a0 research on open education resources for...
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Develop broad objectives for communications strategy
Stakeholder analysis
Situational analysis
Establish purpose and scope of communications strategy
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Research scoping/proposal writing
Literature and desk research
Research Instrument design
Data collection and analysis
Findings
Ongoing dissemination activities07
Early research activities and inception activity
Identify and map stakeholders emerging from literature and desk research
Review, analyse and update stakeholder analysis
Review social media followers, contacts through communications channels
Track and monitor outputs, refine and amend
Conduct first round of audience analysis, mining the research
proposal(s) and discussing with research teams
Update stakeholder analysis and segment audiences
Develop specific objectives for communications strategy that map to
identified audiences
Extract key messages from findings
Design media outputs to support findings which map to stakeholders’
contexts and preferences
Establish a publication strategy for formal outputs
Identify key stakeholders to share findings
Ongoing updating of stakeholders and audiences
Tracking and monitoring of engagements and responses from
audiences
How to cite: Walji, S. (2017, April). Communicating openly: strategies for stakeholder engagement for an OER Research project in the Global South.Poster presented at the OE Global Conference 2017, Cape Town, South Africa
About ROER4DThe general objective of this research project is to improve educational policy, practice and research in developing countries by better understanding the use and impact of OER in formal educational settings.
The main research question is whether, how, for whom and under what circumstances can the adoption of OER and/or engagement with Open Educational Practices (OEP) provide equitable access to relevant, high-quality, affordable and sustainable education in the Global South?
ROER4D project objectives
1. Build an empirical knowledge base on the use and impact of OER in education2. Develop the capacity of OER researchers3. Build a network of OER scholars4. Communicate research to inform education policy and practice5. Curate and disseminate output as open content
Audience analysis and stakeholder engagement needs to continue throughout the research process from the proposal stage to the release of findings and beyond.
This is especially important for research that endeavours to adopt an Open Research approach, or that is working in an “Open” ethos.
Rationale for open communications and stakeholder engagement
How to communicate about Open Education and OER adoption
and impact to a wide range of stakeholders and to diverse groups, especially to those who
might not be familiar with the terminology, remains a challenge for open practioners?
There is pressure on researchers and research teams to develop communications strategies, formulate objectives, and plan activities for
research communications to ensure that findings are communicated effectively and timeously to targeted stakeholders and to
those for whom the research is deemed useful
How do we activate this communications strategy?
How do we engage with stakeholders?
How do we align with our research work?
Ask researchers to identify key audiences and users in research proposal
Establish website, logo URL, social media accounts
Consult with advisory group/key known stakeholders
Contribute social media posts
Draft a press release or early policy brief announcing your project and ask for feedback from key stakeholders
Develop branding and website
Invite newsletter subscribers
Develop and activate initial social media strategy
Develop and disseminate press release or early policy brief
Ask researchers to identify key audiences and users in research proposal
Establish website, logo URL, social media accounts
Engage in participatory research (e.g. workshops, reflection)
Organise formal and informal contact with key stakeholders
Draft and write blogs.
Track and monitor engagements
Develop a newsletter
Share work-in-progress at conferences and social media
Establish a regular blog schedule, commission blogs and publish blogs
Analyse stakeholder network growth
Conferences
Workshops
Publications, journal articles
Support for conferences via social media
Support for workshops via social media
Specialist and mainstream media engagement
An open communications strategy is by its nature iterative and tentative so agility and responsiveness need to be built in
Audience identification and stakeholder engagement needs to continue reflexively throughout the research process from the proposal stage to the release of findings and beyond
Realistically researchers may not be able to undertake full scope of communications and may choose to work with research communications professionals
Agility, responsiveness and humility can help mitigate some of the risks of open communication and stakeholder engagement
COMMUNICATING OPENLY: STRATEGIES FOR STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT FOR AN OER RESEARCH PROJECTIN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
COMMUNICATING OPENLY: STRATEGIES FOR STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT FOR AN OER RESEARCH PROJECTIN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
Risks and constraints of open communications and stakeholder engagement
Deciding when to be open and when not
Supporting “failure” and experimentation
Discomfort in sharing across cultural and geographical contexts
Meeting expectations and managing workload
Danger of accentuating the positive and unbalanced communication
ROER4D Key Audiences 1. Government/policy makers 2. Teachers/educators 3. Institutions (HEI, Schools) 4. OER community 5. Global researchers 6. Funders 7. Development community 8. Others (specific interest/discipline) Textbook publishers Open data community MOOC providers Language practitioners etc
Pilot instruments with selected audiences to ascertain usefulness
Keep records of networking outcomes and establish a baseline for tracking network of stakeholders growth
Share blogs about process of instrument design
Make visible actions of researchers through social media, conference attendances
Solicit peer review or early feedback from key stakeholders
Encourage research participants to discuss findings through meetings or webinars
Collect case studies for sharing
Produce publications, journal articles as delineated in strategy
Share early release drafts for peer review
Write blog posts and policy briefings
Prepare website for findings and publish findings
NewslettersSupport findings release via social media
Produce video/multimedia outputs
Identify media to share findings and pitch articles and offer interviews
designed by Rondine Carstens and the ROER4D team
Centre forInnovation inLearning andTeaching
Contact author Sukaina [email protected]
@sukainaw
Aligning research activities with open communicationsAn agile, iterative and practical approach to align stakeholder engagement with the research process trajectory.The granular nature of the approach is to delineate roles and tasks to make stakeholder engagement more manageable and focus on expertise of researchers and of communications professionals.
Tasks a researcher could do Tasks a communications professional could do
RESEARCH ON OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCES FOR DEVELOPMENT
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