How to tell a story (of your research) to anyone – you are Batman

By Anneliese Poetz, KT Manager, Kids Brain Health Network

Almost two years ago I took a creative writing course. I didn’t expect at that time that it would be so relevant to Knowledge Translation, but I have come to realize that it really is.

I remember during graduate school, as researchers-in-training we were taught to be able to ‘tell the story’ in our data, meaning, how think analytically or be able to describe the patterns in your data.  Being able to tell the story that your data were telling you was necessary no matter whether it was a quantitative (statistical analysis of numerical data) project or qualitative (analysis of words, text).  But beyond this, when it comes time to tell the story of your research project as a whole, you need to become Batman.

“Becoming Batman” means you can think of yourself as the protagonist (see #4 below) in the story of your research project when you are developing your messaging for your KT products.  The KT Core recently produced an Infographic Guide. It requires the research team to sketch out the ‘story’ they want to tell about their research.  It occurred to me post-production that maybe some further pointers were needed for how to do that, and became the inspiration for this blog post.

Whenever we create KT products, it is usually the hope that it will inspire and inform changes; either in policy, practice or individual behaviours and attitudes.  In my creative writing class we were taught about ‘the poetics’ or the 4 ‘unities’ or ‘elements’ of any great story, no matter how it is told: in a book, a play, a movie, etc.  In each great (popular) story, all 4 elements are present.  These four elements and how they relate to telling a compelling story about your research that motivates people to take action are:

1)  Time: how much time is being covered in your story?  With respect to your research project, how long as the problem (see: #4 antagonist) under study been an issue?

You need a containable frame of time.  What was the time frame for your study?  Is there a timeline?

Was there a short timeline within which you had to solve this problem? What were the macro segments of time (the overall timeline from beginning to end) and what were the micro segments of time (time it took to interview respondents)?

You need to decide what will be the beginning of the story, and what will be the end. Make the time frame clear. Will you start to tell the story from before the project began, when you consulted with stakeholders to find out what they needed and formulated the research questions in order to figure out what the solutions could be?  Or will you start telling the story from when you successfully received a research grant to investigate your questions?  Is this something that occurred in the past? Over the past week? Over years? Are you telling the story in past tense or present tense?

Be aware of how much time (e.g. in a video) or space (in an infographic) you have to tell your story – if you only have a small amount of time or space, you are bound by that so keep the story within these constraints.  You can’t cover everything, and the amount of time or space will never be enough. But make a decision what you actually want to cover.

2)  Place:  In your story, where is your research taking place? Place is very important to the story, is it clearly defined or mentioned?  How has ‘place’ affected you and your role in the story of your research?  What are the people like?  How has it influenced who you are, how you do your work?  Make sure your interaction with ‘place’ is part of the story you are telling.

 

3)  Antagonist (villain): you can’t write a story without an antagonist, the antagonist is absolutely crucial to your story.  But in your research project you won’t be talking about how (you as) Batman defeated the Joker. An antagonist in a research project can be an illness, disease, societal issue you want to understand or solve, or a phenomenon (like a discovery you want to make).  Describe what your antagonist is.  What is the problem you are investigating?  Is your antagonist internal (you are struggling to overcome your own curiosity, your personal issues and/or health problems) or external (are you investigating a community or societal issue, an environmental plague, outer space, etc.)?  It should be readily apparent to the reader what it is you are up against.

How did you (or are you planning to) overcome it? This will be your research methods.

4)  Protagonist: The protagonist is the ‘hero’ or main character. This would be you, the researcher.  You are Batman.  You and your research team are working towards overcoming the ‘antagonist’ or problem you are investigating.

How are you different now at the end of the project than you were at the beginning? What did you learn? Discover?

You can’t have a little of both – it is absolute – you either overcome the antagonist or you succumb to it.  Did you overcome the antagonist (solve the problem you were investigating, make the discovery, answer your research questions) or did you succumb to it (the project did not yield results and further research is needed)? In storytelling this is known as the cathartic ‘release’, the recipient of your story is waiting to see whether it is going to be one or the other, and gets the same amount of pleasure out of the story whether you succeeded or failed. The reason why people are interested in your story is to find out what happened, to get that cathartic experience. In order to motivate the reader to action, you need to find a way to get that emotional reaction.

You have a fascinating research project. The trick is to be able to convey what’s important to you about your research, to someone else.  What is at stake for you? For society? Make sure the stakes are high enough, this makes the story more compelling.  What would happen if you hadn’t done this research project?

Food for thought for the next time you create an infographic (or really any KT product). What is the story you are telling? Does your ‘story’ evoke an emotional reaction? If the answer is yes, you will be more likely to motivate the reader toward action (e.g. changes in policy, practice, and/or personal behaviour) and isn’t that the reason why we do KT?

 

What do the acronyms TEDx, ASD and iKT have in common?

Source: What do the acronyms TEDx, ASD and iKT have in common?

This week’s guest post comes from the ASD Mental Health site, Dr. Jonathan Weiss’ Blog. It was first published on April 13, 2016 and is reposted here with permission. 

by Drs. Jonathan Lai & Jonathan Weiss

On Saturday May 28^th, the Chair in ASD Treatment and Care Research^[1] will be hosting Spectrum, a TEDxYorkUSalon focussing on concerns relevant to transition-age youth and to adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

When the Chair was first launched, we asked stakeholders (e.g. people with ASD, clinicians, family members, policymakers, and researchers) how they wanted to be engaged with, both in terms of what we’re doing, and what was going on in the Canadian field of autism research. The message was clear: we need more than one approach, for multiple types of audiences, including those we already knew as well as those in the autism community we had not yet reached. So how best to develop a dynamic, accessible, and efficient way of exchanging knowledge about autism across so many different perspectives? This is where TEDx comes in.

Our upcoming event is part of our strategy of innovative knowledge mobilization and stakeholder engagement. Since knowledge translation is a learning process among stakeholders with different perspectives and expertise, we have involved people with ASD, parents, researchers, educators, policy makers, and service providers as presenters. The presenters will give short 8-minute talks which will be placed online following the event and made freely accessible to the public.

The well-known and appreciated TED format is all about developing, refining, and sharing ideas in an entertaining way, both for those present in the physical audience, as well as those in a virtual audience who can access the talks worldwide. It’s a format, and a brand, that has tremendous recognition and a demonstrated ability to break down complex knowledge into a format that can appeal to a wide range of audiences: it’s open to everyone. Since our goal is share the knowledge that’s been generated in the Canadian autism community openly, we are creating broadly appealing content that will be available through the TEDx in-person and online platforms. We believe it will be an effective method to bring multiple perspectives together and listen to one another.

How can you plan your own TEDx event?

A TEDx event is not an easy thing to coordinate or one that can be developed in only a few months time. You will need dedicated personnel; we have one person (JL) who is dedicated to coordinating all aspects of the day over a 12 month period, for about one day a week.  Our timeline was as follows, based on our capacity:

Timeline (# months in advance of event date)	Task to be completed
10 months	Read TEDx guidelines, craft vision and goals
9 months	Find a venue and date, have an budget
8 months	Curate speakers, identify sponsors and partners
7 months	Construct a program (running order)
6 months	Form your teams (A/V, volunteers)
5 months	Coach speakers (monthly emails, one-on-one sessions)
5 months	Build a website (marketing)
2 month	Promote to your audience (marketing)

First, craft your vision and goals (10 months ahead of time). It’s important to think through and articulate your vision (how would you define success?) and then identify how you can evaluate whether and to what extent you achieved your goals. Our vision and goals were to: 1) make topics of ASD research accessible, 2) build enthusiasm about research and 3) expand reach globally to people living with ASD, students and service providers. This shaped the types of questions we asked on our evaluation forms. For example, we hope that the TEDxYorkUSalon event will lead to greater excitement, optimism and familiarity about Canadian research in ASD and with regard to how people view ASD more generally. We ask questions about these topics in an optional questionnaire when they register, and will do so again after the event, to measure individual change.

As you begin this goal setting and visioning process, read the guidelines to know what goals are feasible. The TEDx Organizer’s Manual had many helpful tips and a step-by-step guide on how to organize an event like this properly. Since this is our first time, we had a steep learning curve. There are various guidelines for the different types of events. TEDx licenses are given to people based on location (e.g. TEDxNewYork, TEDxToyko, TEDxUniversityofLeeds, TEDxYorkU) and there are different guidelines for each event type with respect to: the number of attendees, types of sponsorships, branding of the event etc. We decided to run a Salon event under TEDxYorkU – a smaller event run under approved TEDx license holders because it allows us to explore a more specific topic rather than a general theme. Your vision and goals must align with the type of event – as that determines the structure that enables what you can do.

Ultimately it’s crucial to stick with TED’s strictly prescribed format, which can be difficult for us researchers who are used to having full control over the design and execution of our own events. By choosing to go with the TEDx format, it meant letting go of some of that control. We learned that we had to be flexible – working with a brand with licensing guidelines, we had to adapt each time we were constrained by requirements. For instance, we had to ensure the number of presenters and attendees were approved and that sponsors were not related / perceived to influence/bias talk content. Further, we had to figure out how to brand the event properly – the Event webpage couldn’t be associated with our research brand (Chair website, ASDMentalHealth Blog, or even York University). We would encourage on-going communication within your team and those involved so everyone is on the same page.

Looking for an appropriate venue, we kept in mind not only costs but accessibility for families – as well as technical requirements for our event (e.g. lighting, staging). With the depth and breadth of enthusiastic, passionate Canadian researchers, advocates and parents available, we had no difficulty finding individuals who could fit the TED requirements. Our speakers are up for the challenge, currently being coached to chiselling their passion, knowledge and experience into a tight 8 minutes. Similarly, finding partners and sponsors for the event was not a big challenge. Many organizations that shared the same vision of KT and gladly supported us, including the Faculty of Health at York University, NeuroDevNet, Kerry’s Place, Geneva Centre for Autism, Sinneave Family Foundation, and the Ontario Brain Institute.

We worked with an expert at York University who has successfully run TEDxYorkU over the last few years (Thanks Ross!), building on his success and his wisdom about what’s required in terms of advising speakers, creating an exciting schedule, space and technological issues. NeuroDevNet’s KT Core will be in attendance to engage with stakeholders and capture this engagement on video. Video taping of individual speakers is also being arranged through York University’s Learning Technology Services video team, who have had experience working with TEDxYorkU in the past and were familiar with TEDx guidelines.

Overall, familiarity with TEDx guidelines, building a team (e.g. with sponsors, speakers, technical support) and having consistent communication with those involved within is important to create a successful event. The exchange of ideas and having different perspectives (not just researchers) is, after all, the point of doing iKT!

For more information about this event, and how to register, please visit: http://www.tedxyorkusalon.org/ or contact Dr. Jonathan Weiss (jonweiss@yorku.ca) or Dr. Jonathan Lai (jonlai@yorku.ca) for details.

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_{[1] The Chair in Autism Spectrum Disorder Treatment and Care Research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in partnership with Autism Speaks Canada, the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorders Alliance, Health Canada, NeuroDevNet and the Sinneave Family Foundation. Additional support from York University and ORION’s O3 Collaboration.}

Clear Language That Packs a KT Punch

This week’s blog is written by Stacie Ross, KT Assistant for the KT Core of NeuroDevNet.

NeuroDevNet’s KT Core has been producing our ResearchSnapshot clear language research summaries since 2014. We have 39 ResearchSnapshots posted on the NeuroDevNet site neurodevnet.ca. Responding to feedback from our researchers, we revised our process for clear language writing to take advantage of the expertise of our trainees who are close to the research being summarized.

How We Made a Change

Listening to our researchers allowed us to implement a new process that streamlined and simplified the writing process while at the same time created a ResearchSnapshot that more accurately reflected the original research being summarized. The result will be a more succinct and easy-to-understand review, and trainee writers who have developed clear writing as a new skill and produced clear language research summaries can place these non-academic publications on their CVs. Trainees are encouraged to review our process and think about whether they would like to work with the KT Core, to create a clear language summary of either their own peer-reviewed publication or one from their supervisor.

Revised Process Created Through Trainee Feedback

The detailed process was designed through a few meetings, incorporating feedback, and testing logistics. The umbrella process without all of the details is really four simple steps for us.

1. Create an instructional webinar on how to write clear language summaries.
2. Invite our NeuroDevNet trainees to the webinar/to view it online afterwards.
3. Put out a network-wide call for papers.
4. Send regular reminders to the network to submit papers.

On August 14^th, 2015, we held a webinar to inform NeuroDevNet trainees about clear language summaries and how to write a ResearchSnapshot. Michael Johnny, Manager of Knowledge Mobilization at York University and Anneliese Poetz, Manager, Knowledge Translation (KT Core) outlined just how important design and clear language are for the reader to be able to understand the science behind the ResearchSnapshot. The webinar was a success with great comments received through an online survey afterwards.

“I liked that I came into it knowing nothing about the topic and not being really sure what to expect, but found that I now understand the importance and function of research snapshots.”

“The webinar was a great opportunity to learn about [NeuroDevNet] and clear language writing.”

We also received some tips on how to improve our next webinar. One example,

“I would have liked to see an example of a good research snapshot and a research snapshot that is not meeting criteria. That would have allowed us to have a clearer understanding of what to strive for and what to avoid.”

We will seek to address this valuable feedback in future training sessions.

As I am new to NeuroDevNet, I enjoyed being a part of the webinar and getting to know the process and clear writing expectations. View the webinar to learn about the value of clear language. I am looking forward to creating many more ResearchSnapshots and contributing clear language summaries that can speak to diverse stakeholders and provide them with the information they need to make decisions, to be informed, to provide care, to access more information.

Dr. Jarred Garfinkle’s ResearchSnapshot, “How Much of Cerebral Palsy is Caused by Genetics,” will be a clear language summary of Dr. Maryam Oskoui’s publication, “Clinically relevant copy number variations detected in cerebral palsy.” This will be my first ResearchSnapshot that I have coordinated. The draft is in, it’s terrific, and the process has been smooth and simple thus far. With the support of the online webinar, the existing ResearchSnapshots for reference, the knowledge mobilization writing guide, and myself and the entire KT Core, bringing evidence into practice is proving to be efficient and effective and exciting!

If you are a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee and have a peer-reviewed publication you’d like to translate into a ResearchSnapshot clear language research summary, contact the KT Core.

Embedded KT Support within Project Teams – working the “Co-Produced Pathway to Impact” for NeuroDevNet NCE

by Anneliese Poetz, KT Manager, NeuroDevNet

In a recent blog post we told you about the development of a “Hybrid” tool that combines aspects of KT Planning with principles of project management. While this tool is appropriate for use by any researcher or trainee, we primarily developed it for use by NeuroDevNet’s 4 High Impact Projects (HIPs). The HIPs were chosen from existing NeuroDevNet research projects after the Research Management Committee directed that NeuroDevNet focus on 4-5 projects that had the “highest potential for creating impacts on diagnostics, interventions and services” during Cycle II. The idea is that by working closely with a small number of projects we can maximize the chances we will have specific examples of how we have achieved impact during Cycle II, to best position NeuroDevNet for Cycle III renewal. The process took several months, and began with a call to PIs to ask them to select projects within their programs that would fit the criteria to become a HIP. The KT Core made recommendations and the final High Impact Projects were approved by Dan Goldowitz, Scientific Director for NeuroDevNet.

Social ABCs (ASD) High Impact Project Team members meeting with KT Core.

We provided the 4 HIPs with the Hybrid tool to use for drafting their KT plans for the next 5 years (Cycle II for NeuroDevNet). Over the course of this summer, David Phipps (KT Lead, NeuroDevNet) and I met with 3 out of the 4 HIP project teams for 1.5-2 days in-person to review their KT Plan with them and collaboratively refine it as needed.

This is exciting for NeuroDevNet’s KT Core, because it is the first time there have been KT practitioners (KT supports within an organization) embedded within project teams in this way. The information gathered within the Hybrid KT Planning tool will provide the information needed to manage the timelines and milestones for these KT plans during Cycle II. The aim is to work with project teams so that by the time we write our application for Cycle III funding we will have concrete examples of impact.

Screening & Intervention (FASD) High Impact Project team members working on KT Plan with NeuroDevNet’s KT Core

The first meeting we attended was for a project in the ASD program called Social ABCs, the next was for the FASD program’s Screening & Intervention project, and finally the CP Program’s Exergame project. The first two were more focused on KT activities toward achieving uptake and implementation of their respective interventions into programs that serve children and families affected by ASD and/or FASD while the latter is more focused on commercialization of the Exergame technology and games for home use. In all meetings, the project team members (researchers, research support staff, practitioners/partners etc.) were fully engaged and commented afterwards about how useful this process has been for them: both the tool we provided and the in-person meetings.

As part of the process we are listening to project team members for their feedback on the Hybrid KT planning tool in order to inform future iterations. After the in-person meetings the KT Core continues to work with the HIPs to further refine and finalize their KT plan, and also to determine the best ways in which we can integrate with project teams and support their KT goals for Cycle II. We view this as an iterative process, and we will review these KT plans on an annual basis with follow up in-person meetings with project teams.

These HIPs are pilot projects – the KT Core remains available to help all NeuroDevNet projects with KT Planning and other KT services.

If you are a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee and would like help with your KT plan for a grant application or for your already-funded NeuroDevNet project(s) contact the KT Core to find out how we can help.

Why use Survey Monkey for surveys when NeuroDevNet has REDCap? Create a REDCap survey in 10 easy steps

by Anneliese Poetz, KT Manager, NeuroDevNet

The KT Core provides services for evaluation mainly for KT events and KT products.  Did you know that REDCap can be used for collecting evaluation/survey data?  As a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee, you have free access to REDCap using your login and password.  Use REDCap for informing your research and/or for KT evaluation purposes.

What kind of surveys would you want to use REDCap for?

• Data collection for research
• Evaluation of your KT event (either in-person or webinar)
• Evaluation of your KT product (summary, infographic, video, etc.)
• Needs assessment for informing capacity building, research grant applications, etc.
• Any survey you would normally use survey monkey, zoho, or any other free survey maker for

Example: I used REDCap recently to conduct a needs assessment for an upcoming workshop on evaluation of knowledge translation.  I used a mix of multiple choice and open-ended questions, and for one of the questions I used the “slider”.  I wanted to know how attendees rated their ability to do KT evaluation prior to the workshop, so by choosing the “slider” type of question I was able to give survey respondents the ability to slide a horizontal bar between “0” on one end and “100” on another end, sort of like a visual analog scale.  The data from these responses is represented as a scatter plot in the data report. It’s a neat feature I have never seen in any survey software before.  I customized a report of the open-ended text-based answers as well as a separate report that gave me either bar charts or pie charts showing the data from the multiple choice responses.  This was very useful data for informing our approach to the workshop.

What are the benefits of using REDCap for surveys?

• Has the same features as the paid-version of survey monkey
• Data is housed in Canada, by NeuroDevNet Neuroinformatics Core, not in the United States like Survey Monkey
• Can export your data into SPSS, SAS, R, MS Excel for analysis, or as a .csv file
• Can customize reports for data export so you can visually see trends (e.g. a bar or pie chart for multiple choice answers, text entries for open ended questions)
• Can enter email addresses of respondents directly into the survey, so you can track survey responses by user

How can you get started using REDCap?

1. Go to: https://neurodevnet.med.ualberta.ca/
2. Enter your NeuroDevNet username and password
3. Watch tutorial videos if needed, to learn how to use REDCap to develop your survey
4. Enter your questions, and design the survey using multiple choice options or open-ended text-based answers
5. Work with Neuroinformatics (Justin Leong, jleong [at] neurodevnet.ca) to finalize and launch your survey
6. Retrieve your data (using export/report options listed above)

Contact the KT Core if you’d like help drafting evaluation questions.  Here is a step-by-step example of how you can create your own survey in REDCap:

Step 1: Log into REDCap

Step 2: In this window, you will see surveys you have already created. You can click on an existing “Project Title” in the list, or to create a new survey click on the tab “Create New Project”.

Step 3: When you click on “Create New Project” tab, you will see the following screen. Type in a title for your survey, choose an appropriate “purpose” for your survey (I usually choose “Quality Improvement”) and I usually leave the default choice to start the project from scratch.  Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button “Create Project”.

Step 4: Set up your survey (project).  Click “enable” for “Use surveys in this project?” and then click on it to open a page that will allow you to upload a logo/photo and edit a message to your survey participants (such as ethics agreement if the survey is for research, an introduction/overview of the survey if you are doing a needs assessment or evaluation, information about how the data will be used etc.). When you are done, click the “I’m done!” button.  To design your survey, click the “Online Designer” button and “I’m done!”.

Step 5:  Design your survey.  You will see an entry under “Instrument Name” that is called “My First Instrument”.  Click on the “edit” button to edit the title of this instrument. If you don’t, and you create a new survey (if you “add new instrument”) you will have problems later that you will have to contact Justin to sort out.  After you are done editing the title to something more meaningful (can be the same title as your project title) click “save”.

Step 6: Click on the “Instrument name” title you just edited.  Click “Add Field” to add your first question to your survey.

Step 7: Design your survey questions.  Choose the type of field you want, for example, text box, multiple choice, true/false, slider (visual analog scale), etc.  The slider is great if you want to ask your survey respondents to rate something based on how they felt about it. It can give you more precise information than a scale from 1-10. For example, you can ask “how would you rate your knowledge about XYZ after this workshop?” and give them a scale from 1-100. Text boxes are good for open-ended questions, and multiple choice can be either “choose one only” or “choose multiple”.

Step 8: Create your questions. The example below shows how you would create a multiple choice question. Type the question you want to ask into “Field Label”. Type the choices for your multiple choice question in the box called “Choices” but don’t type a number, just type one choice per line. The numbers will be added automatically by REDCap.  Type in a meaningful name for the variable, so when you view the report of your data you’ll know which one it is.  I usually type “_text” at the end of answers that are open-ended text based answers so that I can create one report for the text-based answers, and another for the report-based answers.  Choose “yes” or “no” whether you want the question to be mandatory for the user to answer – the default is “no”.  Accept the defaults for everything else and click “save”.

This is what the question looks like:

Step 9: When you are done creating questions for your survey, click the “Project Setup” tab.  Click “I’m done!” for the “Design your data collection instruments” item.  Accept the default values and click “I’m done!” for the next 3 items “Enable optional modules and customizations”, “Set up project bookmarks” and “User Rights and Permissions”.  The next item asks you to test the instrument thoroughly before entering “Production” mode. Once you enter “Production” you will be limited in terms of what you can edit/change.

When you are done testing (and clicked “I’m done!”) click the button that says “Move project to production” to get the survey link that you can send to participants by copying/pasting the link into the body of an email.

Step 10: Get your survey link so you can send it in the body of an email to your participants (for anonymous survey data collection).  You may have to contact Justin for help with this.  If you want to try it on your own, look under the “Data Collection” heading on the left hand side of the project page, and click “Manage Survey Participants”.  Then you should be able to copy/paste the link for your survey into an email or into a tweet or other social media post.  Note: you have to have enabled the survey (step 4) in order to get the link for your survey.

This blog post is not exhaustive in terms of REDCap’s survey functionality.  You can also create custom reports so that as people fill out your survey, you can look at the data in a way that makes it easiest for you. For example, I usually create 2 reports: one for the text-based/open-ended answers and one for the multiple choice answers that are usually bar or pie-charts.  It’s up to you.

REDCap is a great tool for surveys.  You may have used it for research-based surveys, but you may not have thought about using it for conducting needs assessments before conducting a workshop, course or presentation or to assess your end-users’ needs before designing your KT products (summaries, infographics, videos, etc.) for evaluating an event (in-person workshop, stakeholder engagement event, or conference, or a webinar) or your KT products (survey your end-users to find out how they have used your KT Product, and what impact it may have had for informing practice or policy).

If you are a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee and would like help with evaluation of your events and/or KT activities, contact the KT Core. If you need technical assistance setting up a REDCap survey, contact Justin Leong (jleong [at] neurodevnet.ca) from NeuroDevNet’s Neuroinformatics Core.

 

 

What happens when KT Planning and Project Management worlds collide?

by Anneliese Poetz, KT Manager, NeuroDevNet

The answer: you get a hybrid tool for researchers to use for developing a KT plan with activities that are linked with the elements of a project charter.

The dictionary defines “hybrid” as: “a thing made by combining two different elements; a mixture.”

NeuroDevNet’s KT Core recently finalized the creation of a new innovative tool for combining KT Planning with principles from the field of project management. Indeed, it is a ‘mixture’ of elements from both. Someone asked me recently: why did you create the Hybrid KT Planning and Project Management tool (short form: ‘the Hybrid tool’). NeuroDevNet NCE was renewed for another 5 years of funding (Cycle II), and we needed a tool that could be used for any project, that would help us manage KT plans for projects in Cycle II and help keep them on track. We believe that doing this will position us well for applying for Cycle III.

Another person asked me, what was your process for creating the Hybrid tool?

1) Identified a need for a custom tool to facilitate KT Planning for NeuroDevNet’s Cycle II projects after conducting a review of existing KT Planning guides and testing them internally to determine their usefulness

2) Based on the review of KT Planning Guides, we chose 2 key tools to build upon: 1) Melanie Barwick’s (Sick Kids) 13-step Scientist Knowledge Translation Plan template for its comprehensiveness, and 2) Purmina Sundar’s (Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health) form-fillable KMb Toolkit for its ease of use and content, as well as 6 different examples of project charters provided by colleagues

3) Identified areas of overlap (e.g. people involved, identification of activities/deliverables) and linked these with corresponding sections of project charters. I literally pulled these resources apart and put them back together in a different arrangement

4) Composed original text for the purpose of providing additional information (e.g. tips for stakeholder engagement as part of an iKT strategy) and tables that mirror those required for NCE progress reporting

5) Identified places in the document where information would have to be duplicated, and noted where .pdf form-fillable document should auto-populate the information to make it easier for project teams to work with

6) Once the word document was drafted, it was shared with Principal Investigators, NeuroDevNet Headquarters, the KT Core’s KT Steering Committee, and the KT Core’s McMaster and McGill sites for feedback

7) Finalized content in response to feedback and sent to graphic designer who created the working form-fillable version

I recently presented at a KT Conference, and explained some of the requirements of our researchers and how we addressed them before finalizing the Hybrid tool. In the presentation below, you can see the requirements we gathered (from stakeholders listed in step 5 above) and how we addressed them. The presentation ends with a few points as to why we think this tool is important:

http://www.slideshare.net/NeuroDevNet/a-poetz-d-phipps-m-johnny

We wish to thank Melanie Barwick (Sick Kids) and Purnima Sundar (OCE CYMH) for giving us permission to use content from their KT Planning tools.

The Hybrid tool has been peer-reviewed, and tested for functionality. It is not available online yet, but we do plan to make it publicly available.

If you are a NeuroDevNet researcher or trainee and would like to use the Hybrid tool for your KT Planning, contact the KT Core.