Workshops

Effective capacity building

BYOGUIDES in collaboration with the Coral Identification Capacity Building Program (CICBP) offer Ocean Literacy and Coral Identification Workshops to build skills and capacity in general biodiversity and coral identifications well as survey techniques. Our Visual Decision Tool systems train people to train themselves thereby building real capacity. By focusing on visual learning and minimising text, participants make dramatic, rapid real time gains in capacity. Over the course of a workshop the tutor / participant relationship evolves from teaching to mentoring as participants rapidly build meaningful skills. A key difference with our training is how highly motivated participants become due to the instantaneous progress they make. Thereby avoiding the post workshop disappointment often associated with fly in/fly out experts.

Case study with the Coral Finder

The Coral Identification Capacity Building Program (CICBP) in collaboration with the Fiji Locally Marine Managed Area (FLMMA) network ran coral identification workshops at the University of South Pacific in Suva. Fiji. Around 50 people were trained in basic of coral identification using the Indo Pacific Coral Finder. As the graphic below shows the Coral Finder puts comprehensive identification of coral genera within the reach of beginners. Intermediate level participants also dramatically improved their coral identification skills and recommended the tool for rapid revision and ongoing learning. Feedback about the workshops and resources from participants was very positive with well over 90% of workshop participants stating that the Coral Finder would be useful in their work.

Since our first trial workshops in Fiji BYOGUIDES has now trained over 500 people in coral identification in 7 countries. The diagrams below show the pooled “before and after” results for 24 workshops (nearly 500 people) with every individual showing significant improvement in coral ID accuracy.