Note: This set of recommendations supercedes the previous notes and includes further clarifications from participants. These are unedited notes from the workshop.
- What might work is…Infrastructure that makes it both easy and motivational for educational innovation papers and products to be entered in “standard” form, presented in easily searchable “standard” form and peer reviewed like a review publication with access rates, download statistics available for use in CV.
- What might work is…Research effectiveness of dissemination funding and publicize results.
- Workshop to focus on consumer-focus on training faculty developers to focus on those who might adopt the material, tailor to:
- Full time faculty or not, graduate students
- Relevant to type of institution
- Online/face-to-face
- …Create backup materials (e.g., instructors’ guides, additional problems and examples, more than just what is in the software/innovation that the student sees, so the faculty would not have to create additional information)
- …Continued support–once you’ve had a workshop, continue interacting with workshop participants, develop/foster a sense of community
- …Remember to make materials flexible (adaptable materials, different environments, courses/labs/institution-type, etc.)
- …Advisory Board–active during development
- …Instantaneous entry–simple starts to using the materials, test things out
- …Include administration–don’t focus exclusively on faculty adopters, but also consider department administrators, student advisors, teaching and learning lab staff, information technology staff
- …Use professional organizations–to get significant dissemination activity, involve and/or give leadership role through/to professional organizations, filter through professional organizations, where people looking for information might start, understand the cost/resource implications for the professional organization
- …Target audiences–select target audiences, and focus on them
- Steps to dissemination: Make them aware, make them interested, enable them to use
- …Materials with a lot of “pull” (e.g., online homework, real time data, working 3-d print)
- …Well designed face-to-face workshops or webinars
- “Fun”: field trips, big name kickoff speech
- Follow-up: 6 month report back, social networking
- …Online professional development connected to materials
- What might work…are indexing tools to help matchmake between needs and what materials, and support are available
- What might work…feedback loops to share experience reports using materials
- …Funnel model: Beyond your own class, needs analysis, find indicators of receptivity, target invitations to leaders
- …Understanding how potential adaptors think. Plan dissemination to meet them there (work-flow analysis). Start with what will resonate with potential adopters.
- …Providing a platform to share (meetings, publications, exploring ideas to test, community)
- …Combined face-to-face and online communities (can be done for almost nothing especially for community college faculty, faculty teaching the same subject, meeting every few weeks)
- …Designated mentor-mentee (the mentor is the middle man) relationship to help insure support beyond training, the mentor who is not the innovator is a credible aid.
- …Credibility of materials–professional society endorsement, award winners, materials from someone in very much the same situation as the potential adopter