The session explored how Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems can move beyond compliance and reporting to foster shared reflection, adaptation, and collaboration across research programmes. Drawing on examples from CLARE, AQUADAPT, and KIX – three initiatives supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) – we discussed what it takes to design MEL systems that are both practical and learning-oriented.

The presentation highlighted several key considerations that guided the development of MEL systems alongside investment in KM platforms:

• Every programme is unique – systems must fit their specific context. 
• Use outcome-focused and actor-centred approaches – and provide the support needed to make them work.
• Start from MEL users’ needs – including both donors and grantees.
• Facilitate learning loops and collective sense-making, not just data reporting.
• Encourage openness, shared ownership, and responsibility in how data is managed and used.
• Set up integrated, bespoke systems that automate routine processes while staying adaptable to change.

Together, the AQUADAPT, KIX, and CLARE experiences illustrated how tailored, integrated MEL systems can help bridge the gap between research and practice – turning data into dialogue and learning into action.

The presentation, “Bridging Communities and Content: Integrated KM for Climate Research Collaboration”, showcased how the Dgroups Foundation supported CLARE in designing and building a modular knowledge management platform that connects people, content, and learning across more than 30 research projects worldwide.

Instead of purchasing a single off-the-shelf solution, the CLARE programme design team agreed with the Foundation team’s recommendation to “buy smart, build light, and stay adaptable.”

The resulting platform integrates familiar tools – WordPress for web and integration with the DSpace repository, Groups.io for collaboration, and ODK for monitoring and learning – into one connected environment. At the core of the collaboration module is email, still the most inclusive and accessible medium for the Programme’s collaborators.

Following the Principles for Digital Development, the platform was co-designed through consultation with Programme partners and built for flexibility, sustainability, and ease of use. It enables CLARE collaborations to share outputs openly, connect through communities of practice, and link evidence to programme-wide learning.

Key takeaways from this specific experience include:

• User voices matter more than assumptions – designing with people, not for them, ensures relevance and adoption.
  
• Buy smart, build light, stay adaptable – combine proven tools rather than reinventing new ones, keeping systems lean and flexible.
  
• Invest early, save later – time spent on consultation, research, and integration upfront reduces long-term recurring costs.
  
• Email remains the most accessible tool for interaction – it continues to be the simplest, most inclusive way to collaborate across contexts.
  
• Visibility of data encourages contributions – when users see how information is used, they are more motivated to share and update it.
  
• Plan for and provide ongoing facilitation and support – platforms thrive when there are people who nurture engagement and connection.

This collaboration demonstrated how an integrated, fit-for-purpose approach can achieve value for money and technically sound systems that are affordable to maintain, adaptable over time, and supportive of user needs.

For the  sessions, Damir Simunic of WA Research prepared a video to show the new look and feel and demo some of the new functionalities of the site.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/17291959]

In his presentation of the new platform, Damir highlighted the following elements:

• The process of  developing and deploying the new platform has been taking much longer than expected; employing world-class designers was a learning process. Nevertheless, we believe the final result was worth the wait.
• The redesign is completely focused on making it easier for administrators to manage groups, as admins are the primary users of the site
• The technical objective of the redesign is to simplify the user interface (for example, number of clicks for common tasks are reduced, ‘announcements’ feature is now merged with ‘discussions’) and modernize the platform to use the most modern browser technologies available (HTML5, CSS3, etc), while still working for older browsers.
• In the process, we wanted to make Dgroups beautiful for admins, to make them proud and happy to show it off to their colleagues.
• Thanks to new technologies, the platform elegantly scales from large desktop screens to mobiles form factors – Dgroups’s first entry into mobile space;
• The video show off some of the new user interface features like drag&drop attachments and pasting; large user avatars; significantly simplified means of adding new members; modern tabbed design, and many more

.

In the Q&A part of the session, some of the issues discussed comprised the following:

• Track status of messages: this will be possible with the new design, similar as it is now to track invitations to groups;
• Stats and tracking usage: This has always been high on any admin’s priority list, and the new design will provide the technical background needed to implement many of these statistics in the near future;;
• Improved options for content sharing: “hidden” urls for RSS feeds to allow server-side subscriptions without the need for passwords;
• improve Dgroups integration with other sites and platforms, a API will also be further development
• Compatibility with older browsers: The new site is designed to benefit from the most modern browsers. However, Dgroups has always been about inclusion, and it will also work on older browsers; obviously, features that only new browsers provide won’t be available on older ones.

We’ll soon provide the link to the test site to all Dgroups administrators. The date for the full roll out on the new platform will depend on the results of this test phase, the feedback received and the improvements required but if all goes as planned, by end of January 2011 the new site will be launched.

It is very important to note that the January launch is about modernizing the user interface – new additions will be coming continuously during the whole year and beyond.

There have been a number of important developments in the past few months.  The new Board of the Foundation has been busy since its election in April 2009, while WA Research has keep on improving the platform and its performances – unfortunately in both cases the communications have not been at the same level as the efforts and the work done. Let’s then try to catch up and take a snapshot of how things are at the moment.

Numbers don’t lie..
As of  June 2010, Dgroups counts 2035 active communities. During the past 20 weeks, more than 70 new groups were created, with average frequency of 3.5 per week. As evidence of increased use of Dgroups, this year is seeing the weekly creation surpassing 15 groups per week, which did not happen in 2009. Equally, number of new groups per week rarely falls under five per week. As of June 2010, these groups are used by 139.336 registered users, up from 113.619 since February 2010.

Thanks to the work of Damir and colleagues at WA Reasearch, the performance of Dgroups has been improving significantly over the past months. The service is stable, most email delivery problems are resolved. A good email sending reputation has been established with large Internet service providers, and we are seeing less and less spam blocks. Email delivery to users is now almost instantaneous, even though weʼre sending about 2.3 million messages per month…

Technical development and web user interface redesign
A large number of usability and stability improvements have been deployed too – and the user interface has been translated and made available also in Portuguese, Mandarin, and Russian.

However, the most important think is the one yet to come: a major visual redesign is currently in progress, and we have great expectations from the preview we could see! A staging web site should be made available during the next months, and we hope to deployed into production in Autumn should there be no major objections or problems. Once the new design is final and in production, we’ll focus on adapting organizational skins to fit the new look and feel.

Support system
We have reintroduced the old support system that proved to work fine in Dgroups1. This is a cascade support system, where users rely on groups admins; admins on the admins peer-support group and creators; creators on their peers and on WA Research as last option. The email address support@dgroups.org has been closed, but we’ll make sure we’ll have a good help file (on the Dgroups help Wiki) and a lively Admins Community.

Partnership and annual meeting 2010
As a follow up from the 2009 members meeting, we are working on the finalisation of several legal and policy documents – such as Terms of Use, Creation Policy etc. We are also drafting a new business plan, and try to ensure that the level of membership stays high enough for sustaining the existence of Dgroups as a whole. Still lot to do needs to be done in this reagard, and we hope that different members can play an active role in this matter. A milestone in this sense will be the next Partners’ meeting, currently planned for the second half of November.

Future Blogging

When I  logged in onto the blog dashboard I saw one comment awaiting  moderation, saying:

“It seems this blog died??? not sure if there is a new blog. the wiki too seems rather dated”

Well, we’ve listened. From now on we will resume regular blogging. In the next post we’ll explain the new management and coordination arrangements for this year and continue with the updates. In the meantime, you’re very welcome to drop by here, and share with us your ideas about Dgroups, what you like and dislike, how you use it and what’s in it for you. We’ll do our best to keep the conversation going, and ensure transparency in the way things progress.

Pier Andrea Pirani

Euforic Services

• Public interface
  From the Dgroups homepage, users can now login to their groups or join new groups in a much clearer way.
• Directory of groups
  When clicking on ‘Join a group’ users access the public directory of groups and can see all the groups created in Dgroups. From here they can join or request membership to the different groups.Still missing – but in the pipeline – is a search function that allows to browse the directory more easily, also filtering by subject or region.  WA Research is currently working on a this and it should be soon released.

• Russian and Chinese interface
  Dgroups is now available also in Chinese and Russian. Thanks to FAO and Yuriy Nesterov in particular for volunteering to translate!
  
• Admin can edit users profile and reset password
  As possible in D1 and long-awaited in D2,  groups administrators can now edit member data. By clicking on any member of a group where you’re an admin, you will notice green bar with ‘edit’ and ‘edit public profile’ links above member information. You’ll also see the ‘reset password’ link, to send your users a new password to login onto Dgroups.

More functionalities are currently being developed and tested; toghether with working to ensure 100% reliability in the email distribution, these functionalities include the possibility to track the status of different messages, statistics and bouce report, improved site navigation and usability.

We hope to announce some of these rather soon. If you have feedback and suggestions on how to further improve Dgroups, please drop a comment below!