Now, as Emerge moves into its final quarter, we are offering two ways in which you can inform the evaluation.

1.      We are looking for projects to be involved in our final round of interviews, which will take place before Christmas. This is the third round of interviews and this time we are looking for projects who

–        have not been involved in previous rounds of interviews with the AI or UE teams

–        have received funding to a maximum of £ 50 000 for their Emerge project

We can offer projects £1000 to cover the costs associated with two of their team members’ participating. This is intended to cover the costs of members’ time spent being interviewed as well as follow up reading and reviewing of the interview transcripts, reviewing the story outcomes and the (optional) possibility of contributing short selected sound bites for the Appreciative Inquiry publication site.

2.      We are looking for data collectors to gather snippets and stories of members’ experiences and achievements within the Emerge community and their funded projects. This role is open to all, even if you’ve already participated in the interviews. The idea is to uncover examples of community engagement, however small, which have not been recorded through the more formal interviews. You might choose to write your own story about being part of Emerge, browse the blogs for examples, chat to people from other projects or attend project events and then send us your thoughts. There is funding for £400 per day and you can negotiate how many days you want to work.

If you are interested in either of these roles please contact Patsy Clarke on p.clarke@brookes.ac.uk

These show that the event was rated positively by delegates and was used to: network, develop ideas, build teams for projects and clarify the user driven approach.  The event has prompted community members to make contact with others, join in and undertake their own community activities.

You read a full summary of the feedback over at the appreciative inquiry area on the Moodle site. 

I've had a go at this myself and below is the agreed record of a conversation with Frances Bell as an example. This is just one way of collecting and writing up a story – please don’t feel limited to doing it this way.

Frances Bell’s story

Frances has enjoyed watching the Emerge site grow from an initially empty site to achieving a critical mass of contributors.

The most effective part for her has been the blog posts which roll on and off the front page quite quickly. She especially values the posts which are made directly to the Emerge group rather than those which are fed in from another blog. Reading blog posts has helped her to make contact with people she hasn’t met, as well as following the activities of those she knows already.

Frances likes the way the Emerge network is developing a variety of ways for the members to communicate, especially the wall and the podcasts.

When asked to identify a particular instance, Frances related an exchange she had started about blended learning (link here). Frances had made a deliberately provocative posting and was pleased with the prompt and detailed responses received. What made this a moment of best practice for her was that a slightly edgy exchange developed into better understanding. Through the comments, she and George explored their commonalities and differences, and he showed her how to insert a picture from an outside document into messages.

Finally, we talked about what Emerge might become and how we might get there. For Frances, the purpose of joining the community was to find other people to work with. To achieve this, it helps to be visible and you have to think about how to present yourself. We also need to be open with each other and share our ideas – and that is harder to do. Frances suggested that ideally Emerge should prompt discussions of what is happening here and what incentives we might need to encourage more open sharing.

We thought it would be good timing to start to bring together members who are interested in the evaluation process. This new 'appreciative inquiry' community is for discussion of how we are undertaking the evaluation and of course for suggestions and offers of help. If you have an interest in evaluation, and appreciative inquiry in particular, please do join.

thanks

Rhona.