If educators have conducted the necessary post programme evaluations and assessments, and have engaged in their own debriefing activities, they will obtain a set of substantial reports and documents containing recommendations (see Preparing Reports).
Even if these have been prepared according to the best possible standards, they will contain a great deal of information that may not be useful for future programmes that will, of necessity, start from a different base than the one that has been evaluated. In addition, those who gather to establish the next round of programmes - whether immediately following the previous programme or a number of years later - may not have time to read all the documentation. A short, pithy document may be prepared as soon as possible that lists "Best Practices and Lessons Learned". This little guide may be the first port of call for future education teams.
How to Do It
It will be therefore be useful to conduct a closure exercise following the presentation of any reports at which a significant number of the important participants in the programme are present. This would include the educator team, representatives of the election authority, and possible representatives of membership or public interest organisations who can represent the interests of the citizens at large. Such an exercize would include presentations of various reports, if there are more than one, and consider various recommendations made to develop a much shorter document that will list a set of statements that can be used in the future by education planners.
Such a list will consist of statements under the theme "best practices and lessons learned" or "principles to be adopted in future programmes". The statements will be composites and categorizations of the various recommendations that are valid for an education programme. They may be grouped under a series of separate topics such as planning, administration and implementation.
Two Key Advantages
- Ownership of the best practices and lessons learned: Future programmes start with the confidence that there is general acceptance of any changes and innovations, or of any alterations in roles and responsibilities of particular offices or organisations. Such confidence is essential if programmes are to get up and running quickly. And this confidence is created both by the development of the set of learning statements and the fact that it has been created by a group of people, not only by an evaluator or educator.
- Summarized and accessible planning statements: Such a document is inevitably a condensed distillation of a range of recommendations. As such it can be turned to with confidence by educator teams preparing for future programmes. It can form the basis of briefings of those developing surveys, focus groups, or field research, and can be submitted to materials producers by fax or e-mail in ways that a full report cannot. Indeed, if it has been prepared with care and documented accurately, it is more likely to be implemented than the more extensive recommendations than often flow from reports.
Keeping the Documentation
All this may be fruitless, however, if the documentation is not kept. In general, it seems to be easier for people to keep books than a short document on a couple of sheets of paper. There is every possibility that either the "best practices and lessons learned" statement will be transformed into a book (obscuring its very purpose) or will be lost in favour of the heavier reports from which it has been distilled.
The best way to ensure its survival is to bind it as a preface or executive summary in project reports; or, if this is not possible, to have it referred to and then bound as an appendix. In some cases, a collection of all reports might be archived as a single bound document or box file, and then such a slim document may be included, preferably as the first of the set of documents.
