By: Emily Schmidt
December 2021
Introduction
I had no idea that 10 days after our return from Papua New Guinea in March 2020, the world would be challenged to think through new ways to meet, learn, and build partnerships via what would become our new best friend: online communication platforms. The repetitive conversation about which online platform was easier to maneuver, quickly replaced our introductory dialogues about what part of a country one was from, or which languages were spoken. The rich conversations of culture and history that peppered our pre-Covid, day-to-day interactions were swapped with talk of personal strategies to avoid infection and comparisons of different country policies aimed to avoid a Covid surge. While we (literally) lost the human touch of our work, we gained something that may have been waning in our working lives: empathy and patience.
Let’s circle back to empathy and patience towards the end of this blog. Capacity strengthening aims to achieve a variety of objectives. There is the training objective that seeks to build skills and impart knowledge on a variety of topics. However, perhaps the most important elements of capacity strengthening are building partnerships, trust, and a space where questions, contradictions and unexpected results can be explored and debated, often leading to further academic query in a collaborative manner. In other words, it’s a two-way street.
Muted mics and virtual space
But how do you build a virtual space that fosters constructive discussion? This was an unexpected highpoint of virtual training. It turns out that rather than having a perfectly packaged workshop in a hotel conference room, we built training centers out of our living rooms. All of a sudden, we were fumbling over technology and speaking into muted microphones. The playing field became a little more leveled and our interactions a little more human. While perhaps clumsy at first, these unintended ‘ice-breakers’ created an accepting virtual space to learn and interact. While we (usually) have the opportunity to travel to the countries where we work, training participants are often not afforded that opportunity. The virtual working space allowed collaborators and participants to see our working environment and glimpse our lives through living room backgrounds or kitchen tables.
Baseball and online learning
My mother only watches baseball because she can ‘walk away from it and come back later without losing much of the overall game’. This was another unexpected highpoint of virtual training: time and flexibility. An intense, one-week training workshop is like drinking water from a fire hydrant. It also requires government and development partners to take 1 or 2 weeks away from their day-to-day work to fully participate. Last year, under the USAID funded Food Security Policy Research, Capacity, and Influence (PRCI) Innovation Laboratory, Michigan State University MSU, IFPRI, Kasetsart University, and UNESCAP with other partners offered a trade flow analysis training to selected partner institutions in Asia. It was a three week, 2-hour per week training that incorporated a weekly homework. Participants had a week to review skills learned and work on similar exercises from the previous lecture – it was a major success. Virtual learning, especially when recorded, offers a mode of training similar to watching baseball. Participants can join live trainings, walk away for a while, review previously recorded materials, and work on exercises to reinforce skills learned. I think my mom might call that a home run.
I taught an entire lecture…to myself…at 4:30 in the morning
Online teaching and learning is not all rainbows and happiness, let’s be honest. Time differences across continents requires blurry-eyed, coffee-drinking, pajama-wearing meetings. We can all agree it is nice when we don’t have to use our video cameras. However, non-verbal communication is still as important as verbal communication, even when connecting virtually. A video camera is also helpful when confirming whether your internet connection is still functioning. After giving a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation to myself at 4:30am, I learned the value of a second screen with a video feed to see your audience. Without a video feed, I was also unable to gauge participant understanding. In addition, there is less willingness to interrupt for clarification in a virtual platform. Thus, I changed my presenting style to stop every 5-7 slides and just ask for questions or ask the participants a question and take time to discuss any thoughts.
Empathy and patience
How many of us have watched as toddlers run through the background of a meeting or waited while someone juggles computer screens and books to create a functional workspace among their unfolded laundry? This is not Covid-coping; this is life-juggling. We all do it, whether we are training or being trained. While no one would agree that virtual training is the panacea to promoting greater capacity to inform food policy, it does offer us another tool. Covid has given us the opportunity to further develop this tool based on a strong foundation: empathy and patience.
Emily Schmidt is a Research Fellow with IFPRI’s Development Strategy and Governance Division.