3 ways for Knowledge Exchange leads to optimise their data

Are you frustrated with managing endless spreadsheets of Knowledge Exchange data?

Or perhaps you've don’t have the time to catch up with every staff member at your university to document their Knowledge Exchange activities?

Well, you’re not alone.

After months of KEVRI market research, we discovered that many Knowledge Exchange Practitioners (KEPs) and Heads of Departments struggle to capture all of their university’s KE data.

The main blocker is time. Many KE professionals simply don’t have the time to ask every academic or staff member how their project is going and inform them which metrics need to be captured.

Another challenge is overcoming the mystery that masks the term ‘Knowledge Exchange’. Many university academics and staff lack the understanding of this concept- even though they’re already carrying out KE activities annually.

So whilst KEVRI is building resources and software that aim to ease pains like these, we also wanted to share a few practical tips that could speed up your Knowledge Exchange data capture process...

1. Nominate Knowledge Exchange Champions (KEC)

Some universities nominate their academics or Heads of Departments as ‘Knowledge Exchange Champions’.

The primary duty of a Knowledge Exchange Champion would be to collate any Knowledge Exchange projects that staff members are either starting or completing within their department or subject area.

By appointing staff at your university with this role, they’ll support your data collation process by granting you an aerial view of what’s happening in every department. Which in turn, will save you a lot of time when it comes to annual submissions such as KEF.

2. Catch projects at the start via a monthly drop-in session

To improve your Knowledge Exchange data collation process, you could organise monthly KE drop-ins for academics that still can’t grasp the concept.

These monthly drop-ins may evolve into discussions where staff members can ask you questions about reporting their Knowledge Exchange activities and the metrics they should consider.

So rather than collecting everything at the end of the year, a monthly meet may allow you to catch projects at their start and track them throughout their lifecycle. Again- saving you buckets of time!

3. Deploy a Knowledge Exchange Metrics guide across departments

What often baffles university academics and staff are Knowledge Exchange metrics. In our training sessions, we are often asked by attendees:

• What are the metrics?
• What do they mean for my project?
• Which ones do I need to collect for my project?

So to save even more time, you could do a quick metric guide to deploy across departments. This go-to-guide allows staff to find their answers quickly and match their project. In turn- this would ease up your weekly schedule!

Whether you're a Knowledge Exchange Lead looking to optimise your data or university staff member exploring Knowledge Exchange, you can get in touch with us at info@kevri.co for further guidance!