The IDEAS Guide is intended for organisations and people who are doing small media and communication projects. ‘IDEAS’ refers to Innovating Designing Evaluating and Applying to Small-scale. The IDEAS Guide leads users through the process of designing a project, and thinking about the project’s evaluation, with a focus on how to do useful evaluation for learning and continual project improvement. It is designed to cater for a range of different skill levels in evaluation.
The Facilitators’ Guide was developed to accompany the IDEAS Guide to help facilitators run workshops to effectively support capacity development for individuals working in grassroots and community organisations who might have little or no experience of evaluation. It may also be helpful for more experienced practitioners.
The IDEAS Guide and the Facilitators’ Guide are co-created resources, developed with feedback and contributions from media and communication practitioners as part of an action-research initiative. The co-creation process included two workshops where the tools were trialled and developed at different stages of the project.
The guides were developed in the context of a specific program (the PACMAS Innovation Fund) in the Pacific, however, the authors hope that guides can be adapted for use beyond this original context.
An overview of the IDEAS Guide launch written by co-author Jessica Noske-Turner can be found at: http://c4dnetwork.apps-1and1.net/the-ideas-guide-learning-and-evaluating-at-a-small-scale-launch-of-new-c4d-resource/