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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Operational Research for Humanitarians by University of Geneva

4.8
stars
104 ratings

About the Course

Evidence is central to good decision-making both in the humanitarian sector and beyond. Every day, a vast amount of evidence is generated that is relevant to humanitarian actors, much of it through research by academics and practitioners. This evidence can be incredibly valuable. It can help us better understand a situation and make humanitarian action more effective and accountable. The difficulty comes with understanding what evidence is relevant to our circumstances, where to find it, and how to assess its quality. This course will provide you with the fundamental knowledge and skills to answer these questions and help you better engage with research. It has been developed with you - a humanitarian professional or junior researcher - in mind. The course moves through the core research concepts one-at-a-time and does not require any prior knowledge or experience. We encourage all of you to plan your own learning journey by using this MOOC in a way that is most useful to you. Content highlights: • How can research be used for humanitarian practice? • What are the most appropriate research methods? • How can I judge the quality of the evidence and whether it is applicable to the context I work in? • How can populations in a situation of vulnerability be protected during a study? This course - co-developed in a partnership between academic and humanitarian institutions - is strongly positioned to give you the needed skills and knowledge to build a bridge between research and practice. We hope that this course will change your perspectives and improve your knowledge and, ultimately, make humanitarian responses more evidence-based. Enjoy!...

Top reviews

DM

Mar 19, 2023

Excellent, very interesting course, very professional speakers reflecting experience and best practice of very -well known academic institutions and international organizations! Thank you very much!

RS

Feb 18, 2023

The contents, pacing and insights of the presenters in the MOOC were all great. Useful information. Recommend taking this course, if only to rephrase your existing knowledge in more formal terms.

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26 - 42 of 42 Reviews for Operational Research for Humanitarians

By Andrea P

Apr 3, 2023

Extremely interesting, focuses on impact and it deals with current themes in the discipline

By Amadou H M

Feb 27, 2023

Interactive course that helps understanding Research and Evidence in Humanitarian context.

By Beatriz D

Jul 10, 2023

O curso é excelente! Aprendi muito e enriqueceu a minha prática na pesquisa. Recomendo!

By Lucia H V

Apr 20, 2023

Very useful MOOC to understand and acquire key tips to develop research.

By Fabrizio C

Feb 21, 2024

All good. Some questions in the quizzes were worded in a complex way.

By Protus Y

Feb 20, 2024

Amazing course for anyone working in the humanitarian sector

By Benjamin E

Mar 25, 2023

An amazing course. Detailed and insightful yet practical.

By FUHNGWA N F

Apr 7, 2023

It has enabled me gain more skills in research

By Nora M

Jul 26, 2023

informative

By Camara M

Jun 1, 2023

Excellent!

By Noureddin I

Apr 17, 2023

Good

By Quentin B

Mar 9, 2023

Intense pace, much content and concepts to absorb, but really well designed. Modules and concepts are intelligently broken down and the learning path makes sense quickly. There's also much valuable additional material (readings, tool-kits) that I will be able to use further. Working at MSF, I will recommend this MOOC colleagues and friends. I also think I will come back to it in the future. Congrats to the teams that put up this MOOC, you can tell there has been hard work behind it!

By Jon C

Mar 10, 2023

Overall, great course. It was challenging and informational. The only issue I experienced was in the video captions. Many times there were errors in the captions in terms of punctuation, or entire words that were incorrect. As I read the captions to further enhance my learning, this caused some difficulty. Its an easy fix, and everything else was great.

By Thomas A F

Mar 29, 2023

The course was worth taking and interesting . I have gained alt of skills in research and hope to continue.

The certificate should bear my Name and other initials though

By Yi H H

Jun 21, 2023

no

By Heirtzler P

Apr 1, 2024

I feel ambivalent about this course. On one side, I think that I've learned a lot of new interesting concepts and acquired new perspectives. The course was also filled with very practical examples that I really liked. You could feel that some speakers were really passionate about their work, and they transmitted this energy very well. But on the other side, there are some aspects of the course that I didn't liked and kind of disturbed my learning experience. Sometimes, the performance of the presentators in the videos were not of very high quality, and it personnaly made it difficult to keep interest in the topics at times. Some speakers were clearly reading a text, without adding any significant added-value to the oral format. Plus, it was sometimes adding confusion because some speakers were so much into reading their text that when they were speaking, they made mistakes. With some particular speakers, I ended up most of the time just copy-pasting the coursera subtitles and trying to unscramble them afterwards, because parts of what the speakers were saying was just not making sense. Another point is that in the evaluations, I felt at times a bit of frustration because some of the questions were not very relevant for testing the learning material. Maybe, this MOOC is like a typical humanitarian research study : imperfect, but effective ? If that's the case, then I don't understand why. The MOOC is developped by prestigious institutions, and in a context that should allow them to produce high-quality learning material. Even if, globally, I liked the MOOC, my expectations were higher, and I can't give it more than 3 stars.

By Emil G

Mar 8, 2023

Unstructured and unfocused. Mixing too many different ideas about what constitute research in a humanitarian setting makes it effectively impossible to fully understand the subject matter, or correctly answer the exam questions.