions, and iterated our approach along the way. Now that the COVIDaction RHS programme has concluded, we want to share the key learnings that emerged for us vis-a-vis a short list of top tips for implementing peer to peer learning in development programming.
Learning 1: Identify questions being asked across many projects.
Peer learning works best when everyone in the group is facing or has faced a similar challenge. Another way of thinking about this is looking for patterns in where grantees are “getting stuck”.
We didn’t have any time to lose, so we used a systematic method for assessing common learning needs in the RHS cohort. Our strategy for doing this was having teams walk through the steps between where they were at and the outcomes they wanted to achieve by the end of the project. We had them highlight each step along the way and the challenges that they would face in reaching each new milestone. We called this a results chain. Where additional information or technical expertise was needed to overcome a challenge, we crafted a learning question. For example, many grantees identified the need for additional support with developing a sustainable business model for the continuation of the service after the funding from us ended.
When a particular learning question was shared by at least half of our grantees, then we knew we had a promising topic for our session. This meant when we ran our sessions the topics were relevant to a wide variety of grantees, and there were a lot who had experience overcoming these challenges.
Learning 2: Convene outside experts that can provide technical framing
Each one of our sessions begin with a 10 to 15 minute presentation from a subject matter expert on the topic that we were discussing that day. We saw several ways that this approach delivered value. First off, it helped get everyone on the same page about the topic at hand. Importantly, it provided context on the theory and strategies on the topic. This proved instrumental, helping coalesce the group around common language and topics before delving into peer-to-peer exchange. The experts also usually had very helpful frameworks, tips, and tools that the grantees could take and use right away to start solving the challenges they were facing. It also created a touch point for further problem solving, as we had some grantees request one-on-one coaching from these experts following the session.
We saw the value of this framing most poignantly the one time it was missing. For one session, the expert had tech issues and had to give the technical framing at the end of the session, after we had already broken into small groups that were organised by specific technical themes and challenges. We observed confusion around the technical topics being discussed in each room, which made the sessions less effective. This revealed to us in a new way just how valuable this expert framing had always been in setting the ground for the additional activities that we did later in the sessions.
Learning 3: Have peer learning participants present their own stories
We have some thoughts on how to enhance the exchange between peers where perspectives and presentations from grantees are most useful. For each session, we looked across the portfolio and looked for innovators who had success stories within the particular topic we were presenting on, whether this story occurred during the funding period or prior. We asked them to put together a presentation concisely synthesizing what they did in the key learnings from what they did.
The grantees who presented told us time and time again how preparing these presentations helped them reflect more systematically on the learnings that they had developed from their experience which they often understood implicitly but had never put pen to paper about to express or share with others. In this way, our peer learning agenda multiplied the amount of documented learning happening within the COVIDaction, which otherwise would have never been recorded.
Learning 4: Peer learning requires more facilitation than you might think — but the outcome is worth it.
While running a few Zoom sessions may sound like a light lift, this approach did require a fair bit of work behind the scenes. The most time consuming aspect — going through a results chain process to identify shared challenges — was the most fundamental to our success. Each session required us to think ahead, too. We had to identify each speaker and convene with them about what they were presening and how it would connect with what other session speakers would present. We thought about how each session could set up learning and build to the next, and had to be creative and flexible with our planning to iterate our approach based on what worked.
However, the time and energy investment is worth it. Put quite simply, peer learning works to deliver impact. We heard time and time again in our endline survey about the value of peer learning. Forty percent of RHS grantees rated peer learning as the most valued aspect of the programme, even more so than the funding that they received.
Some of them came away with specific new ideas or tools that they were ready to apply to their work.
The [peer learning] session on government engagements gave insights on how to improve engagements with [our] MOH champion.
Peer learning helped us understand better how to handle/create customer personas.
Others expressed a more general value in the safe space for problem solving in networking.
The peer learning sessions were incredibly valuable and gave us a safe space to problem solve, learn from each other and increase our understanding of our product and our customers.
[Peer learning provided] networking and learning new ideas and areas of improvements
We are excited to check in later on our grantees to capture how peer learning led to longer-term impacts on their work.
Your turn?
Grant managers in international development are uniquely positioned to be peer learning conveners as they likely have relationships with both the innovators at the frontline scattered across the world as well as subject matter experts that can frame learning topics. While grant cycles may be time-constrained and formal peer learning programming will come to an end, the relationships to one another and organizational capacity that innovators form through peer learning could very well extend beyond the duration of the program.
Based on what we learned, we think grant managers can and should create innovative peer networks within their portfolios for three reasons:
1) It’s highly valued by recipients.
2) It creates networking opportunities that can make the entire industry stronger.
3) (Most importantly) it improves the work! That means greater development impact!
Do you have experience with peer learning? What have YOU learnt about peer to peer exchange?
