DILIMAN, Quezon City—To co-create and co-design improvements in the overall Digital Farmers Program (DFP) 101 learning experience and brainstorm on the DFP 102 course, selected Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) Information Services staff and Smart Communications Public Affairs representatives gathered for a Design Thinking Workshop.

Through the design thinking process, the activity intended to gather feedback and inputs from the ATI regional training centers (RTCs) which were involved during last year’s DFP 101 pilot implementation in regions I, II, CALABARZON, VI, VII, X, and XIII.

Various divergent, convergent, and ideation activities were facilitated by Limitless Lab Founder and Chief Visionary Officer Joie Cruz which helped the participants identify and co-design improvements in the DFP course.

“Design is problem-solving, and design thinking means design-doing. As design thinkers, you should have the capability to see opportunities behind problems,” Cruz emphasized.

Likewise, a learning-by-doing approach on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) was facilitated by Limitless Lab Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Chenier Nicu Villanueva. This activity aimed to help DFP implementers create and design the M&E frameworks, processes, and tools for the successful rollout and impact evaluation of the program.

He stressed the importance of M&E not only at the end, but in the overall stretch of the program. He added, “You have to implement M&E in each phase of the Plan-Do-Check-Act process.”

Outputs during the two-day activity will be used to develop and package a DFP 101 Training Toolkit which will guide the facilitators from both the RTCs and Smart local teams in rolling out the trainings on their own. The toolkit will be first presented during the DFP Training of Trainers in March 2020.

The DFP Design Thinking Workshop was held on February 18-19, 2020 at the ATI Central Office.