Summary
Contents
Subject index
The Knowledge Translation Toolkit provides a thorough overview of what knowledge translation (KT) is and how to use it most effectively to bridge the “know–do” gap between research, policy, practice, and people. It presents the theories, tools, and strategies required to encourage and enable evidence-informed decision-making.
This toolkit builds upon extensive research into the principles and skills of KT: its theory and literature, its evolution, strategies, and challenges. The book covers an array of crucial KT enablers—from context mapping to evaluative thinking—supported by practical examples, implementation guides, and references.
Drawing from the experience of specialists in relevant disciplines around the world, The Knowledge Translation Toolkit aims to enhance the capacity and motivation of researchers to use KT and to use it well.
The Tools in this book will help researchers ensure that their good science reaches more people, is more clearly understood, and is more likely to lead to positive action. In sum, their work becomes more useful, and therefore, more valuable.
Word Processing
Word Processing
When it comes to word processing, most of us use this software for writing papers or taking notes. What few realize is that a word processor can also be used as an effective desktop publishing tool to create effective communications documents like brochures and newsletters.
Creating a Newsletter
There are a number of compelling reasons for any organization to have a newsletter. They highlight research findings; announce a special event, and work to keep an organization in the public eye with updated and useful information. They can be (though not always admittedly) inexpensive to make, print and disseminate, and they are a tool for distilling complex events into manageable bites.
As with any KT tool, newsletters require careful choices around design and content, and both must be tailored for a specific audience. Whatever its content or style, a newsletter must selectively inform: like an appetizer, a good newsletter must leave the reader wanting more. Here, we will keep things simple and focus on:
- determining the audience and the channels to reach them;
- deciding design, quality, and size;
- reviewing materials;
- performing some reverse engineering; and
- bringing it all together.
The Audience
Audience will dictate every element of the newsletter. Any attempt to satisfy multiple audiences (of different needs and comprehension) with a single product may well disappoint or alienate both.
The Design
If you know the audience, you know what they will want to read, and you will have an idea of how to present that content. For instance, a newsletter pitched at a highly scientific audience will use different graphics (e.g., complex charts and logs) than one aimed at community groups (e.g., using photographs).
- The logo and title (or masthead) must capture the audience's attention at a glance. Something clean, elegant, and professional that will stand out and intrigue. Logos are an essential part of any organization's identity—logos represent an organization's image, style, and quality.
- The text must be both easily legible and visually interesting. Columns, text boxes, and bullets can be used to break up slabs of text. White space (areas without any content) creates a clean, clear look, and avoids a “cramming” effect.
- Include different types of information. There may be results to highlight, future plans, and perhaps a report on a conference attended. There might be important future events to feature or a particular research project or researcher to profile and, certainly, links to further information, resources, and contact information.
- Include different types of media. Photos, graphs, charts, cartoons, text boxes, all give the eye a break from plain text.
If the audience is primarily local, and if dissemination will be chiefly electronic (email or internet), the issues of quality and size become extremely sensitive. Recipients may not be able to download large files (anything over 1MB). They will be less likely to print large or colorful files as they consume expensive ink—ideally, we want the recipients to print the newsletter. People tend to scan information on their computer screens, not reading it as intently as they do the hard-copy.
Any emailed newsletter should be around 500kb, and in .pdf format. Ideally there would be two versions of the newsletter—a high-quality one published professionally, and a low-quality, small file-size newsletter compressed for electronic dissemination.
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