Project planning: Dissemination plan
JISC requirement You must develop a dissemination plan to explain how you will share project outcomes and learning with stakeholders and the community
JISC is seeking sustainable change and learning in the community but can't fund all the change required. JISC can only funDissemination informs the community about what you have developed and the benefits of using itd pilots, from which others can take their lead. The change comes when people take up project outputs and learning and build on them. Dissemination is essential for take-up, and take-up is crucial to the success of the programme and sustainability of outputs in the long term.
The programme manager will plan an overall dissemination strategy for the programme. The starting point is changes the programme wants to initiate and the outcomes the programme plans to deliver. The dissemination strategy will focus on what the community needs to learn from the programme, and the processes needed for embedding and take-up. It will cover any important initiatives at programme or cross-programme level (e.g. conferences or workshops, and ensure there is a coherent plan for projects to build on). The dissemination strategy will be shared with you at the start of the programme to help you think about outcomes, embedding, and sustainability at programme level, and how dissemination at project-level can contribute to the overall strategy.
As part of the overall project plan, you must develop a dissemination plan and report on results in progress reports and in the completion report. The dissemination plan will explain how the project plans to share outcomes with stakeholders, relevant institutions, organisations, and individuals, and contribute to the overall dissemination strategy for the programme. It should be planned in consultation with the programme manager and approved by any programme advisory board.
The dissemination plan will explain:
- What you plan to disseminate – the message
- To whom – the audience
- Why – the purpose
- How – the method
- When – the timing
In the project plan template, there’s a table to help develop the plan.
All dissemination should have a purpose, and support or inform project development in some way.
The purpose of the activity may be to:
- Raise awareness – let others know what you are doing
- Inform – educate the community
- Engage – get input/feedback from the community
- Promote – ‘sell’ your outputs and results
First think about what you want to achieve. You may want to announce the project’s inception, highlight a specific result or finding, or get early feedback before going on to the next stage. Then think about what the project will gain from it (e.g. raise your profile, gain support, or get input to influence future project work).
Think about the key message you want to send. It’s often useful to think of the person on the receiving end. What do they need to know about your project? How can you communicate it clearly before they delete your email, throw away your brochure, or nod off during your presentation?
- Focus on clear, simple messages that are easily understood
- Get the right message to the right audience. You can send the same message to different audiences, but make sure it’s relevant to each one
- Coordinate messages within and across programmes. Messages from a group of projects often have greater impact than messages from a single project Consult your programme manager about how your message fits in with over-arching themes for the programme
- Don’t build up unrealistic expectations at the start of the project
Think about who you want to reach and what they can do for your project. Identify the different individuals, groups, and organisations that will be interested in what you’re developing, particularly with respect to take-up at the end of the project. The stakeholder analysis identified people who will be affected by your project and whose support you need. Use dissemination to inform and engage stakeholders, and get them to buy into your work.
Consider the following audiences:
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Internal (e.g. your institution and/or the project consortium) – They supported the project bid, so keep them informed about what you’re doing. Use dissemination to make sure the project has a high profile and they buy into what you are developing.
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JISC development programmes – Share your results with other projects, within the programme and across programmes. rogramme meetings (and cluster meetings) are an excellent opportunity to share what you’ve done and get feedback from projects doing similar work or facing similar problems and issues.
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External stakeholders – Think about who might take up your outputs and the stakeholders that can help you to ‘make it happen’. These might be teachers, researchers, librarians, publishers, online hosts, etc. Think of opportunities to engage with them like conferences.
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The community – There may be much to share with the wider education and research communities. For example, guidelines, methods, evaluation criteria, questionnaires, and what you learned generally. Think about who could learn from your knowledge and experience and share it in case studies, journal articles, etc.
There are a wide variety of dissemination methods. The trick is to select the right one(s) to get your message to the target audience and achieve your purpose.
Decide when different dissemination activities will be most relevant. Messages will vary during the timeframe of the project. For example, at the start focus on awareness of your project, and at the end on ‘selling’ achievements. Also think about the time commitments of your target audience. There are periods in the academic year when it will be difficult to reach academic staff (e.g. at the start of the term or during examinations).
The dissemination strategy will ensure that the programme has a high profile, the community learns from its achievements, and outputs are embedded and taken up. The programme manager will share the strategy with you early in the project and invite you to contribute ideas. Where the programme is structured by clusters, the clusters will be asked to brainstorm about ways to collaborate on dissemination. Thinking early in the programme about the ‘big picture’ will maximise the impact of dissemination and the sustainability of its outputs
You will be asked to participate in programme and cluster dissemination activities. There are very selfish reasons for doing so. Firstly, initiatives at programme and cluster-level often have more impact than those at project-level. Colleagues in the field are more likely to attend a cluster workshop with six demos than a project workshop with one. A MLE InfoKit has more impact than a single case study. Secondly, it’s cost effective. Contribute your ideas on collaboration and participate in the activities that are planned.
Programme-level dissemination
A conference or workshop might be held, or a series of case studies based on project work. The Building MLEs in Higher Education programme (7/99) created a tookit on Creating a Managed Learning Environment available on the JISC InfoNet site as an InfoKit. In year two of the Exchange for Learning programme (X4L), a new programme website was launched to showcase project work, including the learning materials they are repurposing, tools they are developing, project websites and presentations, etc. There may be opportunities for cross-programme collaboration as well.
Cluster-level dissemination
Clusters in a technical area might collaborate on a workshop or a showcase of demos. Clusters focusing on issues might brainstorm about how to get their findings to stakeholders and their knowledge taken up. Case studies are one method.
Your project may be developing something that’s technically difficult and complex. In dissemination activities, use languageYou can send the same messages to different audiences, but use appropriate language for each audience appropriate for the target audience, and non-technical language where possible. This is particularly important for dissemination to stakeholders. They need to know what you’ve achieved and why it’s important. If you’re writing a piece for the institution newsletter, focus on clear messages in non-technical language that teachers and administrators will understand. If you’re writing an article for a computer journal on the design and architecture of your system, use technical language and bring out the flowcharts and schematics.
In planning the purpose of a dissemination activity, you decide what you want to gain from it. Try to build an evaluation component into any major dissemination activity to see if you’ve achieved your purpose. For example, if you invite people to visit your website, check the usage logs. If you hold a workshop, hand out a short questionnaire to find out what participants thought of it.
You must create a project information page for the JISC websiteEach programme has a page on the JISC website with links to the project web pages. There’s likely to be great community interest in these pages at the start of the programme, so they need to be posted as soon as possible. All projects within the programme must create a web page, except for supporting studies resulting in reports.
- The programme manager will create the programme page
- Within one month of the project start, each project will create the information for its own web page and submit it to their programme manager
- The programme manager will check over the information for each project page, edit it as necessary, and then ‘publish’ it to the JISC website
Structure for writing your project web page:
- Title of project
- Background
- Aims and objectives
- Outcomes
- Main contact person with Address, Telephone, Fax, Email
- Other project staff and contact details (where applicable) – this part is optional
JISC requirement You must create a website. The lead institution must host it on their server for at least 3 years after the end of the project and assist JISC in archiving it subsequently
The project website explains aims and objectives and disseminates information about project activities and results
The project website is an important and versatile dissemination tool. It will inform the community about your project, findings, resources you have created, and what you have learned. As a dissemination vehicle, it should include any publicity the project has created, journal articles, other publications, and presentations at conferences. For some projects, the website is also a mechanism for making your deliverables available (e.g. digitised images or other collections of content). Think of what else would interest and engage the people who will visit the site and attract visitors (e.g. reports, designs, models, evaluation criteria, guidelines, demos, questionnaires, etc).
You should put your core project documents on your website. As a minimum, put the project plan and final report online. Progress reports are also useful, as this lets other projects know where you are, and they can learn from how you’re dealing with problems and issues. If you feel the formal progress reports you submit to JISC are too detailed, post a summary on the website.
There are further resources on guidelines for creating project websites. However, projects should note the following hints and tips:
- Make it attractive and easy to use, with intuitive navigation
- Keep the website up to date
- Submit the website to key search engines so it gets lots of traffic
- Ask key websites on similar topics to link to yours
- Use a link checker and make sure there are no broken links
- Make sure it follows best practice in accessibility for disabled users
- Mention that the project is funded by JISC (JISC logo)
A condition of funding is that the lead institution (or one of its partners) must agree to host the website on their server for a minimum of 3 years after the end of the project and to assist JISC in archiving it subsequently. As the website is a dissemination vehicle, archiving will ensure that the project’s publicity material is preserved. Deliverables and core project documents will be archived separately in an appropriate JISC managed repository. Before the project ends, consult the QA Focus briefing document on 'mothballing your website' and get the site in order before project staff leave.
Review as you Go It’s important to plan dissemination at the start of the project, so you can map out activities that will get the right messages to key audiences using the best methods. But plans are plans, and projects should update the dissemination plan in light of experience. Try to build evaluation into dissemination activities so you know what methods deliver the results you want. Focus on stakeholders and whether you’re getting the message across. The plan is only a guide, so update it in light of what works. |
Further resources