As an aid practitioner, you often work in complex contexts in which you have to make critical decisions despite many uncertainties. Scenario building and planning can help you make these decisions.
This free, short course is designed to help aid and development practitioners, to make informed decisions, especially critical and strategic decisions, when working in complex and changing contexts. Scenario building and planning will allow you to better manage uncertainties and enhance your opportunities to build better futures.
This course has been developed as a collaboration between the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership at Deakin University and the Context Analysis and Foresight Unit (CAFU) at Save the Children.
- Course delivery and learning experience
Entirely digital learning experience on dedicated, secure learning platform (Thinkific).
- Duration
2–4 hours.
- What you get
Practitioners will learn how to make informed decisions, especially critical and strategic decisions, when working in complex and changing contexts.
This is a non-accredited free short course. Participants can download a certificate of completion upon finishing the course.
About the course
Scenario Building in Complex Contexts
After taking this online course, you will know what scenario building is, which steps to take to build robust scenarios, what to expect from scenarios, and how to use them for strategic decision-making.
Building scenarios is not the end goal, it is a tool to achieve collective or organisational objectives. Scenarios can, for example, help strengthen response planning processes to ensure that programmes and strategies are more forward-looking and adaptive to change.
Course contents
- Introduction – What are scenarios and why are they important?
- Module 1 – Prerequisites to build exploratory scenarios
- Module 2 – Knowledge mapping
- Module 3 – Assumptions and hypotheses
- Module 4 – Building the scenarios
- Module 5 – Impact analysis and scenario-based planning
- Conclusion – Co-writing the future
Who we teach
This course is intended for anyone working as an aid practitioner in the humanitarian and development sector.
It might be of more relevance to those working in policy, preparedness or strategic planning, or any function which aims at supporting programmatic and strategic decision-making with contextual expertise. This course is also designed for future aid professionals, who want to join the sector with strong analytical tools on hand.
How you learn
The methodology included in this training is based on best practice in the humanitarian sector as recommended by humanitarian needs analysis and assessment specialists such as the ACAPS (initially known as The Assessment Capacities Project), Inter-Agency Research and Analysis Network (IARAN), and others.
Real life examples and videos of practitioners sharing their own experience throughout the course will put its content in perspective. By developing your ability to navigate uncertain futures and adapt to fast-changing environments, this course ultimately contributes to a more informed, more context-aware, fit-for-purpose and accountable aid sector.
Eligibility
This course is intended for anyone working as an aid practitioner in the humanitarian and development sector. No prior experience of foresight analysis is required to take this course.
Start using scenario building to improve your decision making ability today.
