Academic researchers in many disciplines are facing difficulties in disseminating their research outputs beyond the academic community. Particularly, Information Systems (IS) academic researchers have been struggling to make their research more relevant to practice. The diversity of IS research means that should be a wide audience within and beyond academia who could benefit from IS research outputs. This audience includes educators, practitioners, patients, etc. How IS relevant to practice is a central dilemma of IS research. Research relevance is classified according to dimensions such as interesting, implementable, current, accessible “Article style” by many IS scholars. These dimensions are important to be investigated as some academic papers are yet to be beneficial to an audience beyond academia. The Accessible dimension is the focus of this study where accessible means the academic papers should be readable and understood in terms of tone, style, structure, and semantics by the potential audience beyond the academic community. This study investigates the barriers that limit academic researchers in disseminating and communicating their research outputs beyond academia. This study aims to design a communication method to assist academic researchers in disseminating and communicating their research outputs beyond academia. This study consists of three phases, in the first phase a qualitative method is applied by interviewing academics in the Information System and Computing Department at Brunel University to gain a better understanding of how and why academics disseminate beyond academia. Based on communication theories a research framework is adapted to analyse and explain the interview data. In the second phase, short videos are recorded of 10 academics where each explains one of their papers. In the third phase, two different groups are interviewed to evaluate the 10 short videos in regards the Information Quality (IQ) dimensions (i.e. appropriate amount of information, format, and timeliness). By using the thematic analysis technique the academics highlighted three barriers that limit them to disseminate and communicate their research outputs beyond academia. The three barriers are the message (i.e. academic structure and language of research papers), channel (i.e. academic journal and conferences), and social system (i.e. lack of Incentives, lack of time, and lack of support). Moreover, academics emphasised the vital role of feedback loop in their communication with target audience beyond academia. The 10 short videos are designed to overcome two of these barriers (i.e. message and channels). Each short video is evaluated by its academic author on one hand and the potential audience/stakeholders of the short video from the other hand (e.g. practitioners). Thus, the academic authors of the video suggest some changes by adjusting the video structure and adding some examples for more explanations of their research papers. Also, authors concerned about format particularly the visual elements of the video which have to be completely matched with the title of the video. However, the opinions of potential audiences vary based on their information need. For example, some practitioners are concerned with the practical information, in other words, practitioners seek the applicable part of the information provided in the short video (i.e. how to apply something); and others watch the short video to increase their awareness of a particular topic. This study will assist academic researchers to focus on how to disseminate their research outputs to audience/stakeholders beyond academia using media tools (i.e. video). Also, it provides a novel method of disseminating and communicating their research outputs beyond the academic community. Moreover, this study helps to create an interaction platform that enables academic researchers to build a collaborative framework and a mutual understanding with the audience beyond academia.

In recent years, the UK higher education sector has seen notable policy changes with regard to how research is funded, disseminated and evaluated. Important amongst these changes is the emphasis that policy makers have placed on disseminating peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles via Open Access (OA) publishing routes e.g. OA journals or OA repositories. Through the Open Science agenda there have also been a number of initiatives to promote the dissemination of other types of output that have not traditionally been made publicly available via the scholarly communication system, such as data, workflows and methodologies. The UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 introduced social/economic impact of research as an evaluation measure. This has been a significant policy shift away from academic impact being the sole measure of impact and has arguably raised the profile of public engagement activities (although it should be noted that public engagement is not equivalent to social/economic impact, but is an important pathway to realising such impact). This exploratory study sought to investigate the extent to which these recent policy changes are aligned with researchers publication, dissemination and public engagement practices across different disciplines. Furthermore, it sought to identify the perceptions and attitudes of researchers towards the concept of social/economic impact. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach consisting of a questionnaire- based survey and semi-structured interviews with researchers from a broad range of disciplines across the physical, health, engineering, social sciences, and arts and humanities across fifteen UK universities. The work of Becher (1987) and Becher & Trowler (2001) on disciplinary classification was used as an explanatory framework to understand disciplinary differences. The study found evidence of a lack of awareness of the principle of OA by some researchers across all disciplines; and that researchers, in the main, are not sharing their research data, therefore only the few who are doing so are realising the benefits that have been championed in research funders policies. Moreover, the study uncovered that due to the increased emphasis of impact in research evaluation, conflicting goals between researchers and academic leaders exist. The study found that researchers, particularly from Applied and Interdisciplinary (as opposed to Pure) disciplinary groups felt that research outputs such as articles published in practitioner journals were most appropriate in targeting and making research more accessible to practitioners, than prestigious peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. The thesis argues that there is still more to learn about what impact means to researchers and how it might be measured. The thesis makes an overall contribution to knowledge on a general level by providing greater understanding of how researchers have responded to the impact agenda . On a more specific level, the thesis identifies the effect of the impact agenda on academic autonomy, and situates this in different disciplinary contexts. It identifies that it is not only researchers from Pure disciplines who feel disadvantaged by the impact agenda , but also those from Interdisciplinary and Applied groups who feel an encroachment on their academic autonomy, particularly in selecting channels to disseminate their research and in selecting the relevant audiences they wish to engage with. Implications of the study s findings on researchers, higher education institutions and research funders are highlighted and recommendations to researchers, academic leaders and research funders are given.

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the experiences of teachers fulfilling the role of facilitators of the STAR intervention with fellow teachers at two neighbouring schools. The study constituted part of a broader research project that commenced in 2003, at a primary school in the Eastern Cape. At the time of the current study, seven of the ten teachers who participated in the initial study were replicating the initial study’s strategy in two neighbouring schools in an attempt to assist the teachers in providing psychosocial support. In an attempt to explore the experiences of the teacher-facilitators I observed a STAR intervention session (November, 2008), that involved four participants facilitating a STAR intervention session at the neighbouring school. Following my observation of the intervention session, I co-facilitated a focus group, exploring the teacher-facilitators’ experiences in fulfilling the role of peer-facilitators. Two days after the first focus group, I co-facilitated a follow-up focus group for the purpose of member-checking. In addition, I relied on field notes and visual data as data sources. Based on the data analysis that followed, three main themes emerged. Firstly, the teachers seemed to ascribe meaning on a personal level in terms of their experiences as facilitators of STAR. They experienced joy in sharing knowledge and enabling others, feelings of self-worth and self-confidence, personal development and growth, as well as confirmed commitment and motivation. Secondly, they experienced a shared voice in the community, in response to the peer-facilitation of STAR, referring to appreciation and trust that inspired enthusiasm for participation in various school-community systems and a sense of community as outcome of facilitation. Thirdly, participants identified aspects related to being a peer-facilitator, in terms of overcoming feelings of uncertainty and concern, working as a team, relying on creative problem solving when dealing with potential challenges, and extending the scope of facilitation. Based on the findings of the study I concluded that the participating teachers experienced the facilitation of STAR in a positive manner on both a personal and professional level. As a result of their positive experiences, they seemed to become even more committed and motivated than initially, to support their community through the facilitation of STAR. Their positive experiences seemingly influenced their perceived development in terms of self-efficacy beliefs and actualisation, which in turn enhanced their personal and professional growth, thereby forming a cycle of improved positive experiences on various levels. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted