CREATEd Co-Design Toolkit
from the Center for Research Use in Education
What is the purpose of the CREATEd Co-Design Toolkit?
Our goal is for the co-design toolkit to help achieve CREATEd’s goals for stronger relationships among members of the research, policy, and practice communities that improve educational opportunities and outcomes for all students. Ultimately, co-design will:
-
Enhance participants’ capacity to support research-informed practice, to center equity in their work, and to communicate and work across traditional boundaries associated with their role, ultimately increasing capacity to work collaboratively across the system to achieve equity goals
-
Build stronger relationships between research and practice by creating opportunities that support greater understanding and appreciation across research and practice boundaries and improve capacity for future collaboration
-
Lead to the development of new research-informed equity-centered resources that can be mobilized nationally for use in educational policy and practice
-
Demonstrate our commitment to redress systemic inequities and promote a more socially just education system by adopting a critical lens on all aspects of the work, including the selection of research, intended users and uses, and product design
-
Actively support a more accessible, diverse and inclusive educational community by building teams that are more representative of the communities they serve
Who built this toolkit?
This toolkit was developed by the Center for Research Use in Education as part of its CREATEd initiative. Developers include:
Elizabeth N. Farley-Ripple, Project Lead
Carolyn Hammerschmidt, Content Creator
Lucy Rycroft-Smith, Content Creator
Annastasia Purinton, Content Creator
Laura Mikowychok, Web & Graphic Designer
The CREATEd Co-Design Toolkit is free for public use and is licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.
The citation for this toolkit is as follows:
Farley-Ripple, E.N., Hammerschmidt, C., Rycroft-Smith, L.J., Purinton, A., & Mikowychok, L.(2025). CREATEd Co-Design Toolkit. Center for Research Use in Education, University of Delaware. Retrieved from www.createdcodesign.com.
Who should use this toolkit?
This toolkit was created to help education interestholders engage in collaborative design, regardless of their experience, roles, or background. We envision this process to be used by a range of individuals for a range of purposes, including:
-
An educator looking to bring research-informed practices into their classroom
-
An education advocacy organization working to design and advance equitable education policies
-
A professional learning or curriculum provider seeking to turn equity-centered research into products that can be shared through or integrated into their services
-
Researchers or research institutions working to have a positive impact on educational equity
-
Research-practice partnerships ready to transform local evidence into local policies or practices
What is in the toolkit?
The toolkit includes:
-
An introduction and overview of the process
-
A facilitation guide for each stage
-
Supplemental facilitator resources for each stage
-
Team tools, including graphic organizers to prompt discussion and decision making
Structure
The CREATEd Co-design Toolkit is organized around four phases, which encompass eight stages plus a "pre-work" stage:
Organize
Goals: To identify research to be transformed; build a co-design team of researchers, educators, communication and design experts; orient team to process
Team Members: TBD - co-design can be initiated by researchers, practitioners, intermediaries and other interestholders
Products/deliverables: Co-design team, selected research, orientation
Plan & Partner
Goals: Content planning, planning for how to develop product and how success will be measured
Team Members: Researcher, Designer, Facilitator, Practitioners, any additional partners or experts as needed
Products/deliverables: Scope and Schedule for Implementation, Initial dissemination plan
Test & Refine
Goals: Listen to interestholder feedback on resource and determine if additional products or edits to current resource are needed.
Team Members: Researcher, Designer, Facilitator, Practitioner, any additional partners or experts
Products/deliverables: Feedback on design and set of planned revisions
How should this toolkit be used?
The toolkit is intended to provide a process and associated tools to foster collaboration around the development of equity-centered, research-informed educational products. To that end, the toolkit emphasizes the use of research, promotes critical and equity-centered perspectives, and aims to redress power imbalances between research and practice communities in this work. These were the non-negotiables in the creation of this toolkit.
However, the toolkit is still intended to have a wide range of uses and applications. It is designed to be flexible in terms of:
-
Participants: As noted above, this toolkit may be used by a wide range of interestholders. The process is organized around a team that includes a researcher(s) with expertise in the research informing the design process, practitioner(s) or policymaker(s) that represents the community most impacted by or likely to use the product, and a communication designer - but who serves in these roles is flexible and can be determined based on the nature of the issue being addressed.
Researchers could be the authors of a research article, an expert on an issue (or team of experts), a lead evaluator, or research staff in an education agency. Policy or practice participants could include students, parents, teachers, leaders, community members, intermediary organizations, school board members, legislative staff, legislators, and more!
There is less flexibility with other roles, however. The co-design process should be facilitated by the person most familiar with the process and with the skills and dispositions to engage in the activities described in the toolkit. This may or may not be the person initiating the work, and is a very important decision. Similarly, the communications designer should also have the skills to complete the proposed work, or else engage a team to join the project.
-
Goals/purposes: The co-design process can be used to address a range of goals for achieving educational equity - goals collaboratively determined by the team in the (Re)Centering Tool. These goals can range in complexity, from helping the community become aware of an issue to creating new policies to implementing new practices. The toolkit is widely applicable and creates opportunities to consider the nature of the goal and to adjust the work of the team accordingly.
-
Timelines and Resources: All co-design work happens within constraints - sometimes related to time (i.e., when a product is needed, how much time participants have to give) and sometimes related to resources (i.e., participant expertise, financial resources). The toolkit refrains from specifying these details. For example, the co-design process may be implemented in an intensive, in-person workshop over a few days, or virtually over an extended period of time. However, we strongly recommend planning ahead for this work, preparing for co-design (Stage 0) two or more months ahead of the start of the work, so as to ensure team members are available to participate and can block off time.
Similarly, the toolkit provides support for making decisions based on the resources available, allowing the team to make informed choices about how to meet their goals. Some projects may have thousands of dollars available, while others may rely on in-kind contributions. The toolkit can be used to support co-design under a range of such conditions.
Depending on the resources available to support co-design, compensating team members can be a helpful way to ensure commitment and demonstrate the value of their contributions. For some team members, participation may be part of their regular workload, and it may not be appropriate or necessary to provide additional compensation (e.g., team members are doing this work on behalf of their own organization). However, for others, it is likely to require time and effort above their regular responsibilities. This may be true for any or all members of the team. It is important to consider the level of compensation relative to the time demands of the process, equity in compensation (e.g., are researchers and practitioners compensated similarly?), and non-monetary compensation (e.g., other forms of professional credit or recognition). Furthermore, compensation is important in valuing equity, diversity, and inclusion work, which is often expected to be performed for free by those with minoritized identities (sometimes called a minority tax).