How You Can Put Knowledge Into Action
“I’m an action researcher. That means that I don’t often do purely theoretical research or purely fundamental research. I’m an applied researcher that uses knowledge to provide solutions for specific social challenges. I’m not interested in publishing research that goes on a shelf and nobody reads, I’m interested in putting knowledge into practice. One of the most important parts of that process is disseminating the ideas, practices, and recommendations that come out of my research.”
Now I’m an action researcher. And all that means is that I don’t do research just for the sake of research, I don’t often do purely theoretical research, or purely fundamental research, what I most often do, what I want to do the most, is applied research that really focuses on a specific challenge that exists in society in order to hopefully provide some solutions to that challenge. And so I always paraphrase that and say, I’m not interested in publishing something that goes on a shelf in the library somewhere, and nobody reads, I’m really interested in taking that knowledge out of the act of the academy and putting it into practice. And part of that is all about disseminating the ideas, the practices, the recommendations that come out of a research project. Now, in any research project, what you end up with is a kind of scientific methodology that seeks to answer a fundamental question. And then using that methodology to collect data, and using that data and the analysis that goes behind that data to hopefully provide some answers to that research question. And some recommendations to dealing with whatever problem they’re you’re trying to deal with whatever problem you’re trying to solve. And so one of the earliest opportunities I had to act in that capacity to kind of disseminate knowledge was pretty early in my academic career, I was working for a large EU-funded research project. And I was tasked specifically with focusing on the dissemination of the knowledge that we are generating. And it was really, really fun because I kind of got to interview my superheroes. So I got to sit down with these very elite, very high-level very leaders in their field, one of maybe three leaders in their field, and interview them and just try to get out of them. What is that knowledge, it’s all packed up in their brains, that they may have put into reports and studies and everything like that. But I wanted them to kind of distill it into a nice little short, three-minute video interview so that I understood what they were dealing with, what are the issues that they’re fundamentally trying to take apart. And it was great fun, and I got to play around with some video editing software. And it really gave me a nice experience, because it helped me build a new skill set and act to think and act creatively. And all of that was really fun. And it was a departure from the hardcore research I was doing as kind of one of my other jobs within that Institute. But there were really kind of three lessons that I had kind of, in the last, I guess it’s been seven years now kind of picked apart, and tried to learn from and tried to kind of reflect on and try to continue to understand.
“As academics, whatever we do isn’t going to be perfect. It’ll never be future-proof or irrefutable. It’s not meant to be. There are always limitations and nuances in research. But being able to take what we know and translate it into an easy-to-understand and relatable piece of information that’s also relevant to on-going social trends can transform your work and create impact.”
One of the main lessons here is that whatever we do as academics when it comes to disseminating our knowledge, it’s not going to be perfect, it’s never going to be perfect. There are not many academics out there that can immediately take what they know, and what they’ve done in research and just spit it out as a very understandable, relatable piece of information that’s relevant for some other broader social issues that are happening at the same time, often as academics were taught to connect our work to a broader social issue. But the broader social issue tends to be so broad, that everybody kind of knows, yeah, this is an issue, this is a problem. But it’s not concrete enough to be able to say, okay, that this specific issue is what you’re dealing with, there’s often not a face behind it, there’s not really an understanding for what is the impact? What is the tangible tangibility of that work of that piece of work that you’re doing? And so I think, for me, I fell into this trap of imagining that my work had relevance for society. But taking it and translating it into something that was relevant was a process that I was kind of not really interested in. And it was kind of a difficult process to imagine I kind of dismissed it because I figured all well, you know, it’s not going to be a good enough quality, that dissemination is not going to be good enough quality that anybody would even care. So I took a lesson from this experience, and that is that it does get better. So as you continue to work to disseminate your knowledge, you can learn how to do it better and better and better and better along the way. The number two thing that I think was really important for my career and how I progressed as an academic and as a knowledge translator as a knowledge disseminator is a positive reinforcement that I’ve gotten from my community, the people around me, the people that matter to me, getting that just even the shortest note to say, Hey, I liked what you did there. I liked how you said that. It was really important for me and really important for me to kind of continue this process of learning how I can Best translate that knowledge into practice and into real tangible issues. And so I think everything from a small compliment to just something that says, hey, yeah, I get where you’re coming from that was really important. And I think that’s really great that you did that it can be really great. I get compliments from my mother all the time and it made me feel it fills me with joy and happiness, she compliments on my YouTube videos. And she says, This is so inspirational or this was so great, thank you for putting this out there. And it really, really fulfills me because I see that even if it’s just her saying, Yes, I like what you’re doing. It gives you that feeling that sense of like, okay, I can continue to do this and continue to get better. And it’s that encouragement to continue to progress. So if you’re thinking about going into this field of research, dissemination, or knowledge dissemination, take that on board, take those small compliments on board as an encouragement to continue doing this work continue on this journey. And then the third thing that I’ll point out here is that a lot of academics are fearful of knowledge dissemination because they imagine that in order to make their knowledge order to package it in a way that’s understandable for a broader audience, that they somehow have to simplify it or dumb it down. And I find this kind of assumption really, really problematic and frustrating because that’s not what knowledge dissemination is about at all. It’s not about dumbing things down. It’s not about making things simpler, even, it’s about taking a step away from your craft, and trying to understand where someone else might be coming from in relating to your craft and meeting them on their own terms. And what that means isn’t that you have to dumb something down or simplify or anything like that. What it means is that all the nuances that you’ve captured in this may be an expansive piece of work, have to be focused in on and so you don’t, I don’t believe you have to lose the nuance in an academic output an academic result, in order to try and translate it for a general more general audience. I believe that the nuance is actually what matters, the nuance is the most important part. And if you lean into that, and if you take that nuance as the key driver for knowledge, communication, activity, or knowledge, dissemination activity, I think that can be really, really powerful. Because now you’re not just informing this broad issue, from a scientific perspective, but you’re informing this broad issue from a public awareness perspective, and you’re really pushing the boundaries of what the public can understand about a specific issue. And you’re enabling them to grasp concepts that are wrapped up into your piece of work in a very easy-to-understand manner. And I think there’s a real, there’s a huge amount of power, and there’s a huge amount of presence and impact that you can achieve through this process. So if you’re an academic, and you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, oh, well, I imagine it would be interesting to do science communication through research dissemination, but it’s just not quite for me, I imagine it’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort. And you’re absolutely right, it does take time and effort if you continue to work on it. But to start, it can take very, very little time at all, it’s just a matter of picking something small that you can do, and doing it carving out five minutes in a week. Or if you don’t have five minutes, if you only have one minute, carve out one minute in a week, and do whatever that activity that you might want to do is making a set piece of time dedicated to that each week can really help take you and start that journey start to evolve your work. And the work that I did back when I first started doing research dissemination. When I looked back on it now it is kind of like, Oh, yeah, I was still early, I was still trying to figure it out. I still wasn’t sure what the right mix of academic knowledge and kind of public discourse was. But if I look at my work, later on, I can see a little bit more clearly Yeah, I have evolved, I have taken more steps forward. And of course, if you’re again if you’re an academic, and you’re thinking about doing research, communication, dissemination, treat it almost like you do the research process.
“Learn how to operationalize science communication. There is a methodology to it. Start by breaking it into a process with clear activities that can showcase the research process as well as the outputs. Do what’s in your capacity, that fits with your schedule and workflow. It provides an excellent approach to connecting your research and teaching and it acts as a powerful force for change.”
So researchers are great about taking knowledge creation processes, methodologies, and really operationalizing them in a clear process, do the same thing with your knowledge communication, take what you’re doing as a research output. And now break it into a process of dissemination where you have clear tasks that are part of a broader activity that you can do on your own that’s within your own capacity that fits with your time schedule and fixed with your, your workflow, and whatever else you have to do. I think that can be really powerful and it can be a really great opportunity and I know At the incentives for a lot of academics are not out there to do a lot of research communication dissemination there not a lot of incentives from an institutional level. But again, going back to that second point, getting some positive reinforcement from your colleagues getting some positive reinforcement from your friends and family members can go a long way to getting that feeling of Okay, I can do this. I can learn this and I can figure this out.
Originally published at https://www.dranthony.design on February 18, 2021.
