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Spark: a centre for social research innovation

Faculty of Social Sciences

Our Services: Training

Training shouldn't just teach someone a skill – it should help them use that new knowledge or skill to transform the way they do their work in the world, bettering the lives of others.

Our team has extensive experience in teaching, facilitation, and conflict management and we share a deep personal love of learning that translates into a love of sharing experiences and information. Our Executive Director has personally taught or facilitated over 1000 sessions over her career on every topic you can imagine.

Here’s one example:

I developed and taught a training for medical doctors that did research. Many of them did clinical trials or other very rigorous methods, but, like so many of us, didn’t feel comfortable in the grey area between not having any information, and investing a lot of resources in having perfect information.

As a very practical applied researcher, I was asked to help them build that middle set of skills – figuring out what was the right level of evidence they needed in answering any particular question, and then engaging their creativity to think of simple, bootstrap approaches to getting good enough answers to be able to move forward. 

It was hard for them – against all their training – but we got there, and I believe they are much better doctors for it.