‘Open, ready and agile’: Developing a communications strategy for the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) in the Global South
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This document summarizes a presentation about developing a communications strategy for the ROER4D research project. The presentation introduces the ROER4D project, which aims to study the impact of open educational resources in developing countries. It discusses developing a communications strategy to share research findings through various channels and media formats. Key aspects of the strategy include making the research visible, generating knowledge, networking researchers, and building research capacity. Metrics like tweet activity and social media mentions will help evaluate the strategy's effectiveness over time. Enabling openness, agility, and readiness can help ensure the communications approach is adaptive and responsive to feedback.
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‘Open, ready and agile’: Developing a communications strategy for the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) in the Global South
- 1. Sukaina Walji University of Cape Town Open Education Global Conference 2015 23 April 2015 Open, ready and agile: developing a communications strategy for the ROER4D project
- 2. Overview Introduce the ROER4D project Research communications Developing the ROER4D research strategy Enabling factors: Readiness, Agility & Openness
- 3. http://oermap.org/oer-evidence-map/ Most OER research taking place in Global North
- 4. in the Global South In what ways, and under what circumstances, can the adoption of OER impact upon the increasing demand for accessible, relevant, high-quality, and affordable education in the Global South? Research on OER for Development
- 6. 1. Build an empirical knowledge base on the use and impact of OER in education 2. Develop the capacity of OER researchers 3. Build a network of OER scholars 4. Communicate research to inform education policy and practice 5. Curate research documents produced and data collected as open data ROER4D Objectives
- 7. Factors affecting nature of research communications Orgs/funders keen on seeing research impact and uptake [1] Changes in discourses around how and what of research communications [2] Increasing number of channels, media and formats Media and content consumption habits and expectations of research ‘recipients’ Our work is situated in field of research communications [1] Doemeland D; Trevino. J. 2014. Which World Bank reports are widely read ?. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 6851. Washington, DC: World Bank Group. [2]Lewin, T., & Patterson, Z. (2012). Approaches to Development Research Communication. IDS Bulletin, 43(5), 38-44. doi:10.1111/j.1759-5436.2012.00361.x
- 8. A need for an informed and deliberate approach to communicating research about OER Communicate OER research in Global South • Northern OER research has louder voice • People unaware of what is happening in OER or open ed in developing countries • We know more about OER activities but not enough about evidence to inform policy Communicating to non-OER communities • The “iceberg model” of OER engagement (Weller, 2014)[1] • Communicating to constituencies for whom OER is not a primary activity but a means to an end or a happy by-product [1] http://blog.edtechie.net/oer/the-iceberg-model-of-oer-engagement/
- 9. An IDRC funded research project to build and mentor Communication and Evaluation for IDRC flagship projects http://evaluationandcommunicationin practice.ca/
- 10. ROER4D Communication and Evaluation supported by DECI-2 Ricardo Ramirez Dal Brodhead Wendy Quarry (IDRC DECI-2 Project) Julius Nyangaga (Kenya) Charles Dhewa (Zimbabwe) Sarah Goodier (Evaluation) Sukaina Walji (Communication) (South Africa)
- 11. Steps in the DECI-2 Research Communications process
- 12. Progression through the process ✓✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ The steps are iterative, not linear
- 13. Developing the communications strategy Developing a communications strategy with DECI-2 team at Feb 2014 workshop
- 14. Defining purposes, objectives, methods and media Purpose Media
- 15. Four key purposes for ROER4D Communications 1. Visibility for project 2. Knowledge generation 3. Networking 4. Research capacity development These have informed our communications activities
- 16. Project events Resources SlideShare Blog Twitter Facebook Page CMS (Vula) Website Email Virtual meetings (Skype, Adobe Connect) Internal communications External communications Conferences ROER4D Communications overview OpenUCT repositoryNewsletter
- 17. Tweets per week Average: 7.75 tweets per week Data downloaded from Twitter Analytics; analysis conducted in Excel: grouped individual tweets into tweets per week
- 18. Tweets per week Average: 7.75 tweets per week GO-GN and OCWC, Slovenia (end April 2014) GO-GN and OpenEd, USA (end November 2014) OER Asia Symposiu m, Penang (end June 2014) UCT T&L Conf. (20 Oct 2014)
- 19. Activity around tweets (per week)
- 20. Activity around tweets (per week) GO-GN and OCWC, Slovenia (end April 2014) GO-GN and OpenEd, USA (end November 2014) OER Asia Symposium , Penang (end June 2014)
- 21. Activity around tweets (per week) GO-GN and OCWC, Slovenia (end April 2014) GO-GN and OpenEd, USA (end November 2014) OER Asia Symposium , Penang (end June 2014) Recommendation: Continue tweeting around events as this draws higher levels of engagement
- 22. “ROER4D” search: replies and mentions (at 2 March) Going to track over time Data fetched from Twitter’s API via NodeXL; Frucherman-Reingo algorithm graph constructed in NodeXL
- 23. “ROER4D” search: replies and mentions (at 2 March) Going to track over time Data fetched from Twitter’s API via NodeXL; graph constructed in NodeXL Recommendation: Pick up conversations with key people identified from these snapshots
- 24. Enabling factors for research communications Readiness Agility Openness
- 25. Readiness The DECI-2 approach specified organisational readiness as key to starting a Communications (and Evaluation) Staff: skills and attitudes (not all researchers want to communicate!) Time and resources Enabling environment, management support But too many unknowns to be really ready. We need to be “ready to be un-ready”
- 26. Agility What is agile? “successive approximation aka iterative development is central to agile methodology. It’s how you proactively gather feedback…so you can further improve” Examples • Rapid and incremental re-design of website and information design of pages - ongoing • Audience analysis – newsletter as well as social media • Amending objectives as new information comes to light • Responding to evaluation data and making changes Why does agile feel natural?
- 27. Conceptual Framework/s Methods Instrument questions Data Analysis tools Findings Proposal Literature Review Open Research process Openness and open research http://tinyurl.com/ ROER4D- Bibliography
- 28. Enabling principles for research communications Openness Agility Readiness
- 30. Links Website: www.roer4d.org Contact Author sukaina.walji@uct.ac.za Follow us: http://twitter.com/roer4D Presentations: www.slideshare.com/roer4D
- 31. Acknowledgments & Attribution This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Written by Sukaina Walji With acknowledgement to Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams and Sarah Goodier Contact: Sukaina.Walji@uct.ac.za
Editor's Notes
- http://oermap.org/oer-evidence-map/
- Funders are increasingly concerned and keen on research communications and research uptake – focus on showing impact Doemeland, Doerte; Trevino, James. 2014. Which World Bank reports are widely read ?. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 6851. Washington, DC: World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/05/19456376/world-bank-reports-widely-read-world-bank-reports-widely-read Changes in discourses around “development communications”: move away from the provision of findings from expert to recipient. There’s a developed literature in the development communications field Digital media and channels offering more options: social media and media consumption habits Notion of "open research”: transparency, participatory, collaborative, interdisiplinarity, involvement of stakeholders from outset. Enabled my digital, social and participatory tools. Changes in discourses around how and the what of research communications
- http://blog.edtechie.net/oer/the-iceberg-model-of-oer-engagement/
- Developing Evaluation and Communication capacity in IS research
- These are factors that are enabling our work in communications. Our communications work is ongoing and the development of the strategy continues.
- In such a complex project, it’s difficult to have a clear strategy, which is where agility came in. It was more important to be willing to learn, listen and respond to feedback than feel that we were in any state ready or that the answers were out there somewhere.
- Agility as an approach to communication has benefits: Small incremental communications efforts has led to read feedback and a rapid response, hence not only Agility or agile is another way of experiential learning and reflection or learning by doing. This deviated from the DECI-2 approach in terms of fieldtesting and prototyping and simulation.
- These are factors that are enabling our work in communications. Our communications work is ongoing and the development of the strategy is ongoing. It is iterative. Openness has supported agility. Through an open research commitment, the communications has also had to be open. Openness underpins how we communciate. This tends to be agile, but based within a structure. That has required agility. This has been iterations of the the research communications strategy that has been about engagment, Sometimes it has been difficult to follow the DECI-2 steps in the order or even method. For example, we haven’t done any field testing – we’ve just gone with a real version. Agility has supported readiness Turned this linear approach of readiness around that that in order to become ready, being agile and iterative is important, The end goal is more akin to readiness – in the sense that readiness is a state of learning , but it is only readiness to go onto the next stage.