The two-day event worked really well, it was wonderful to ‘see’ everyone contributing and the zoom platform which I have found in my work is a great leveller in terms of enabling people to contribute who may otherwise feel less confident face-to-face."
Keele University's Impact Accelerator Unit (IAU) hosted the most recent of our online training sessions 'Implementation and Impact' on the 21 and 22 January, which was well attended by health researchers, doctoral students, and clinicians.
The event was co-produced by IAU staff members working with IAU patient and public partners. As a team, they designed, developed and delivered the sessions, with each team member facilitating during break-out rooms and group chats, questioning, and presenting. Professor Krysia Dziedzic welcomed delegates and brought the discussion and reflection together in the closing session.
The IAU was approached by the School, late last year, to contribute to our online research skills training workshops, after recognising the need to learn more about how to effectively mobilise knowledge, with the involvement of patient and public contributors.
This need was again highlighted during the workshops, evident in the enthusiasm of delegates and in the exchange of information. Delegates were also keen to learn more about the area and build ongoing connections with each other.
The workshops were designed guided by the following objectives:
- To better understand what Knowledge Mobilisation is, become familiar with its concepts, and be able to choose an approach to accelerate the impact of research
- To understand co-production and how this could be used practically in research
- To understand the impact that can be generated from research and be able to consider steps to increase the impact of research in the future.
It was a privilege and an honour to be involved from the outset and a whole new learning curve from my perspective and it put together the pieces of my own jigsaw, and helped me to learn more about the wider contexts that researchers and clinicians operate in and the tensions they have to deal with in getting research into practice.”
- LINK member Mandy Parks
Online learning has it's own challenges, least of all navigating the technology. The organisers planned to give participants time for reflection and incorporated several breaks into the online programme. The post-event feedback received suggests that some delegates would have preferred longer breaks, illustrating the challenge of providing quality content and time for discussion in a 3-4 hour session. As the organisers commented: "Discussion was so enthusiastic and interesting sometimes breaks were overlooked! As a team we think it’s going to be useful to get feedback from each other as well as the delegates about the nature and duration of breaks when working virtually and make sure planned breaks are taken."
The IAU team has considered building on the workshop taster session and "providing a ‘deep dive’ into topics over a longer period of time would be beneficial in the future design of workshops. "We have already been approached to present a seminar at the University of Manchester, which again illustrates the interest and enthusiasm around the subject."
Other comments
“Brilliant two days, thank you so much for your efforts! I have learnt so much!”
“Useful for early career researchers it's been fantastic!”
“Great stimulating conversations Thanks to everyone involved, really thought-provoking”
“Thank you very much for this much-needed training! Really appreciate your efforts to organise it!”