NN45, April 2011
The Geopolitics of Overseas Scholarships & Awards. Old and New Providers, East & West, North & South
REPORT OF TWO NORRAG MEETINGS
By Kenneth King, Editor, NORRAG NEWS
a) Brainstorming Meeting and b) Follow-up Website Meeting
Geneva, 7-8 March 2011 & 31st March-1st April 2011
Email: Kenneth.King@ed.ac.uk
This report covers an initial Brainstorming Meeting to consider the outcomes of the regional review of NORRAG in 2010, and a meeting with the IHEID’s IT contractors to consider the implications of the review for our current website.
1) Activities and governance
The main activity of NORRAG has been, since its launch in 1986, exactly 25 years ago, the production of NORRAG News (NN) and the organisation of NN “spin off” meetings, publications, cluster meetings.
NORRAG has to evolve to reflect the necessity not only to increase the policy outreach of the network but also to revisit NORRAG’s current “membership” as well as management, in order to secure the sustainability and evolution of NORRAG over the next many years.
One of our main concerns, in the brainstorming meeting, has been to differentiate the several different types of reader of NN and members of NORRAG.
2) Membership: site-visitors, active readers, active members, and policy-receivers
Different layers of readership should be distinguished, in order to reflect different expectations of the four different audiences of NORRAG and of NORRAG News (NN) identified in the two meetings:
Website Visitors: the largest group of visitors to the NORRAG website include “spiders” from search engines such as Google, and visitors who just want to check some particular item. They don't want to register for future issues of NN; they are after particular information. They should have full access to all the publications available on the site, including the latest issue of NN in PDF. They should not need to register and provide their profile if their aim is just to visit and read NN (at the moment all of the 25 years of the NN corpus is open to these visitors except for the latest PDF; in future, from NN45 in April 2011, this issue too will be accessible to our large visitor community).
NN Readers: We currently have a substantial group of readers. These probably cover the bulk of the 3,200 individuals who have registered through our home page as of April 2011. We would think of them as visitors to the NORRAG “library”, in Noel McGinn’s phrase. They come from all our different NORRAG constituencies – masters’ students, research students, academics, agency- and government policy people, NGOs, consultants and think tanks. Over 40% are from the South and under 60% are from the North. But if their main concern is just to keep in touch with NORRAG, and read the latest issue of NN, we should not ask them to fill out a membership form. However, as many of them are regular readers, they will want to know when the latest issue of NN is posted on the website; so in future all we shall ask of them is to give three things: their email, their country and the professional status (NGO, academic, consultant, agency or national policy person etc). That way, we can make sure that we email them when a new issue is accessible.
NORRAG Members: Being a member of a network implies contributing to and profiting from a community and its shared work. There could be a series of rights and responsibilities which could be listed for NORRAG members and which could attract a subset of our readers to declare their interest in taking up membership. These would be: readiness to provide NORRAG with their profile; interest to be engaged in face-to-face NORRAG cluster meetings; interest in connecting with other NORRAG members through the networking tool and through the new social networking sites; commitment to contribute to NORRAG NEWS, and to suggest new, relevant themes; readiness to organise the occasional on-line discussion via the NORRAG website.
Of our total readership of 3,200, we would expect around 230 to consider themselves active members of NORRAG, and perhaps a further 550-750 as more than just readers. For instance, 230 readers of NORRAG were sufficiently interested to complete the on-line survey in April-May 2010 (about 8% of the readership at the time). And between 25-30% of the total readership have updated their profiles on our membership data-base; this would be about 900 altogether.
Receivers: The term, receivers, recognises a category of occasional readers who only receive unsolicited email alerts on NORRAG activities (new issues of NN, calls for contributions, meetings announcement, etc.). Receivers stand for a category of influential policy persons, who would not, on their own initiative, visit the NORRAG site, but they might be crucial interpreters of research and of policy issues reported in a particular issue of NN. This kind of person should be sent NN, but should have a way of clicking to say, don't send any more. Receivers are people who could be very influential when a particular issue of policy came up. Members in different countries can propose such Receivers.
The following steps are being considered in order to operationalize these distinctions:
- The new NORRAG website will allow a simple distinction between a) signing up as a reader of NN to get further email alerts. Such readers will provide only their emails, countries of origin and their professional status (e.g. donor agency or academic etc), and b) signing up as a NORRAG member.
- There will be a list of suggested commitments and opportunities for those who want to become members. By accepting the rights and responsibilities associated with being a member they take the voluntary decision to contribute to the collective work of the network;
- There should, eventually, be an email to the whole of the current readership of NORRAG suggesting that the present 3200 people who have already registered for NORRAG should revisit the website and decide whether they would like to become NN readers or NORRAG members;
- Identify, through those who choose to be members, who else should become a receiver.
It will be very important to be aware that in most organisations and associations, the active membership is often a rather small proportion of those who have registered.
3) The crucial role of value chains in active membership
Above, we have talked about possible membership numbers, but active membership of NORRAG is not really a numbers game; it is to do with individuals in institutions recognising that NORRAG is potentially very relevant for their own professional work and contacts. But this relevance can only be fully recognised if the pattern of NORRAG activities is better known. We see there being a “value chain” connecting a series of NORRAG activities. Thus, an issue of NORRAG News is agreed on a particular theme; there is then a meeting held around that thematic issue in a particular country; a form of publication is agreed whether through journals or on-line; this then leads to a further initiative. There could be other examples of value chains, but the key principle is continuity and commitment, and not one-off events.
An example of a value chain can be taken from the GMR 2012 which will be on skills development. Right back to February 2007, NORRAG had been arguing for skills to be treated as an EFA goal, as had been clear in the Jomtien and Dakar conferences. This was finally agreed by the GMR. There was then an on-line consultation about the GMR 2012 earlier this year, and NORRAG members played a key role in commenting on the GMR 2012 Concept Note. NORRAG has also organised a large section of the forthcoming Oxford UKFIET conference on Skills for Employability. NORRAG would then have a special issue of NN in about October 2011 on the Politics of Skills Development. But we should engage meanwhile with the 20 NORRAG members who found the time to contribute to the on-line consultation.
Although NORRAG has organised a lot of national cluster meetings in the last 2.5 years (in Geneva, Bern, Utrecht, New Delhi, Santiago, Cape Town, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Hong Kong, Bamako, Accra, Mexico, Seoul), we shall no longer run such a cluster meeting without a follow-up. The purpose of such meetings is not just to increase the number of NN readers, although that has happened in most of the cities just mentioned. Rather, it is to engage a small number of individuals in engaging with NORRAG in a more direct manner, and to explore with them what should be the follow-up to the cluster meetings.
Another example of the value chain comes from the Oxford Conference just mentioned. There are over 40 people who have sent in abstracts for the NORRAG section of the conference, mentioned above. Most of them are NORRAG members. In terms of value chain, we should contact them now, and explore their views of what could be the outcome of our all coming together in Oxford. What might be the possible follow-ups?
4) Interactivity and outreach
In order to improve both the interactivity within the network and its outreach, the attractiveness of the website should be increased:
- The website should be more user friendly (see further below);
- NN should be re-designed and should be made more easy to read on the computer by using not only the PDF format but also reading devices such as Kindle;
- A shorter version of NN (50 pages) should be translated to both French (as now) and Spanish;
- Relevance of using communication tools such as Facebook, Linked-in and Twitter should be considered based on the experience of other networks such as Panaf (IDRC project), the Development Studies Association of the UK, EADI, and the Royal African Society. RSS. For instance the one-page CVs of members could be held on Linked-in instead of being added to the NORRAG profile.
5) Policy impact
The policy impact of NORRAG activities should be reflected through testimonies, anecdotes and stories of policy makers, rather than through numbers. We could draw upon some of the testimonies which policy makers mentioned in the 2010 mid-term review (the survey and regional reports). If we wanted additional stories of impact and influence, we should target key policy makers in government and in aid agencies and ask them just a couple of questions about impact. It would be critical over these next two years to deliberately accumulate stories about impact and influence, since our funders are obliged to look at the results, the impact and the influence of any funding they have given to NORRAG.
6) Consequences for the NORRAG website
The website was discussed in detail with members of the IHEID’s IT support team on the 31st March meeting. They had developed a possible format for the website. For this meeting a new version of the homepage had been developed by Lama Nusair which took account of the readership/membership distinction discussed above. The revised version has:
- A clear short sharp description in one line or two of what NORRAG is. We would suggest something like: “NORRAG: a Focus and a Forum for the Analysis of Aid and International Policy Development in the Education and Training Sector”
- Strong hooks to encourage both the reading of NN as well as the membership option. It was felt that there could be on the home page short, sharp one-liners to draw people to particular items in the latest issue of NN. These should, ideally, use phrases from some of the most readable and newsworthy articles of the latest or next NN: e.g.”67,000 German and foreign scholars funded worldwide every year” (from NN45). Or there could be a series of rotating images from the last 5 NNs with short sharp comments on the images.
- The idea of using a Mind-Map was mentioned by Claudio Castro, with NORRAG at the centre; and then branches to key themes of NN, such as Higher Education, Knowledge Economy, EFA, Skills could all be opened, and expanded, and even linked to the issues of NN themselves. In addition to listing the titles of NN45 to NN1 as now, there could also be a breakdown of the library of NN by theme. The 13 issues of the Working Group for International cooperation in Skills Development would of course be under Skill Development. The question would be, however, whether such a mind-map would involve extra costs.
- The home page could directly encourage readers to access NN, through one link, but could, through another link on the home page, encourage potential NORRAG members to publish their profile, attend meetings, comment on key drafts of the latest international education & training documents and also of course contribute to the different issues of NN. It could also draw attention to who were some of the most recent contributors to NN. In other words, a click could show the contributors in the latest issue of NN. Equally, a list of a number of 10-20 well-known contributors picked from the last five issues of NN could be a magnet to read or to contribute.
- Future NORRAG cluster meetings should be listed on the site. It will also help the membership category of NORRAG to expand, if we have a list of key meetings when NORRAG will have piggybacking or cluster meetings.
- The new version of the website will need to distinguish our readers from our members.
- Creating this new version of the website is a key NORRAG requirement. A new website is a priority and should be given a funding priority. But we shall need to await the reaction of the IT Cross Agency system to react to our specific needs.
7) Partnerships with other networks and their active members
Over the last two years, 2009-10, there has been the development of a few joint activities with two networks, one in Africa (ERNWACA) and another in Latin America (RedEtis). These activities were aiming both at a more targeted outreach for NN as well as seeking to encourage closer working relationships. In both regions, the readership of NORRAG News has been small, except for Ghana (82) and Nigeria (84) in West Africa, and Chile (18) and Argentina (33) in Latin America. However, as we have said above, the key issue is as much membership as readership. So the question should be: who are the individual readers in Latin America or in West Africa who would want to be more active NORRAG members? The same could be asked of other regions of the world where there are education and training networks. But the challenge is to move beyond the individual coordinators of such networks, who are our main contact points at present, to other members.
8) Identifying active members: a time-line
The key issue for networks is the readiness of individuals to engage with their activities. In our current turning point in NORRAG, we are exploring the key question of who would see themselves as members of NORRAG and not just as readers. This will not be done over-night. We shall first have to renew the website reflecting this distinction amongst the various categories of our readers. Then we shall need to ask ALL our current readers to re-register as readers or as members. That will take time, as most of our busy readers get far too many similar requests! But we expect that before the UKFIET Oxford Conference we shall have a much better idea of this key distinction.
As usual we shall host a NORRAG meeting and reception at the UKFIET Oxford Conference, and take ideas from that meeting forward to our annual strategy meeting the day after Oxford.