ResearchImpact wishes Sarah Dickie all the best in her move to Prince George, BC.

Sarah has been the Administrative Coordinator for the UVic Office of Community Based Research for almost two years. Along with being a bright and smiling face in the office and dealing with the piles of day-to-day administrative tasks, Sarah has been vital to OCBR’s Community outreach work, and has also been the main coordinator for countless OCBR events and workshops. Sarah leaves very big shoes to fill, and will be missed dearly by those of us in the Office, across the campus, and also by our community partners and friends.

Good luck Sarah! Come back and visit soon.

O3 Open House

Last week York’s KM Unit co-hosted an Open House to demonstrate ORION’s (Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network) new online professional networking and collaboration platform O3. “Introduced as a new value-added service for member institutions, O3 helps deliver on ORION’s mandate of supporting Ontario’s research and education community. O3 seeks to encourage collaboration, the sharing of ideas and research results, and connecting with colleagues across academic disciplines. It is a unique professional networking and collaboration platform developed by and for the research and education community (ORION newsletter, May 2009). “

Gary Hilson, ORION’s Projects and Alliances Consultant, was on hand to give attendees an overview of the platform and its various features, which include a number of Web 2.0 tools such as member profiles, user created blogs, wikis, discussion forums, as well as document management. ResearchImpact is currently exploring how we can use the O3 platform to facilitate and foster collaboration between KM brokers and researchers. David Phipps of ResearchImpact said, “Social networking is an important, emerging tool for knowledge mobilization.  As our work naturally connects people over distance and time, a robust social networking platform with features that allow us to connect and collaborate with partners will enhance the KM services that York can offer it’s graduate students, research and their partners.” Omar Mohammed, Manager of Research Computing at York, stated, “We are pleased that ResearchImpact has taken the initiative to explore O3 as a collaboration platform for research and knowledge mobilization. The O3 initiative leverages the ORION research network and we will follow the emergence of O3 with interest.” The Open House was attended by over 20 people including York faculty and staff members, students working in a number of York’s Organized Research Units, as well as representatives from the York Region community.

If you are interested in more information about O3, please contact Gary Hilson at gary.hilson@orion.on.ca.

Re-Launch of the Homeless Hub

The KM Units of York and UVic are pleased to support Stephen Gaetz and homelessness research including the Homeless Hub.  Mobilize This! recently wrote about some of this work and we are pleased to feature the re-launch of this knowledge mobilization website.

As featured in Yfile on Friday the Homeless Hub will re-launch providing researchers, students, schools and decision makers with enhanced access to research on issues related homelessness. From the Homeless Hub web site “Launched in 2007, the Homeless Hub is a web-based research library and information center representing an innovative step forward in the use of technology to enhance knowledge mobilization and networking. The Homeless Hub has emerged as a place where community services providers, researchers, government representatives, and the general public can access and share research, stories, and best practices.” The new and improved Homeless Hub continues this work, makes research even more accessible and interactive, it includes resources for educators and it hosts a downloadable e book “Finding Home”.

Stephen Gaetz (Faculty of Education, York University) is the principal investigator of the Homeless Hub which is supported by a SSHRC Cluster Grant and with support from Government of Canada’s Homelessness Partnering Strategy. He is also leader of the Canadian Homelessness Research Network.

New Homeless Hub Web Site

Federal Partners in Technology Transfer Welcomes ResearchImpact

John Biles, Director of Partnerships and Knowledge Transfer for the Metropolis Project (on the left)

Craig McNaughton, Director of the Knowledge Mobilization and Program Integration Division at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (on the right)

Peter N. Levesque, Director of Systems and Operations at Knowledge Mobilization Works (second from right)

David Phipps, Director, Research Services & Knowledge Exchange, York University and ResearchImpact (third from left)

What do all these guys have in common? We all shared the stage at the opening plenary panel at the annual meeting of the Federal Partners in Technology Transfer. “The Federal Partners in Technology Transfer (FPTT) initiative is a unique example of people in Canada’s federal science-based departments and agencies (SBDAs) working together to establish common approaches, practices and policies to effectively transfer research and technologies from government laboratories to the private sector”. The theme of the 2009 annual meeting was “Marketing and Mobilizing Your Technology” and ResearchImpact’s David Phipps was invited by FPTT to organize their first ever session on knowledge mobilization.

This session brought together perspectives on KM from the university (York), a federal funder (SSHRC), a long term (+17 years) project housed within a federal Ministry (Metropolis) and the private sector (Knowledge Mobilization Works!) so that technology transfer professionals could begin to appreciate connecting research to application outside of patents and licensing.

This session built on an earlier Mobilize This! blog entry about the differences between technology transfer and commercialization. Common themes that arose from our discussions were the need to connect research to application and we dug into the use of web 2.0 technologies and other tools to support this. We also had some discussion on evaluation (a recurring topic).

My feeling is that while there is interest and appreciation, the job of a technology transfer officer is specialized. The skills are transferable to a knowledge mobilization setting but unless the technology transfer office changes it’s mandate to embrace a broader concept of innovation and supports a broader range of partnerships with industry (beyond patents, licensing and company creation) technology transfer and knowledge mobilization will continue to be on opposite sides of the coin instead of on a continuum of research support services.

Thank you to FPTT for the invitation. This was ResearchImpact’s first opportunity to engage the technology transfer profession.

1 Million Hits and Counting

999,997

We launched www.researchimpact.ca in 2006 and it was pretty much a place holder until May 2007 in time for Congress where ResearchImpact had its launch. The ResearchImpact web site at that time had a video or two (Ben Levin’s talk for example) but was mostly explaining what we were. May 2007 saw 17,773 hits total since inception.

999,998

ResearchImpact was updated with some new messages, a new look and a blog added for Congress 2008. More videos were added plus more success stories such as the Aboriginal Policy Research Forum. Some of our business started being transacted on the web site by inclusion of our Opportunity Description Form. May 2008 saw 382,204 hits total since inception.

999,999

Again for Congress 2009 we recently update our look and added new functionality including links to our web 2.0 spaces such as our Flickr photostream and our twitter page. A new feature is our ResearchSnapshot series of research summaries, look for more of these towards the end of the summer.

1,000,000

Late in May 2009 we surpassed 1 million hits on www.researchimpact.ca. Today York University released a story on this success. A big THANK YOU to all the faculty, students, funders, partners and administrators who helped ResearchImpact grow to this point.

Now we need to hear from you. Our services continue to evolve but we want to know what you are looking for in a KM web site and a KM service network. Use the comment feature on this blog story to tell us what you’d like to see out of future incarnations of the ResearchImpact web site and the ResearchImpact network.

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1,000,003….

Knowledge Mobilization at York Looks Forward

On June 5, the KM Unit at York spent a day off-site at the Toronto Centre for Social Innovation embarking on visioning exercises to help define the scope of programs that will be offered in the fall. This is important as the current project funding will be sunsetting and operations will need streamlining to support sustainability.

The efforts from the day resulted in the following, and we welcome your thoughts and comments. Just click on the comments button above this message and share your thoughts!

Vision Statement

National leaders in knowledge mobilization, connecting research and people for social innovation.

Mission Statement

The KM unit at York University is a service unit that:

Builds a culture of knowledge mobilization
Fosters collaboration
Supports co-production of knowledge/research
Connects policy and practice relevant research to decision makers
Develops and delivers tools for knowledge mobilization

Our Values

Our service unit is built on the following values:

Respect – knowledge has many forms and origins and flows in a two way direction
Wisdom – grounding practice in theory and using practice to inform theory
Honesty – knowledge brokers are impartial, client-focused and honest brokers
Engagement – research engages with and is responsive to the needs of the partners
Impact – real world solutions for real world problems

Mobilizing Minds at the ‘The International Conference on the Use of the Internet in Mental Health’ May 14-16, 2009 in Montreal, Canada

York’s KM Unit is pleased to support the Mobilizing Minds: Pathways to Young Adult Mental Health research group. ResearchImpact’s own David Phipps is a co-applicant on this project and is supporting the group by working to identify lead community and practitioner champions, as well as to develop a strategy for community engagement.

Researchers from the Mobilizing Minds: Pathways To Young Adult Mental Health research group presented at the International Internet and Mental Health Conference.

To learn more about the Mobilizing Minds group check out their recently released web site: www.mobilizingminds.ca

The first presentation by this group focused on how well web sites concerning children’s anxiety disorders answer parents’ questions about treatment choices. Results demonstrated that web sites varied tremendously in the quality and quantity of information provided. The mean readability score across web sites was low, indicating that comprehension of this information may be beyond the scope of many parents. Future knowledge synthesis research is required to answer parents’ questions more comprehensively. This research also demonstrates a need for web sites to support informed decision making by enhancing the quality of information provided. Check out this presentation, WorkshopA3 by Kristin Reynolds here.

The second presentation used an innovative qualitative research methodology. The Internet Blogs of 8 young adults, who were suffering from problems with mood and anxiety disorders, were analyzed in an effort to understand their experiences. These young adults reported a pervasive sense of powerlessness over their all-consuming mental health problems but simultaneously felt that they ‘should’ have control over these experiences. They also reported experiencing a strong sense of disconnection and alienation from others. The results stress the need for a community of practice approach that includes decreasing young adults’ sense of disconnection by designing community systems, which are inviting and give young adults a voice, and include a range of treatment options.

Check out the www.mobilizingminds.ca web site to see this poster.

Looking Back on a Week at CAURA and Congress

We’re tired. Tired but charged. What a week this has been.

• ResearchImpact was featured in 3 conference presentations; thanks to SSHRC, Harris Centre (MUN) and USask for participating in the ResearchImpact session at CAURA.

• ResearchImpact was noted by Gisele Yasmeen (VP Partnerships, SSHRC) in her talk “Knowledge Mobilization and the Canadian Community”

• Chad Gaffield, President of SSHRC, noted York’s ResearchSnapshot research summary series in his remarks at the open session “Capturing the Impact of Publicly Funded Social Sciences and Humanities Research”

• May 27 at Congress saw the highest web traffic for the month on the new www.researchimpact.ca site launched at Congress

• ResearchImpact shared the podium with SSHRC and The Federation of the Humanities and Social Science

• ResearchImpact met with our KM colleagues at Harris Centre (MUN) and University of Saskatchewan to map out future KM collaborations and options for the growth of ResearchImpact

• ResearchImpact supported UVic’s Office of Community Based Research in their leadership of Community Based Research Canada

• The May 2009 edition of Mobilize This! was the longest newsletter in ResearchImpact history reflecting the excitement that we have generated this month

This is the third year in a row ResearchImpact has had a presence at CAURA and Congress. We emerged on the research landscape two years ago as a new idea and were seen for the KM experiment we were. Well funded by SSHRC and CIHR we were nothing but a good idea whose time had not yet come. In the words of a colleague from Montreal, “we had only started to get nowhere”. Two years later we are definitely getting somewhere. We are Canada’s knowledge mobilization network and even though future funding is uncertain we’re certain we need it and we are committed to growing ResearchImpact as a network of universities and their local research partners.

Look out Concordia, here we come!

ResearchImpact's Michael Johnny and David Phipps

Knowledge Mobilization is Content Agnostic

Agnostic.  “Someone who us doubtful or noncommittal about something”.  KM doesn’t care what you’re researching it only cares how you do it.  ResearchImpact recently presented on KM to the Seniors’ Health Research and Transfer Network and Centre of Excellence for Research in Immigration and Settlement.  Both groups have a mandate to connect research to policy or practice and asked RI to speak about our experiences developing Canada’s KM network.  We also recently touched base with the Homeless Hub the emerging Canadian Homeless Research Network, two groups based at York with a mandate to connect research to decision making.

It doesn’t matter if you care about homelessness, immigration or seniors; health, KM is KM is KM.  KM is agnostic to the content but it is concerned with the process.  After 3 years of running RI, we are seeking commonalities of methodology:

• Engage users at ever stage of the research cycle: planning, execution, evaluation, dissemination

• Focus on co-creation the on push/pull of the co-create knowledge

• Recognize that KM is a skill set that needs training and resources

• We can evaluate discrete KM interventions but we haven’t a good handle on evaluating KM at the systems level

Seniors Health. Immigration.  Homelessness… and we suspect all other research that has the potential to inform practice and policy can be subject to KM.  KM doesn’t care.  But we do.