Dear colleagues,

I am an edtech practitioner and researcher, looking to use realist evaluation as a new approach to understanding why some learning technology initiatives work in some departments and not others etc to help my Institution make policy decisions on University wide initiatives.  I have spent the last 6 months absorbed in the realist literature and attended the CARES recent workshop in Liverpool.  I am definitely hooked!  

I now find myself trying to convince senior colleagues that the approach has a practical use within an organisation as a strategic decision making tool.  However, I can’t seem to get a handle on how much time and effort a realist evaluation will take for planning purposes.  Or, whether it would require too much effort in fact to be useful as an every day tool to help decision making rather than purely a research approach for research teams, to help build an evidence base sector wide.

Any advice, tips or hints from the literature would be very much appreciated.

Best wishes,

Melanie