Course Description
This course aims to equip graduate students with the necessary concepts and skills to be effective problem solvers, whether as project managers, members of implementation teams or researchers within wider partnerships. Acquired skills will be equally relevant to development and conservation applications and to different sub-themes therein.
Athena Title
CONS & DEV PRACTICE
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
By the end of this semester, students should: 1. Understand the main challenges associated with the fields of conservation and development practice and state-of-the-art thinking and approaches for their management and governance. 2. Have acquired basic skills required of project managers: program management and budgeting, program-level monitoring and evaluation, and institutional learning and change. 3. Have acquired basic skills required of effective frontline facilitators of change: process facilitation, criteria and indicators, action research in support of research-practice and research-policy linkages, adaptive collaborative management, and networked governance. 4. Know how to communicate effectively, including writing for non-academic audiences and the delivery of demand-driven information and information technology. 5. Have a firm grasp of the relationships between social and institutional theory, conservation and development methodologies, and political and logistical constraints. 6. Understand the relationship between course themes and diverse areas of application (e.g., demand-driven development, conservation, community-based natural resource management, payment for ecosystem services, urban sustainability, biofuels, climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation).
Topical Outline
PART 1: DEVELOPMENT AND CONSERVATION CHALLENGES (3 weeks) 1. Course introduction 2. Capacity and political constraints at individual and institutional levels 3. Motivating and sustaining stakeholder interest 4. Power dynamics 5. Managing the understanding-action tension 6. Project life cycles and sustainability 7. Complexity of human and natural systems PART 2: SKILLS FOR FRONTLINE FACILITATORS OF CHANGE (6 weeks) 1. Facilitation 2. Demand-driven development approaches 3. Adaptive collaborative management 4. Action research 5. Criteria and indicators 6. Catalyzing collective action 7. Network/hybrid governance PART 3: SKILLS FOR PROJECT MANAGERS (3 weeks) 1. Program management (technical, human and financial aspects of planning and monitoring) 2. Program-level monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment 3. Institutional learning and change 4. Donor relations PART 4: COMMUNICATION (3 weeks) 1. Lessons learning and documentation in the context of change processes 2. Writing for/presenting to/reaching non-academic audiences