The course builds on participants’ advanced understanding and experience of how to develop new and enhancing existing complex MEL processes and practices across learning organisations. It also includes supporting partners to develop and implement effective MEL systems.

In this course, social and cultural dynamics of international development cooperation are analysed, discussed, and connected to contemporary development cooperation activities and projects. Themes to be focused on include the impacts of colonisation in development cooperation, decolonisation, migration, gender, racism, and education.

The course is designed to increase awareness of how cultural perceptions and power structures have influenced society and our understanding of and practice in aid. It promotes alternatives to aid as linear and progressive Eurocentric narrative. The course draws on different theoretical perspectives and scrutinizes practical examples of aid interventions and similar initiatives.

The course deals with different approaches and types of evaluations within the framework of development projects. The participants acquire knowledge and skills for the use of methods for the analysis of project processes and results and their use in project management. In order to deepen the understanding, practical project examples are focused on.

This course presents the orgins and evolution of the International Development Cooperation during the last six decades und relates the changing paradigms to their political and socio-economic contexts. It looks at the different actors with their spefic roles, approaches and challenges from a Swiss as well as a global perspective.

The course gives an introduction to the most important methods for rigorous impact analysis of development programs and projects. The course is designed to both cover the most fundamental methods of impact analysis and introduce real world case studies from national, international and non-governmental development organizations and asks how rigorous impact analysis has influenced their policies.

Migration can bring significant benefits to both countries of origin and destination if the right policies and initiatives are in place. This course explores the various roles that international cooperation actors can play, with a specific emphasis on conflict, persecution and migration; labour migration; and the intersections of migration, environment, and climate change.

The course provides a deeper understanding of the methodological foundations of results-oriented planning and steering of development projects. Together with the participants, we reflect on the situation-specific application of instruments for project planning and the development of a monitoring system, which makes it possible, in complex contexts, to adapt and steer projects.

The course provides a deeper understanding of the conceptual and methodological foundations of results-oriented Project cycle management, focusing on planning, monitoring and steering development projects.

This course introduces students to key methods for quantitative policy impact analysis and covers the different stages of the process. Acquired skills are applied on a real project from a development organization. Students also learn how to perform simple statistical analyses with the statistical Software R.