From the Community Toolbox: Two Practical Tools for Organizing and Tracking Learning Processes

Published in

FSN Network

3 min readSep 30, 2022

By: Amy Leo, Senior Adaptive Management Specialist, IDEAL

Whether their title is “Strategic Learning Lead,” “MEAL Manager,” or something else, Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) learning champions are skilled at translating the broad concept of learning into practice for their teams. Recently, members of the Strategic Learning and Knowledge Sharing peer community, facilitated by IDEAL, have been discussing and sharing how they manage the process of implementing learning agendas, i.e., answering learning questions. If you are involved in learning and adaptive management and love a good spreadsheet, this blog is for you!

A group of men and women sit around a table in discussion at a conference. — Photo Credit: Kim Jurczyk / Save the Children

Below are descriptions of two tools created by Maria Alemu, CLA Technical Advisor working on the Ifaa RFSA in Ethiopia with Catholic Relief Services. Click on the links below to download them as Excel files and adapt them for your own use. Thank you, Maria, for sharing these tools.

1) Learning Questions Prioritization and Planning Template

This tool was developed during the Ifaa’s Refine and Implement inception workshop in which all partners came together to discuss their learning agendas and learning priorities. It was prompted by a need to prioritize research questions and plan how to answer them.

The partners used this spreadsheet to compile, collaboratively prioritize, and narrow down their learning questions. Then, MEAL staff consulted with technical leads of the respective sectors to populate columns on how the research questions will be answered, such as via existing resources or an analysis of existing data.

After populating the spreadsheet during the refinement period, Maria’s team reviewed it during the first round of clustering the research questions, during the development of statements of work for formative research, and whenever team members wanted to introduce new learning questions.

The spreadsheet links learning questions with their respective sectors in Ifaa, the current relevancy of the question, the secondary information that is available to answer the question, and a strategy for addressing information gaps before and during implementation.

→ Recommended uses:

Prioritization of learning questions
Tracking how learning questions will be answered

Click here to download a blank copy of this spreadsheet.

Screenshot of the spreadsheet used to prioritize and track learning questions. The top row is blue and has the following headers: Sector, School, Still needed?, Secondary, Fill BEFORE implementing, and Fill WHILE implementing. The left column is green and has two sample sectors, both of which are Ag. Production. The rest of the spreadsheet is filled out with responses to the prompting questions in the top row. — Screenshot of the spreadsheet used to compile, prioritize, and narrow down learning questions.

2) Learning Agenda Study and Research Tracking Matrix

This spreadsheet was designed to keep track of the many steps involved in managing studies that contribute to answering learning questions. There is a row for each study and columns for tracking the status of each step in the process — from inception to final approval. Maria developed this spreadsheet as her team started drafting statements of work for the research studies and updates this spreadsheet at least once a week.