Mama always told me, “share your toys” / Ma mère m’a toujours dit : « partage des jouets! »

By David Phipps, RIR-York

Sharing knowledge is central to knowledge mobilization. Thanks to a recently published paper, David Phipps (RIR-York) is now able to share his KMb toys.

Partager le savoir est un élément central de la mobilisation des connaissances. Grâce à un article publié récemment, David Phipps (RIR-York) est désormais en mesure de partager ses jouets de MdC.

Peter Levesque (Knowledge Mobilization Works) says “sharing is the new selfish”.  Or maybe it’s “sharing is the new black”. Whichever it is he means that sharing is the currency of knowledge mobilization (KMb). At RIR-York we have an ongoing debate about how much of our “KMb secret” should we give away outside of our ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche (RIR) colleagues. Well, thanks to a recent paper our “secret”, if we ever had one, is out in the open.  We’re sharing our KMb toys and we want you to play with us.

We first articulated our suite of KMb services in a blog on Mobilize This! on April 20, 2010.We described all of our KMb services and how they each mapped onto KMb theory. But we were light on detail. Now, 21 months later, the details of this have been published in Scholarly & Research Communications, a journal managed out of Simon Fraser University. We describe in detail each of our KMb services and illustrate each with an example from our practice.

KMb Method	KMb Service	Notes
Producer Push	#1 Clear language research summaries	Develop clear language research summaries from completed faculty research.
	#2 Lunch and Learn	Seminar series at decision-maker sites.
User Pull	#3 Research translation help desk	Use current knowledge broker model to help decision-maker partners identify, develop, and sustain collaborations with researchers.
Knowledge Exchange	#4 Research forums	KM in the AM: Monthly thematic knowledge mobilization breakfasts.
Co-production	#5 Social media to support collaboration	Provide support for full suite of social media tools including blogging, delicious bookmarks, Twitter, and social collaboration tools.
	#6 KMb interns	Graduate student KMb interns work in research collaborations with decision-maker partners.

 

After describing the services and offering conclusions based on five years’ experience running an institutional KMb service unit the paper presents the outcomes of that work (see below) and makes the following recommendations to those seeking to develop an institutional capacity for KMb (see the paper for details):

1. Find institutional champions
2. Collect data
3. If possible, find grants for seed funding
4. Hire the right knowledge broker

The paper presents outcomes of our work to August 2011.  Updated figures to December 31, 2011 are below.

# Faculty Involved	240
# Graduate Students Involved	142
# Information sessions for faculty and students	166
# Information sessions for community	185
# collaborations brokered	246
# agencies involved in KMb partnerships	205
Community Partner funding raised	$1.1M
Research Contract funding raised	$1.2M
Total KMb associated grant funding raised	$17.6M
# web hits	+5M
# Research Summaries	173
# tweets	5447
#twitter followers	1845
# delicious bookmarks	244
# blog postings (+70,000 views)	294

The paper has been posted in York’s institutional repository.  You can get download a copy of the open access paper here.

In addition to sharing our KMb services in this paper we have previously posted some of our KMb tools:

Clear Language Tool Kit

• https://researchimpact.othree.ca/documents/toolsforkmb/kmbtools_researchsummariespdf

CAURA 2011 KMb Tools

• http://www.researchimpact.ca/kmbinaction/OutilsMdC/index.html
• http://www.researchimpact.ca/kmbinaction/KMbToolBox/index.html

In the spirit of sharing, Melanie Barwick (@melaniebarwick) has kindly made her KT planning template available. And posting more RIR tools is in the works for RIR-York. We are knowledge brokers, not KMb researchers. We do not come from a culture of publishing our findings. Since sharing underpins all KMb activities it is important to share our practice based knowledge. Whether you chose to post your tools on a website, share them at a conference like the upcoming Canadian KMb Forum or publish them in peer review please share your successes (and your failures).

Because knowledge, like toys, is best when it is shared.

2012 York KMb Learning Events / Les activités d’apprentissage offertes par York MdC en 2012

Michael Johnny, RIR, YorkU

York KMb is offering sessions for researchers, staff and graduate students to help make their research relevant to professional practice and policy development.

York MdC offre des séances de formation à l’attention des professeurs, du personnel et des étudiants gradués afin de les aider à accroître la pertinence de leurs recherches sur le plan de la pratique professionnelle et du développement de politiques.

For the past five years, York’s Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) Unit has focused our KMb activities on service and awareness raising for faculty, graduate students and external organizations and leaders who are seeking to engage in KMb.  Since 2006, York KMb has led 186 information sessions for community organizations and has supported 142 graduate students to meaningfully engage in KMb activity.  While we’re proud of our efforts to raise awareness of the opportunity and importance of knowledge mobilization, two recent developments that have supported an expansion of our capacity building initiatives: securing a community-based knowledge broker, and second, a mandate from federal research granting councils to include a knowledge mobilization strategy on funding applications.

The unique role of a community-based knowledge broker supporting York KMb has enabled our unit capacity to address some of the emerging issues in knowledge mobilization that are centred within York University.  With an increasing demand for engaging York researchers in collaborative project opportunities, our service unit saw a need to support learning opportunities here at York to help expand the capacity of university researchers who have interests in collaborative research, or, in mobilizing their existing research to help inform public policy and/or professional practice.

Given this, we’re pleased to announce the release of a series of learning events that help university researchers and administrators learn tools and strategies to engage in KMb within research projects. This series will include sessions on clear language writing and design, social media (specifically twitter, blogging and collaborative technologies) and developing strategies in KMb. Sessions have been developed that provide one hour information sessions or half-day hands-on workshops on several aspects of KMb.

Feedback has been positive and we’re excited to continue to roll out learning sessions throughout the calendar year.  Dr. Christopher Innes, Canada Research Chair and Distinguished Research Professor within the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies (English) commented, “This is great.  Sessions like this are important for York researchers to strengthen their research projects with plans for Knowledge Mobilization that are recognized by research funding councils.  The KMb Strategy Building session provided important tools to assist me and my project team”.

Upcoming events include KMb 101 (February 13), Clear Language Writing and Design (February 27), O3 (March 6) and WordPress (April 3). The full calendar of events is available here.

In addition to building capacity on campus, York has been asked to provide a KMb webinar to the Canadian Association of University Research Administrators.  This national webinar will help raise awareness of the emerging role of KMb for university researchers and their research partners.  The webinar will be help on February 14 at 1:00 EST.  Information about registration can be found here.

A Love Story: Working in KMb / Une histoire d’amour: travailler en MdC

Michael Johnny, RIR- YorkU

I have the best job within the university. I know this because I feel like I am 23 years old again!

J’ai le meilleur emploi de toute l’université. Je le sais parce que je me sens comme si j’avais de nouveau 23 ans!

This is likely not what you’re hoping this blog post to be.  Love stories are seldom about work, they are about people.   This is about my relationship with my work, does that make sense?

I tell people that I have the best job in the university.  Being a knowledge broker is extremely fulfilling; working within a service unit that is respected and appreciated, and has a capacity to help enable research to impact society is important.  I like it.  Check that, I love it.  It was in reflecting with some other brokers about my career path to get to this place of enlightened happiness that made me realize this is an important story.

When I was 23 years old I started my career as Aboriginal Literacy Coordinator within the Hamilton Regional Indian Centre, a Friendship Centre which provides diverse social services to the Aboriginal population of the Greater Hamilton area.  It is not an understatement to say the work was transformative for me.  I quickly developed a passion for my work.  Complex service work that is rooted in values of honesty, respect and humility are not only important for my professional happiness, they are essential.  Over a nine-year span I grew within my role and found interests in research (eventually going back to graduate school to research the very work I was responsible for) and community development (working with other skilled professionals to advance issues important to the community).  I loved my work, and the relationship was reciprocal.

Yet as we want to do sometimes, we seek more.  Growth opportunities were no longer readily available for me in Hamilton in my organization and my interests in literacy provided me contract opportunities for many provincial and regional organizations.  The work was important but there was a missing element (or elements).

And sharing my favourite beer in a great pub in Ottawa, I was able to tell my current colleagues how the work I am doing in KMb has brought me back to a place I was more than 20 years ago.  KMb has rekindled my passion for work and at the core of this is that the work provides a complex service base (after all, we are a service unit) and in order to be successful it is critical to operate with values that are completely aligned with my early career work in Hamilton.

This is a love story I embrace every day, along with a deep sense of appreciation from having thought I may have lost it for good many years back.

Knowledge Hypocrites / Les hypocrites de la connaissance

By David Phipps (RIR-York; @researchimpact)

We are all knowledge hypocrites.  Neither researchers nor knowledge brokers practice what we preach. David Phipps (RIR-York) reflects on why this is and cites examples from RIR’s work to illustrate some early attempts to effect change.

Nous sommes tous des hypocrites de la connaissance. Ni les chercheurs, ni les courtiers de connaissances ne pratiquent ce qu’ils prêchent. David Phipps (RIR-York) réfléchit sur les causes et donne des exemples issus du travail du RIR pour illustrer les tentatives entreprises pour changer cet état de fait.

Many of us working in knowledge mobilization are hypocrites. I am a knowledge hypocrite. You are likely one as well.

I have previously blogged about the need for knowledge brokers to base their practice on evidence from research. I also charged KMb researchers to connect their research to KMb practitioners. I was recently speaking to a couple of researchers from KT Canada and raised this with them.  I told them that most of the KT Canada research is not helpful to KMb practice. Many KT Canada researchers produce single studies with little systematic reviews to provide actionable messages to knowledge brokers. Although all KMb/KT researchers advocate that research should be made accessible to practitioners, KT Canada researchers rarely do (an exception being John Lavis’ group at McMaster who create user friendly summaries of their systematic reviews). I compared much KT scholarship to grains of sand. Important in their own right but as a knowledge broker I need to know what the beach looks like not understand every grain of sand.

KT researchers do not practice what they preach.

But just so we share this responsibility equally, most knowledge brokers are similarly hypocritical. We advocate for the use of research to inform practice but we don’t pursue KMb/KT research to inform our own practice. We advocate that using research needs to be part of an organization’s culture. Employers need to create incentives and time to engage in research.  At RIR-York we always try to set aside one day per month to engage with the literature.  With our busy schedules it is always the first day to be co-opted for operational purposes.

Most knowledge brokers do not practice what we preach either. There are a few of problems that underpin this hypocrisy.

1) KT researchers in health consider health service providers and policy makers as their audience.  KMb researchers in education consider teachers, school boards and policy makers as their audience. But knowledge brokers are also audiences for all KT/KMb research. At RIR-York we try to make some KMb/KT research accessible to brokers through the on line KMb journal club. Posting one broker interpretation of scholarly researcher each month, the five journal club posts have received over 2250 views. This illustrates that there is an appetite for broker accessible versions of scholarly research.

2) There are few venues for knowledge brokers and KMb/KT researchers to interact; therefore, we rarely do. One exception is the upcoming Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum in Ottawa June 19-20. The conference theme is “bringing the art and science of KMb together”. In my keynote address I shall be challenging the audience to bring KMb science and KMb practice together in an evidence informed way (evidence informed practice and practice informed evidence).

3) Knowledge brokers do not see themselves as researchers, even in a participatory sense. Knowledge brokers have a lot of practice based knowledge to share. We make videos and blogs and tweet and that’s all critical but it doesn’t capture the attention of university based researchers who privilege peer review as their only currency. Taking lessons learned from our community based researcher colleagues we need to think of practice based research in a participatory fashion and collaborate with KMb/KT scholars to develop research evidence that is useful to our practice. Check out RIR-York’s peer reviewed publications posted in York’s institutional repository, and yes, we are developing ResearchSnapshot clear language research summaries of these papers such as the one produced on our 2009 Evidence & Policy article.

We remain knowledge hypocrites. Until researchers receive time and incentives for making their research broadly accessible and knowledge brokers receive time and incentives for accessing that research we shall remain hypocritical.  Well-meaning indeed, but hypocritical. The system won’t change overnight but it won’t change at all if we don’t start to seek out KMb/KT researcher/practitioner collaborations.