CORE Net

A Case for Design-led Facilitation for Network Building

Without any significant precedent of collaborative work across themes and formats, CORE Net was able to bring together diverse actors with varied interests to step away from their sectoral silos and exchange learnings. Especially in Communities of Practice that are emergent and open-ended, we have found that design plays an important role in helping surface shared values and motivations. Iteration and storytelling-led approaches were helpful in best responding to the emergent needs of the researchers and research users. User-centred design methods created a safe space for members to engage and learn with curiosity and openness.

Collaboration Norms: In a network with members belonging to such diverse sectors and scales, design-led facilitation allowed us to establish roles and expectations for the network based on the interests and bandwidth of different members. Through a series of co-creation workshops in July 2020 with invited members, we arrived at the guiding principles, value propositions, and collaboration norms for the network.

Spectrum of Participation: The collaboration norms workshops also helped identify that participation from the members would likely be along a spectrum based on their interests and availability. It was also established that their location along this spectrum would also likely change over time.

Working Groups: We mapped the journey for network members to form thematic working groups to move towards closer collaboration and coordination. Different platforms and mediums were used across different functions and engagement — Slack for sharing updates informally, the CORE Net Web Platform as the online repository for member projects & resources, Coffee Hours as internal sessions that were used to share completed/ongoing projects and questions, as well as conferences, special events, newsletters and social media. Quicksand also took on the role of anchoring evidence synthesis and created summary notes for various lines of work on request.

The emergent and urgent needs arising from the COVID-19 pandemic significantly contributed to the willingness of research practitioners to share and engage with each other more openly. For the many complex challenges that face us today, we find that the role of design-led facilitation for network building is more important than before.

Reflections from Building Communities of Practice

The role of the Secretariat of Communities of Practice evolves rapidly based on the changing needs of the community.

Over two years, the CORE Net Secretariat adapted to the emergent needs of the community within the broader ambit of network facilitation. This included framing conversations, collating and presenting information, organising and moderating sessions and managing participation. A defining value of design-led facilitation is constantly adapting to best serve the needs of the network members.

Our primary role was to hold space for evolving conversations that reflected the temporal needs of researchers and research audiences.

The role of different members is likely to evolve over time within Communities of Practice, based on their interest, incentives, and bandwidth.

With the CORE Net Collaboration Norms workshops, we were able to establish how the level of involvement among different members is likely to vary based on their scale and availability. Through the journey of the two years, we discovered that participation was often higher when the network activities aligned with what partners members already wanted to focus and collaborate on and amplify.

The role of different members is likely to evolve over time within Communities of Practice, based on their interest, incentives, and bandwidth.

With the CORE Net Collaboration Norms workshops, we were able to establish how the level of involvement among different members is likely to vary based on their scale and availability. Through the journey of the two years, we discovered that participation was often higher when the network activities aligned with what partners members already wanted to focus and collaborate on and amplify.

Members within Communities of Practice appreciate clear expectations on time and effort for their engagement.

Many members were most engaged when they could clearly understand their input and if the output was tangible (a paper presentation, panel discussion, etc). However, cross-disciplinary collaborative work can often be emergent and responsive and would need more patient engagement from members.

Applied Learnings

In conclusion, CORE Net demonstrated the value of design-led facilitation in fostering collaboration and building proactive communities. By bridging diverse sectors and encouraging open exchange, the network was able to apply user-centred approaches in building effective Communities of Practice. The insights gained from CORE Net highlight the importance of evolving roles, clear engagement expectations, and active involvement from network champions.

Since working on CORE Net, Quicksand has gone on to build and facilitate many other Communities of Practices, applying our reflections and learnings from this project to subsequent engagements. These include GenderCollab in partnership with Oxford Policy Management supported by BMGF, and the Indian Alliance for Public Health Preparedness in partnership with the Precision Health Platform; both these network partners were members of the CORE Net community.