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CREATEd Co-Design Toolkit

from the Center for Research Use in Education

The goal:

Share the final product with the target audience(s) and promote its uptake or use in policy or practice.

The participants:

Team Members:

Researcher(s), Designer, Facilitator, Practitioner(s)

Optional:

Partners - particularly intermediary organizations and brokers with strong networks for reaching your audience - can be engaged in this stage, if they aren’t already.  Especially consider engaging those who can help reach traditionally marginalized segments of your audience. 

The deliverables:

  • Updated dissemination planner

  • Audience lists

  • Meeting notes

Tools for this Stage:

Building and Supporting an Effective Team

Building and Supporting an Effective Team

Foster equity, trust, and collaboration to achieve collaborative goals.

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Best Practices in Dissemination

Best Practices in Dissemination

Plan, launch, and assess how your resource reaches its audience.

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6

Develop & Design

Evaluate

8

STAGE

7

Mobilize & Disseminate

PREPARE

IDEATE &
NEGOTIATE

PROTOTYPE
& REFINE

MOBILIZE

estimated active codesigning

estimated inactive time

PRO TIP

The final stage of the CREATEd CoDesign toolkit is to evaluate.  It can be helpful to link conversations about dissemination to plans to monitor and evaluate that progress.  Consider combining some of the discussions and decisions of Stages 7 and 8.

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Suggested stage plan

Plan the meeting

  • Schedule a time that works for your team.  Balance the time needed to work through the goal of this phase against availability and fatigue.  We recommend a minimum of 90 minutes for this phase of the work,
     

  • Prepare and share an agenda with the purposes for the session, the anticipated outcomes, and the resources the team will use to achieve them.
     

  • Share with the team the
    Best Practices in Dissemination Guide
    in advance of the meeting so they can re-familiarize themselves with the goals and process.

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Best Practices in Dissemination

PDF

PRO TIP

If combining the planning meetings for Stages 7 and 8, share Evaluation Planner in advance as well!

SAMPLE:

One-Hour Meeting Agenda

0:00-0:10    Introductions and overview of session

0:10-0:20    Team building activities

0:20-0:50    Develop plan for dissemination

0:50-1:20     Develop plan for evaluation

0:50-1:00     Debrief and next steps

 

If adding Stage 8 planning, consider the following:

0:00-0:10    Introductions and overview of session

0:10-0:20    Community building activities

0:20-0:50    Develop plan for dissemination

0:50-1:00    Debrief and next steps

 

*Note that these times are minimum suggested times and many teams, particularly newly convened teams, may benefit from longer discussions of these issues.

Team building

Sustaining equitable relationships and trust is ongoing work. Keep up the team-building by engaging team members in an activity that celebrates progress and reminds them of what they have accomplished as a team.   

Planning

The core content of this meeting is to plan for how to get the design to its intended audience.  To do so, use the Best Practices in Dissemination guide to decide on:

​

  1. Specific audiences. We may want to reach teachers, but may not have a list of teachers so will need to identify ways to reach them.  That may include reaching out to educator associations, identifying social media influencers, or other groups composed of teachers.  This discussion should build on team members’ knowledge of the field and professional networks and build a list of audiences and their contact information (where possible - this may be a task for after the meeting as well!). 
     

  2. Strategies and channels. What is the best way to connect with audiences? Phone calls? Emails? Social media?  Newsletters?  Name the ways that the audiences will be reached. 
     

  3. Message. How will you communicate about the product you are sharing? Use language that reflects your knowledge of the audience from Stage 2 Audience Activity and the Stage 3 Framing the Research activity. 
     

  4. A feasible timeline. Who will do what and when? Considering the equitable distribution of work and benefits, write the plan down and make sure you engage with the team’s (re)Centering Tool to ensure goal alignment and feasibility.


As with all products created through co-design, the team should attend to equity awareness in mobilization strategies, for example, using people-first language, carefully considering colors, icons, and shapes to avoid stereotypes, and recognizing diverse audience needs. Feel free to revisit the Design Review Checklist as a reminder!

Doing

Once a plan is in place, it’s time for team members to start putting these strategies into action. Facilitators should plan to:

  • Arrange check-ins with team members to provide support and assess progress

  • Communicate with team members about progress and impact

  • Reconvene the team to address any challenges

Wrapping up

Finally, after the meeting the facilitator should:

  • Make note of any decisions and make notes available for the team to refer back to as needed.

  • Support ongoing communication during independent work.

  • File everything in the team’s project management system.

PRO TIP

If combining the planning meetings for Stages 7 and 8, share Evaluation Planner in advance as well!

"We used A/B testing on our email campaigns, to determine what subject lines, imagery, and calls-to-action were the most effective for each audience. You might be in the dissemination process, but you can always be researching!"

CAROLYN H.

FaCILITATOR

Ready to continue?

Up next, you'll be measuring the success of your codesign – and your dissemination efforts – and making plans for the future of your design.

STAGE 8

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