Assignment One Homework
Online Learning
OL 102 Project Architecture: Managing for Impact.
Center for Sustainable Impact: https://csd-i.org/project-architecture-ol-102/.
This week’s resources:
Assignment One Discussion
Magee Project Example Assignment One
OL 102 Assignment One Student Logframe Template to Fill In
Assignment One: Beginning Logframes
Getting Started
Go to the Download Course Documents menu link to your left and open up the document called OL 102 Assignment One Student Logframe Template to Fill In. You’ll see that it’s the same matrix that we completed in Assignment Six of the first course, OL 101, but that in a number of the empty cells I have added more information.
Part 1.
Measurable Sub-goals.
The sub-goals are components of the main goal: Each of the sub-goals, added together, should fully describe the main project goal. You can see that I have annotated the student template so this is clearly visible when you compare the goal statement to the sub-goals.
In order to know if the activities that we chose to address the problem statement are working we need to have something measurable. Let’s start by making our sub goals measurable. From the research that you did on your activities in the last course, you may have found levels of success written up in the abstracts or conclusions of the scientific papers that you downloaded.
For example in my Assignment Three example from the previous course, the scientific studies that I found indicated that hand washing could reduce diarrhea in children by between 30% and 53% and that ceramic water filters could reduce diarrhea by between 40 and 50%.
At this early stage of project design you don’t want to overstate the successes that you hope to achieve. So was conservative and said that 50% of the children in my project will be free from chronic diarrhea by the end of the project.
In a similar fashion, results on family gardens show that they can improve nutrition by 50% — and so I’m using that number for my expected improvement as well. You can look at the student log frame template and see that I have added these percentages to my sub-goal descriptions.
Part 2.
Expansion of output descriptions
In as much as the sub-goals needed to add up to fully describe the project goal, the outputs also need to add up to fully describe the sub-goals. So we need to expand our definitions of the outputs to make sure that they will fully describe the sub goals. We also need to make the descriptions of our outputs very specific and measurable.
My first output for the week six of OL 101 student matrix said “hand washing workshop and follow-up.” I have now changed this to say “100 families in four communities participated in workshops on the benefits and practice of hand washing and received six months of follow-up”. This describes a specific thing as if it has happened. It is something measurable. And it relates to concrete elements within the sub-goals – i. e. 100 families from four communities. It also gives a timeframe: 12 months.
Part 3.
Detailed Activities
Just like outputs add up to fulfill the sub-goals, you must now define specific activities which will add up to fulfill the outputs. Specific activities that you need can be found in the lesson plan that you wrote in the last course in Assignment Five about one of your outputs.
So, my first output is a workshop on hand washing. I needed to think creatively and refer to my lesson plan to decide what activities would I need to do to fulfill the output. I knew, for example, that I would need to develop a lesson plan and collect materials if I hadn’t already done that. I would need to arrange meetings for the workshops with the communities. I would need to present the workshops. And then I would need to provide follow-up for six months in order to encourage the community to adopt hand washing in their daily lives. So you can see in my example that I added these four activities beneath my output and I numbered them.
Standard Numbering Systems:
My first output 1.1 is numbered 1.1 because it is the first of two outputs of Sub-Goal 1. Then because developing a lesson plan is the first activity of Output 1.1 we will name it Activity 1.1.1. The second activity of output 1.1 will be known as Activity 1.1.2. This system of numbering will become important when we develop the budget and a schedule. I realize that this may be a new concept, but just use the template and write in your activities using my numbering system; it will make sense soon enough.
I then did the same thing with my other activities. You should do the same now.
The homework to turn in will be to add the following into the Logframe Template for your project:
1. Measurable Sub-goals
2. Expansion of output descriptions
3. Detailed Activities
Go to OL 102 Assignment One Student Logframe Template to Fill In to see what this could look like.
See you next week.
Tim Magee