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What you can find on this page
Purpose
ParEvo is a method of developing alternative future scenarios, using a participatory evolutionary process (hence ParEvo). This involves the re-iteration of variation, selection and reproduction i.e. the evolutionary algorithm (Campbell, 1960; Dennett, 1996:48-60) The process is designed to be used by multiple people, to produce a collective good – a set of storylines about alternative futures. In addition, the process generates data on the structure of participation – how people have collaborated to produce those storylines..
For participants, the ParEvo app can be used to achieve two related kinds of purposes.
- The first is cognitive: to enable participants to creatively think about alternative futures, and how they do that thinking i.e. meta-cognition)
- The second is more behavioral: to prompt consideration of ways of responding to possible futures, in anticipation iand/or after the event, and to exploit and/or mitigate the consequences.
This is done through (a) the participatory development of alternative storylines/scenarios about what might happen in the future, and (b) the evaluation of those storylines, and the analysis of the implications of those storylines. For more detail on how this can be done see the Planning and Implementation page. Then the Evaluation page.
For the Facilitators of ParEvo exercises, and the Administrator, there is another higher order purpose,which is to learn how to optimally design a ParEvo exercise. ParEvo has been made available on a platform where people can experiment with different ways of running participatory explorations of alternative futures. All the data from ParEvo exercises can be retained and made available for comparison and analysis (subject to the consent of the Facilitators of those exercises).
Design
Each ParEvo exercise involves 10 steps, explained in detail here on another page of this same website
Origins
The core concept was developed by Rick Davies in the 1990s, during the development of his PhD thesis on organisational learning (available here). Its first implementation circa 1995 took place before the widespread availability of the internet and is described on this 2007 MandE NEWS webpage.
In late 2018 two pretests of a web-based version were carried out with the help of 23 volunteer participants spread across 12 countries. These pre-tests used a very labour intensive combination of online surveys, Excel spreadsheets, network visualisation software, web page editors and FTP software. Aptivate has since helped Rick Davies develop a web app to make this process available online to multiple parties. The new web-based version solicits, presents and analyses the contents generated by participants on a more automated, timely and error-free basis.
The primary published description of the method is: Davies, R., Hobson, T., & Beard, S. (2023). ParEvo: A methodology for the exploration and evaluation of alternative futures. Evaluation, 30(10). doi:10.1177/13563890231188743. For the full list of publications see his ResearchGate profile. For the origins of the process design see MandE NEWS — Evolving Storylines.
The ParEvo web application was built by Aptivate: The Digital Agency for International Development. Full documentation, planning guidance, and the exercise library are at parevo.blog.
Copyright
Rick Davies holds copyright over the ParEvo process embodied in and enabled by this website. Use requires prior permission. Copyright extends to exercises using non-text content, those incorporating AI-generated content, and implementations outside this website.
The ParEvo process is formally defined in: Davies, R., Hobson, T., & Beard, S. (2023). ParEvo: A methodology for the exploration and evaluation of alternative futures. Evaluation, 30(10). doi:10.1177/13563890231188743
For more information on copyright see:
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