A New Twist to YorkU KM in the AM

For those of you who have been able to attend one of York University’s KM in the AM events, you will know the reward for early mornings are a nice, hot breakfast along with the chance to engage with researchers and community leaders. Research speed dating is one metaphor we have heard used to describe these events, but they are simply a place for people to meet and interact around a common topic of interest. And if the event helps plant the seeds of collaboration around a project, that’s a bonus!

After four years of hosting these events throughout York Region, we have had 331 participants and 97% of those who attended found the event useful. We are set to launch a fifth season, and in the spirit of responsiveness and continuous improvement, we’re adopting a slight modification to some of our events this year and our inaugural event reflects this. Starting September 30, the York Institute for Health Research, in collabortion with the KMb Unit will be co-hosting a workshop series on Program Evaluation. This will be the first capacity building KM in the AM we’ve offered. Many of our partners have identified their desire to learn the skill sets needed to better participate in knowledge mobilization activities, and this is the first foray for us to meet these needs.

Dates and Topics:

• Thursday, September 30, 9:30 to noon – Evaluation Concepts, Tends, Innovations

• Thursday, October 14, 9:30 to noon – Applying Program Logic Model to Planning your Evaluation

• Thursday, October 21, 2:00 to 4:30 – Data Collection-Ethics, Surveys, Focus Groups

• Thursday, November 18, 2:00 to 4:30 – Data Analysis, Writing the Evaluation Report

Location: All workshops will be held at 21 Dunlop St., Richmond Hill at the Office of Catholic Community Services York Region. The KMb Unit would like to acknowledge CCSYR for their generous donation of space.

View Larger Map

Costs: $25.00 per person, per session, payable at each event. Cash or cheques payable to York University.

Registration will be capped at 15 per session and coffee and light refreshments will be served at each event.

To register or inquire about more details, please contact Krista Jensen, KMb Officer at York, at kejensen@yorku.ca or 416-736-2100 ext. 88847.

Be sure to check www.researchimpact.ca for additional information on upcoming YorkU KM in the AM events, soon to be scheduled for October and November 2010.

Reflections from the 2010 KMb Retreat

August 30, the entire KMb team at York University spent the day at Toronto’s Centre for Social Innovation planning for the coming academic year. This has become an annual exercise; the team heads offsite for some unstructured planning and development discussion.

A special shoutout to Elizabeth Monier Williams, Research Communications Officer for York’s Office of the Vice President Research and Innovation. Elizabeth provided a candid and comprehensive analysis of the KMb Unit’s communications.

Reflecting on the day we realize that we have not “jumped the shark”, instead we are operating more as a “hive of awesome”. And while we’re likely heading into the tipping point years, we realize we continue the need to distance ourselves from the trainwreck meter. Emo!

That means, roughly, that ResearchImpact is still the leading voice for institutional KMb services in Canada and that we need to continue our efforts to deliver quality services to our faculty, graduate students and community/government partners.

We wish to let you know that 2010-2011 looks to be another great year for York’s KMb Unit. We’re a dynamic team and well positioned to deliver on a strategic and operational mandate of service to the research community at York, as well as our stakeholders beyond the university.

Ask how York KMb can support you!

York responds to the knowledge mobilization evaluation

Like most service units York’s Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) Unit counts lots of stuff. We count every presentation we make according to the audience, we count numbers of requests for service, we count students, web hits, tweets, students engaged with non-academic research stakeholders and, of course, we count money.

What has this shown? We’ve brokered over 155 collaborations between researchers and non-academic research stakeholders. We’ve worked with over 200 York faculty. We’ve had over 2M web hits on our web site. We have helped faculty raise over $15M in funding for engaged research, we have placed 29 graduate student KMb Interns with partners (4 of whom were subsequently hired by their internship partner organization) and we have attracted over $700K for funding from KMb partners. But the question remains:

So What?

We have been busy but what impact has this activity had on faculty, students and partners? Most of what we count are inputs into a system of institutional KMb support. What are the outputs, outcomes or impacts? We wish to better articulate the downstream impacts of our efforts so in May 2009 we began a formal evaluation of the first 2.5 years of KMb. York’s KMb Unit contracted the Program Evaluation Unit of the York Institute for Health Research to develop and undertake an evaluation of the KMb Units at York, at UVic and at their collaboration called ResearchImpact. Under the supervision of Michaela Hynie, Director of the Program Evaluation Unit, the evaluation ran from June – September 2009 and a final report which will be released at Congress 2010 was tabled in November 2009.

On February 19, 2010 the report was reviewed by a committee of stakeholders representing local and national perspectives on KMb. Chaired by Stan Shapson (Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University), two York faculty met with external stakeholders (see below for Committee membership) and were asked three questions:

1. How should we continue to develop institutional support services at York University?
2. How should we develop ResearchImpact (Canada’s national knowledge mobilization network)?
3. How can we apply the principles of KMb to industry liaison?

The review committee was positive about York’s institutional KMb capacity and recognized that KMb has certainly created benefits for York, for researchers, for graduate students, for research partners. However, they also provided helpful critical suggestions for the future. The reviewers felt the evaluation fell short of identifying the social, economic, cultural or environmental impacts of research. One reviewer commented that the report did not capture the intangible benefits of KMb at the community level. In a presentation on measuring the outcomes and benefits of university research at the Canadian Association of University Research Administrators (May 9-12, 2010 ) David Phipps recognized that York invested a lot of time to get to a point where we were less than satisfied with our ability to demonstrate the impact of KMb. This is not a criticism of the evaluation report or of the methodology but an observation about the state of evaluation of the non-academic impacts of research, especially in the social sciences and humanities. We also recognize that 2.5 years is insufficient time for many impacts to be realized. Outputs (such as graduate student interns trained) and outcomes (such as graduate students hired by their intern host organizations) were identified but impacts and a social return on investment were generally lacking.

Nonetheless we are pleased that the evaluation reported many successes and achievements and the Committee left the KMb Unit with a number of areas on which we can focus for continued growth. Since the Evaluation Committee meeting on February 19, 2010, Stan Shapson has met three times with David Dewitt (Associate VP Research, Social Sciences & Humanities), David Phipps (Director, Research Services & Knowledge Exchange) and Michael Johnny (Manager, Knowledge Mobilization) to consider the outcomes of the evaluation report and the Committee’s input to inform decisions about future KMb developments at York and ResearchImpact. See the table below for recommendations and action items arising from York’s response to the review committee’s comments on the evaluation report. See also the following documents for more information on York’s evaluation of the KMb Unit and ResearchImpact.

• ResearchSnapshot summary of evaluation report Hynie Evaluation of KMb ResearchSnapshot
• Presentation made by Michael Hynie to Evaluation Committee Evaluation Report Feb 19, 2010
• Final Evaluation report KMb Evaluation Final Report

If you have any feedback please comment on this article using the Leave a Comment feature above.

We wish to thank Michaela Hynie and her team for undertaking the evaluation. We also wish to thank the members of the Evaluation Review Committee:

Lisa Drouillard, Director NSERC Liaison,
Science and Innovation Sector, Industry Canada

Pierre-Gerlier Forest, President
Trudeau Foundation

Janet Halliwell
Former Executive VP, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Bill Hogarth
Former Director, York Region District School Board

Valerie Preston
Professor, Department of Geography, York University
Director, Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement (CERIS)

Stephen Gaetz,
Associate Professor, Faculty of Education
Director, Canadian Homelessness Research Network

Recommendation	Action Items	Next Steps
1. Capacity Building	Include KMb tools in KM in AM schedule	Develop KMb tool kit (already developing tools for brokers and P2P Alternate meet and greet with KMb tools
	KM in PM	Themes will emerge from KM in AM Currently exploring youth engagement
	KM in AM	Diabetes, aging workforce May 2010
	Roll out KMb Tool Kit	Clear language research summary completed in draft Schedule of new tools developed for release Roll out: P2P, national knowledge brokers teleconference, KM in AM
2. Faculty Engagement	Link to White Paper	MJ and PR developing document
	Articulate Value Proposition for faculty	Identify faculty already working in York Region (completed) Highlight faculty working in York Region on blog and in newsletters
	Governance	Focus with faculty working in York Region – what can they contribute to a governance structure Launch new Joint Advisory Committee
3. Student Engagement	2010 Interns (UWYR-York)	One page vision including budget (completed) SS speak with DZ (completed) Materials for competition prepared (completed)
4. Strategic vs Portfolio Approach to knowledge brokering Consensus for a blended approach	UW Priorities helping our youth grow up strong enabling individuals and families to achieve economic independence improving the wellbeing of individuals and community York Capacity Possible York capacity Mental health Immigration & settlement Poverty & Homelessness Climate Change	Confirm York capacity Map unique York capacity onto UW goals Determine where there is “bench strength” and capacity to work in public policy Meeting with York Region to explore YR priorities Thematic meetings to explore collaborations; 1) reactivate poverty working group; 2) explore CERIS to lead immigration; 3) successful SSHRC Public Outreach grant for climate change; 4) mental health Need to identify funding opportunities
5. Convergence Centre	Move Community Collaboration Stations to CC	Open convergence centre Fall 2010
	Hold events at CC	Every other KM in AM KMb Expo 2011
	KMb Unit presence at CC	MJ spend 1 day/week at CC
	Community Awareness	Identify key community partners and develop communication strategy for dissemination to encourage use of CC for community uses
6. Evaluation & Impacts	Evaluation Report: what are the most important/critical findings Evaluation didn’t capture some of the impacts experienced in York Region	Develop clear language research summary MJ and DP review report and presentation Provide points to VPRI/Community for comments
	Continue to track all activities
	Case Study Method possibly with UWYR as case study partner	identify faculty with case study experience discuss with Janet Halliwell
	Break through evidence based evaluation	Contact Janet Halliwell for guidance on methods Review materials from SSHRC Evaluation meeting at Congress 2010 Big thinking: CIFAR, John Halliwell (UBC), others?
7. ResearchImpact	Functions: Community of Practice Source of research for receptors Role for Industry Liaison?	United Way-University meeting April 2010 (MUN, UQAM, Guelph, USask, UVic) Others? Explore opportunities for funding

Social Inclusion for Health and Well Being in Program Evaluation – Thursday, April 30

The York Institute of Health Research led a dynamic and participatory conference that drew a capacity audience of almost 100 registrants. Supported by the Ministry of Research and Innvoaiton and York University, YIHR is home to an emerging Evaluation Unit that will be offering evaluation services and capacity building. The KM Unit at York was invited to prepare a poster presentation demonstrating its capacity to support program evaluation and social inclusion collaboration via the knowledge broker model. There were a number of conversations that ensued and there was much interest and curiosity from many participants who were not familiar with knowledge mobilization or the capacity that York has built to support KM. Conference organizers were successful in bringing together numerous presenters who shared their experiences and beliefs for social inclusion that promote health and wellness. Program evaluation is important to ensure that programs are aligned to achieve these objectives. Keynote presenter, Daniele Zanotti of the United Way of York Region, summarized the day well with this comment, “This work is the essential ingredient to get communities working together”. Following a morning of panel presentations participants were able to engage in workshops led by university researchers and their community collaborators.

People are invited to visit the YIHR web site for more information on the conference, including copies of all poster presentations and PowerPoint presentations from panel presenters.

Social Inclusion and Program Evaluation Models to Support Social Innovation