Uploaded byVertigo Ventures
Research Impact-Make it memorable 10 Dec presentation
The document outlines Vertigo Ventures' services and tools for capturing and reporting impact data in academic settings, emphasizing the importance of institutional memory and systematic approaches for tracking performance. It details the development of the vv-impact tracker, a technology designed to facilitate impact measurement and reporting across various disciplines and sectors. Additionally, it highlights the challenges organizations face in evidencing impact and the benefits of using structured impact systems.
Research Impact-Make it memorable 10 Dec presentation
- 1. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 MAKE ITMEMORABLE: INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY, TRACKING YOUR IMPACT PATHWAY OVER TIME. 1 BOKANI TSHIDZU DIRECTOR, VERTIGO VENTURES 10 DECEMBER 2015 WWW.VERTIGOVENTURES.COM/IM PACTHUB
- 2. CONFIDENTIAL © VertigoVentures 2015 WHY WE’RE HERE 2 Impact is here to stay What we mean by ‘impact’ Impact reporting tools Capturing Impact data over the time Regular reviews Examples
- 3. CONFIDENTIAL © VertigoVentures 2015 OUR HISTORY 2009 • Founded Vertigo Ventures 2010 • Developed a comprehensive impact taxonomy. Validated as the most advanced in the UK 2011 • Wrote impact reports, including for the REF, for organisations across sectors, using the taxonomy 2013 • Clients asked for help with creating ‘institutional memory’ for impact 2014 • Technology partnership established • Leading web development firm, works with higher education 2014 • Beta launch of VV-Impact Tracker from July 2015 • VV-Impact Tracker launch event in January and roll out across UK universities 3
- 4. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 SERVICES Consultancy • Training •Impact Reports • Impact • Benchmarking Impact Tracking • VV-Impact license • VV-Impact up • VV-Impact Real Time Streaming • Text mining and sentiment 4
- 5. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 POWERED BYVV-IMPACT METRICS AN ESTABLISHED IMPACT TAXONOMY 1. Cited in papers and builds on the Kellogg Foundation Logic Model 2. User-tested taxonomy across disciplines – In use as part of an impact capture system for a UK university – Been used with UK-wide universities to evidence REF case studies 3. Replicable, simple process to identify impact 4. Comprehensive and used across sectors 5. Precise indicators for evidencing impact 6. Actively maintained by Vertigo Ventures 5 Impact Type Stakeholder Impact Level Activities Outcome Impact Indicator
- 6. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 WHY ISTHIS IMPORTANT? 6
- 7. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 WHAT ISIN IT FOR YOU? • Project funding • Researcher profile – What do you want to be known for? • Career progression 7
- 8. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 WHAT ISIMPACT? ACADEMIC IMPACT PLANET WIDER IMPACT PEOPLE PROFIT KNOWLEDGE SKILLED RESEARCHERS IDEAS IDEAS
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- 10. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 THE CHALLENGE •Need visibility on the organisation's performance • Need a systematic approach to store the information • Need a way of making it ‘easy’ for academics 10 “Not having data/evidence readily available to demonstrate how the research has had an impact to funding bodies and other stakeholders to scale work” UK University Impact Officer Research paper Presentation at event Event Chair presents findings to National body National body lobbies government Change in legislation and resulting effects
- 11. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 EXISTING OFFERINGS 11 Unstructureddata File repository only Administrative burden Time intensive Retrospective impact capture only Neglects behaviour change requirement Manage as we go Strategic lens Re-purpose information for different audiences No centralised infrastructure to support with impact data capture *Annual Mini Research Impact Assessment
- 12. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 WHAT MAKESA GOOD IMPACT SYSTEM Easy to use: for frequent use and wide adoption Collaborative: to allow project researchers and admin to contribute Discipline agnostic: can be used across several subjects and research types Consider broader beneficiaries, likely impact on them and appropriate mechanisms for capturing data Provides an introduction to those new to impact Provide reports and aggregated date for impact monitoring 12
- 13. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 IMPACT INTHE RESEARCH PROJECT LIFECYCLE 1. Identify potential impact. 2. Plan impact activities and set up evidence capture 3. Establish means to capture impact data, resources and timescales. 4. Capture impact evidence 5. Impact statement to funding organisation and project stakeholders 6. Liaise with the KE&C team to use impact reports as evidence to scale the reach of the project 3. Carry out impact activities
- 14. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 TRANSLATION ACTIVITIES 14 Events, conferences, seminarsand workshops Press activity Government activity: steering committees, white papers Business/industry collaborations or consultancy Creation of a digital/web presence Collaboration, people exchange Education, training and skills Spin Out Company, patent and license Agreements
- 15. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 IMPACT DATACAPTURE FUNCTIONALITY 15
- 16. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 WHO ISUSING VV-IT IN A UNIVERSITY AND HOW? Users Benefits PVC, Research Director Reporting impact to Research Committee Visibility on institutional performance Material for communications Impact Officer REF preparation Impact reporting to funders Academic Support Pathways to Impact statements Personal reputation for Annual Reviews Reduce admin Grants Team Pathways to Impact statement development Marketing/ PR Compelling stories to attract the best Website material 16
- 17. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 Project information •Link underpinning research outputs to a project from your repository (ePrints/ORCiD) • Collect external collaborator details • Collaborate on projects Evidence vault to store information • Store any kind of evidence • Time stamp when information was uploaded • Store the original source information Impact pathway mapping • Use the VV-Impact Metrics taxonomy to create impact pathways • Storyboard activities and evidence to develop impact narratives Export material reports • Multiple formats • Flexible reports • Information for grant writing and case studies Designed with ease in mind • Contemporary interface to allow for positive user experience • Designed for self service FUNCTIONALITY 17
- 18. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 EVIDENCE CAPTURETOOLS 18 VV-Impact Evidence Vault Survey Monkey Smart survey Topsy VV-Impact RS HANSARD
- 19. CONFIDENTIAL ©2014 THANK YOU NEXTWEBINAR : 22 JANUARY 2016 BOKANI TSHIDZU E: BOKANI@VERTIGOVENTURES.COM T: +44 (0) 7957 814 344 19
Editor's Notes
- #4 Known each other for years pre 2009 as we studied together and worked together at L’Oreal. We were used to reporting impact but each time had to start from scratch – wanted a scalable process to make this more efficient. Worked with clients on REF to build reputation then asked for scalable solution. There is no scalable structure existed. We formed a partnership with our software architects to help us design, build, deploy, maintain and support our development roadmap. We have seen existing CRIS clients approach us to ask if/how VV-IT could like to their CRIS. Could see the first tender coming out, asking for any system speaks to VV-IT Hence building partnerships with CRIS
- #5 VV’s revenue streams are from 3 areas: Consultancy – varies – mainly around supporting orgs to embed impact Focus is impact tracking – foresee revenues from this around 75% of the business Doing some work around opinion streaming and we are exploring how this may be useful for ROs and maybe linking in to VV-IT
- #6 This is the structure behind the impact taxonomy, it is a database of impact information. By allowing you to go through each section of the database, it allows you to navigate the taxonomy to identify the relevant impact impact pathways for your research project. For example you have been providing educational talks at a museum, an impact type might be society, culture and creativity. We would then look at who has been affected by these talks, for example the stakeholders could be visitors The impact level asks, how they have been affected. In this case there could be an effect on perception or awareness and the resulting change is the outcome such as a change in public awareness. The impact indicator is the empirical way of demonstrating this change. For example change in audience demographics following the workshops. We have used this taxonomy across academic disciplines from policy to engineering and it works. A university is using it in house to capture their impact data already as it allows organisations to capture structured data and to do meaningful analysis Because it provides precise, empirical indicators for measuring impact The material is also aligned with all major funders –from charities to RCUK
- #11 So what is the problem with showing our impact. What we saw with REF 2014 that a major challenge was demonstrating impact. Was this the same for you? We really understand that evidence was not available. There are many issues with impact but this is the one to focus on today. How do we enable access to information. The debate has moved on now from what is impact (Very difficult to standardise across disciplines, Scepticism and suspicion, Control of information) To key issues in demonstrating impact e.g. Ownership and attribution of impact Impact activity – planning for impact -Bridging academic / user divide Combining narrative with metrics In addition- right now there is no way to systematically store the information that is going to make sense for projects across disciplines. Also, this is part of a larger culture change, academics need to see impact as a strategic tool rather than something that is going to be cumbersome and time intensive. Basically, you had a research paper – grey piece and you knew that it had somehow affected a change in legislation. Challenge is the orange piece was unable to be proved. Which doesn’t allow attribution. We have the pathways to show you effective routes to impact How are you handling this now? Have you tried to solve this problem? Have you found a solution?
- #12 We have been asked to develop VV-IT because whilst there have been some early attempts to capture impact, e.g. from CRIS providers and in house, clients (what you said to us and to the RAND report) have come back to us with the following challenges Unstructured data from using large text boxes is a nightmare: an academic is faced with large text boxes which don’t provide guidance on how to fill them in. A tool is only as good as the data in it so supporting users to readily add in meaningful data is key and it makes it otherwise impossible for the organisation/ department to do an aggregated report It needs to be as easy as possible for the end-users to use now and in 5 years time – the information still needs to make sense. The current ways to capture impact are retrospective only outside of VV-Impact Tracker and do not prompt or encourage impact creating activities e.g. planning for a project when it is easier to identify appropriate resources. Users are logging in for approx. 10mins a week to update and add info to a project to develop their ICS so cooridinators can see - - wow this is a high potential project, how to amplify or oh no, this high potential project has no evidence – need to find out what is going on. We have seen that you can’t throw a system in and expect people to use it. VV-IT is designed to support and guide users and as part of the behaviour change piece, we have adopted a slow roll out process where by only those who want a tool to support them and their teams to manage their impact data have been given access in addition to the the central staff. These people are typically high potential Pis who want to excel at impact. From here we have seen it grow rapidly through word of mouth. How does this resonate with your experience?
- #17 We have a quarterly Steering Group who share best practice, how they are using VV_It to help shape what we should do next to it. From the insight shared so far on how their orgs are using it, we can see how impact is on the research committee agenda. Where the impact officers prepare a brief report on what impact there is across the organisation e.g. we have created 50 jobs so far this year, we have 20 possible REF case studies so far. Impact officers use VV-IT to monitor project’s progress and ensure info is being kept about high potential/possible REFcase studies UOA cooridnators are using it to capture concepts- possible REF projects , With academics using it for Pathways to Impact development and reporting to various funders Grants are keen to ensure that impact activities are appropriately costed which we are doing more for in v2.0 Marketing/ PR often have access so can find case studies for website etc
- #18 VV-IT is based around projects. Projects can be defined as you wish – i.e. funded or not funded. Here we link objects e.g. publications from your repository to avoid duplication and provide the bare bones of an ICS, which is likely to be from a body of work. You can then use the online scrapbook to store all the info about this project. Then you can storyboard this info to develop your impact narrative, ready for export and editing This is how we do this
- #19 From LF I hear you’re keen to learn how people are using it...I can share insight today and following this it maybe helpful to put you intouch with a client already using it