Training of Trainers for the Building Capacity to Use Research Evidence Program

Policymakers in Morocco and around the world have the mandate, resources, and authority to make decisions that affect millions of citizens. Policy decisions that are informed by evidence can make a significant contribution to improving people’s lives. Creating a “culture of evidence” in which evidence-informed policymaking is the norm requires establishing a common understanding of data and evidence, and the role they can play in crafting strong policies.
 
From March 23rd – April 2nd, 2021, the Morocco Employment Lab will be hosting  a virtual Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop. The workshop is intended to equip Moroccan instructors to teach EPoD’s Building Capacity to Use Research Evidence (BCURE) blended learning curriculum, with the goal of improving the technical skills and motivation needed to increase data and evidence use among policymakers. Since 2013, the BCURE program has been delivered to thousands of trainees in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, and others. With this upcoming  ToT workshop, MEL will be officially launching  the BCURE program in Morocco, with a goal of reaching a similar scale.
 
The program is expected to attract over 50 instructors from Moroccan government agencies, universities, and civil society organizations. Participating institutions are supposed to include Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Université Ibn Tofaîl Kénitra, Mohammed V University, and Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l'Administration (ENSA), among others. The training will draw on examples from different policy domains, moving beyond MEL’s focus on labor. Such breadth of content and wide stakeholder inclusion are part of MEL’s strategy to contribute to a broad culture of evidence in labor market policy and beyond.
 
Teaching faculty will include Janina Matuszeski and Dan Levy, both of EPoD and the Harvard Kennedy School. Session topics will cover:

• An overview of the BCURE training program on data and evidence use for policy decisions;
• The value and demands of blended learning, including self-paced learning, scalability of online instruction, data collection, and data-driven teaching;
• Using data dashboards to analyze learner response data from the BCURE online units and incorporate knowledge from this analysis into their teaching;
• Customizing lessons around BCURE online units to include learning materials and/or examples relevant to their country and institutional contexts;   
• Strategies for addressing key challenges in teaching policymakers;
• A summary of MEL’s ongoing evaluations of labor market interventions in Morocco. 

In addition to faculty lectures, the workshop will include time for focused group work and intensive practice teaching sessions, in which participants will practice using BCURE tools and content to customize lessons for a mock audience of their peers.

Following the workshop, the MEL team will be meeting with institutions to plan for their own BCURE deployments, beginning in Summer 2021. Follow-up meetings will be  focusing around supporting individual instructors as they prepare to teach BCURE content to university students and civil servants, among other policy actors. 

Speakers

Janina Matuszeski
Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
 
Dan Levy
Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
 
Amelia Knudson
Research and Training Manager, Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at Harvard Kennedy School
 
Charlotte Tuminelli
Senior Training Manager, Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at Harvard Kennedy School
 
Rema Hanna
Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies, Harvard Kennedy School 
Director, Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at Harvard Kennedy School
 
Hana Lakhdar Ghazal
Deputy Director of Morocco Employment Lab at J-PAL Middle East and North Africa
 
Florencia Devoto
Director of Morocco Employment Lab at J-PAL Middle East and North Africa