Implementation of Propel in DIME's monitoring, evaluation and learning processes

Brief project background

The M&E coordinator uses the Propel platform to capture programme and organisational learning. Propel was embedded into the Habesha Project’s operations to enhance learning and knowledge management. The platform enables the programme to track key lessons, document experiences, and consolidate knowledge across teams and projects, building a valuable repository of actionable insights.

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Digital integration for Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning aims at bringing better efficiency and effectiveness to projects. Central to this would be integration of digital platforms such as Propel, in relation to capturing of learnings, reflection, reporting, and adaption. DIME is in a process of change and Propel has been initiated to help in this process regarding two key areas specifically: their recruitment processes and the assessment of the educational programmes.

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This use case will cover the implementation, underlining challenges and progress in the context of these two areas of integration for Propel.

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The challenge

The programme has evolved, and its processes have had to change to address the changing needs of the programme, the organisation and the refugee students accessing higher education. Due to this, the selection process of students has been adapted to ensure not only the competitiveness of the process but also to ensure that it is streamlined and standardised across the two projects.

The programme team noticed that throughout the recruitment process a lot of feedback is collected from the students as well as the team themselves collect a lot of observations and insights along the way of what works and what did not, supported by the M&E and reporting processes of the project.

However, so far these observations and learnings were not documented systematically. Hence, it was very difficult for the programme team to get an overview of the learnings, including what is working well and what is not, ad use this gained knowledge to take decisions about improving the recruitment process.

Key challenges

- No guided, systematic and continuous way to capture learnings.

- No standardised process or method for capturing learnings.

- No shared place to collect, aggregate and analyse their learnings.

- No easy way to build on the gained knowledge to inform programme improvements.

Stakeholders

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The programme team; the target group, specifically, the students going through the recruitment process; the M&E coordinator; the organisation’s management.

The impact of Propel

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Currently, the programme team together with the organisation’s M&E coordinator was in the process of developing the evaluation report for the programme, to reflect on what has been done so far, share insights among the organisation and ensure that results and reflections can inform strategic decisions about the way forward and inform effective adaptations to the recruitment process.

Impact and results

At DIME under USCRI, we have integrated Propel into their operations to enhance organisational learning and knowledge management processes. Propel serves the programme and organisation as a dynamic platform that enables them to systematically capture, analyse, and apply insights from programme activities. Through Propel, key lessons learned can be tracked, experiences documented, and knowledge synthesised across teams and projects, creating a rich repository of actionable intelligence.

Data-Driven Decision Making: Creating organisational knowledge

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Propel has become central to the DIME’s efforts in building organisational knowledge. By capturing real-time feedback and data from the field, the team can identify patterns and trends that inform decision-making. The platform helps the team distil this information into clear, structured knowledge that is easily accessible across the organisation. This knowledge-sharing capability ensures that DIME’s teams, whether at HQ or in the field, are aligned and informed, enabling them to avoid repeating past mistakes and to refine their strategies based on evidence and experience.

Adaptive Management and Sustainability: Enhancing programme outcomes

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The insights gained through Propel are instrumental in helping refine the current programme model. Recent results have shown that initial expectations were not fully met, prompting a re-evaluation of the approach. Propel aids the programme team in systematically reflecting on what worked and what didn’t, providing a clear analysis of successes and challenges. This structured reflection informs the way forward, helping the team make evidence-based adjustments to the programme model. Propel’s ability to facilitate continuous learning and adaptation is key to the strategy of reworking the model to improve future outcomes.

Learning and innovation

Lessons learned

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Propel can be used by a key stakeholder, such as the M&E coordinator and/or the whole programme team. In the case of DIME, we decide to take a gradual approach during which we first set up Propel with the M&E coordinator who then independently started feeding Propel with their findings and using its insights for reporting to the other team members involved and support the business case for expanding the use of Propel in the organisation.

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As team members are often busy and need quick and easy ways to capture learnings, we are currently exploring how we can simplify the knowledge capturing process of Propel based on the feedback we received from the DIME team. Additionally, we learned about the importance of including multiple datasources, such as reports. We are therefore looking into enabling the combination of different data sources in Propel.

Scalability and next steps

So far, Propel has been fully integrated in the Habesha Project and has been established as an important element for learning, reflection and adoption. From here, Propel can be expanded to USCRI’s other projects to establish one shared, dynamic space for knowledge and learning, serving as the organisation’s smart memory.