IMPACT Europe consortium meets in Utrecht for periodic project meeting

On Thursday 12 November 2015, IMPACT Europe consortium partners gathered in Utrecht, Netherlands, for one of the periodic project meetings. The gathering provided consortium partners with an opportunity to meet new members joining the project from SSP SORØ and RAND Europe, as well as to take stock of progress made across different areas of work.

In particular, participants discussed progress registered in the development of the IMPACT Europe evaluation toolkit and digital platform, whose fully-functioning prototype is now nearing completion. During the meeting, partners focused their attention and discussion on addressing any outstanding concern as regards the methodologies and sources employed for developing the toolkit, before moving on to aspects relating to the graphic appearance of the digital platform.

With an eye to the piloting of the toolkit, which will start in the Spring of 2016, partners also focused their attention on issues relating to the training materials and courses supporting the toolkit. In particular, discussion at the meeting revolved around the operational approach to be adopted during training sessions with end-users. Mitigation strategies for tackling issues arising from linguistic barriers and the use of different types of audio-visual materials were also discussed. The first toolkit training sessions with end-users were then scheduled and are now slated to occur in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Denmark and Germany in early February 2016.