November 20, 2015
Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) Program: Collecting, Sharing and Building from Successful Practices
Grant Award Number: 1519282
Principal Investigator: Michele Korf, Michele Korf and Associates
Sponsor: VOX Media Productions
Table of Contents
Project Summary
Interview Phase Findings
Survey Phase Findings
Workshop Experience and Outcomes
Elements of Successful Initiatives
Outcomes for Participants
Reflections and Recommendations
Support Resources
Growth Opportunities
Strategic Approach
Next Steps
Project Summary
NSF’s CRPA program, now archived, provided grants to researchers that enabled them to partner with organizations to conduct media-based and other outreach to increase public engagement in and understanding of science. This project, undertaken by Vox Television with Michele Korf and Associates (MKA), assessed the results of these grants to identify successful practices and lessons learned, and aggregate findings to productively inform and support current and future efforts of this kind. The key objectives of the work have been to identify approaches that broaden reach, increase the effectiveness of researcher/outreach organization partnerships, and inform recommendations for amplifying the strategic impact of these projects.
The method used was a multiphase process of document review, online interview and survey, culminating in web-based workshops. In consultation with current NSF program officers and others involved with the CRPA, available outcome data from previous grantees was reviewed and a subset of 20 CRPA PI grantees and others representative of the larger group and noted for effective collaboration and outcomes was selected for one-on-one interview via Skype. In addition to PIs we also spoke with representatives from CAISE and program staff from research divisions at NSF. Information gathered informed an online survey distributed to the larger group of 65 CRPA recipients.
The broad aim of this project is to advance the effectiveness of media-based and other outreach efforts for NSF grantees, thereby serving the overall goal of increased public understanding of science that is key to media-based outreach. The broader impacts of the proposed activity will be its potential to collect and make available successful media/outreach practices and future strategic opportunities that extend beyond this project to other grant areas across NSF. Additionally, this work is intended to help future grantees for related new funding initiatives better understand and expand the context of their efforts, enabling them to better align with NSF-wide themes and strategic objectives, tap new channels and networks, and work more strategically with partners.
The CRPA program was one mechanism for addressing communication with public audiences. We believe the findings of this project, addressing both successes and challenges, provide a valuable basis for insights and recommendations for any renewed CRPA activity as well as for media-based outreach across EHR and the Foundation in general. (return to top)
Interview Phase Findings
As reported in the first of two interim reports, we found there to be a range of PI recipients, from those experienced and relatively self-sufficient to relative newcomers to media/outreach collaboration. This range was considered to be a distinctive strength of the program, as it provided a means for scientists to develop communications projects, even if they were new to media-based outreach. It did however create a distinctive set of needs, as there was not a “one-size fits all” approach to the projects or to their ambition.
Teams: These were varied but often grants were built on pre-existing PI relationships with media or other informal science partner expertise. Some though not most tapped graduate students or utilized their institutional media/communications or education departments. The media partner sometimes drove project conceptualization and proposal submission, sometimes with friction over project priorities. However, the process of writing a competitive NSF submission was widely seen as a help to designing the project as it identified key considerations (e.g.: audience, how to convey content, dissemination, evaluation, timeline and budget categories).
Production: Cultural differences between style and workflow of filmmakers and research scientists were typical of the “newcomer” category. Communication problems arose when the media partner did not have science or educational media expertise, with ability to prioritize and accommodate educational needs. At the newcomer end of the spectrum, timeline and cost to complete was sometimes underestimated and motivation stalled by lack of production support (mentorship guidance/resources).
Dissemination and Evaluation: Dissemination was often local or statewide, often more a limitation of the partnership dissemination reach than the broader national applicability of the content. Evaluation was almost always summative, but a desire for more formative effort with up-front audience research on what the audience wants and can relate to was acknowledged.
Sustainability: Few projects had plans for sustainability beyond the term of the award despite potential for longer shelf life in original or adapted form. Usually rights were available but unexploited, for continued or adapted use and learning extensions. Team understanding of rights from a technical and strategic point of view was uneven. Formal education uses as a secondary market, though outside the main ISE mandate, was seen as having the most immediate potential for longevity.
Community: PIs and media partners as well reported that they worked in a vacuum, and would like to know more about experiences of others in similar efforts and see examples of best practices. The desire for community and infrastructure to support it embraced a range of possible activities: access to other filmmakers, editors, outreach professionals etc. and other PIs. Interest in a mechanism for connecting with prospective media partners was also noted.
Tools and available resources: There was widely shared desire for access to a production toolkit with examples and resources related to media creation, also access to production mentoring and just-in-time advice. Although existing resources address some of these needs, they were relatively unknown or underutilized (e.g.: CAISE, PBS LearningMedia repository). Even when used, they were more likely considered to be administrative, as in the case of loading reports on CAISE, rather than viewed as a venue to extend reach of resources after the term of a grant or provide a platform for adapting a project for new purposes. When this kind of collaborative work did occur, often through public media, there were often useful in-kind resource benefits.
Impact: Building on the points above, many would like to see some sort of aggregation of resources in one place to list awardees with links to their work, and other ways to help extend, broaden and deepen reach. There was considerable interest in exploring cross-disciplinary and multiple format/audience extensions if help and potential support were available.
CRPA: All interviewed saw considerable value in the CRPA initiative, appreciated its flexibility, felt that it complemented other funding efforts, supported cross-fertilization, could be a catalyst for additional project funding, and wished that it be reinstated in some form. The CRPA program was viewed as a valuable tool for legitimizing PIs engaging in broader impacts work, and helping make clear what is meant by broader impacts. Coordination with other funding areas of NSF was seen as key, as was keeping funding at a level that does not preclude newcomers.
Survey Phase Findings
As reported in the second of two interim project reports for this grant, MKA created and deployed an online survey sent to all PIs for the CRPA program. Survey questions were informed by findings of the phase one interviews with selected PIs and others. The main goals of the survey, which had a 28% response rate, were to sample the program for key variables such as staffing structure, audience and dissemination strategy, and to ask in general whether the recipients found the program worthwhile.
In general, results supported and amplified what we learned via the interviews:
Products created: As expected, among those responding the majority of programs created centered on a museum exhibit, a media project or both, relying on a website as a main vehicle for dissemination.
Teams and Partners: The CRPA teams were varied, with major participation by PIs, graduate students, museum professionals, and with good participation from filmmakers and digital producers. Strikingly, only 24% of the respondents indicated that public media played a substantive role on their grant, versus 43% for museum educators. This was echoed in the “partners” question, which showed even lower indication of public media inclusion in a partnership role, 16% of the respondents, in comparison to 58% for science museums.
Audience: We asked participants to rank audience segments by importance, and found a slight emphasis on middle and high school age audiences, but with good representation of 18-44 year old audiences as well.
Digital Library/Aggregation Resources: Respondents were generally not aware of CAISE and other related resources, either repositories for results of their own work, or as resources for project development, distribution or dissemination. Yet, they did strongly support (71%) better use of digital repositories to aid in impact.
Overall Value of Program: The majority of the respondents (85%) found the program worthwhile, although some in this positive group noted implementation challenges.
These findings tend to underscore what we uncovered in the interviews: that understanding program goals, shaping the project, defining the audience and building an implementation team could be challenging in some contexts. At the other end of their projects, delivery, distribution, and in particular aggregation and continued dissemination were not pursued in a strategic way. We also learned that despite a media component in the RFP, a large number of the programs, including some of the most successful ones, were museum oriented, and public media oriented projects remain a source of untapped potential for media-based outreach activities.
Workshop Experience and Outcomes
As the third phase of the grant, we conducted a two-part virtual workshop entitled “CRPA: Looking Back and Ahead” for selected CRPA participants identified in earlier stages of the project. The goal of the workshop was to bring together research PIs and their media/outreach partners to share and analyze best practices with respect to media-based outreach and to envision tools and resources that could support such initiatives in the future. The full attendee list, as well as the slides used for the workshop, is appended. An archive version of the workshop is also being submitted to CAISE for posting on informalscience.org. The sessions were facilitated by Michele Korf and Arthur Smith of MKA. In addition to the PI and media attendees, Valentine Kass, Sandy Welch and Wyn Jennings from NSF attended, as did project advisors Bruce MacFadden, past NSF program officer and CRPA PI recipient, and Ted Krichels, Senior VP for System Development and Media Strategy for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Day Two only).
The first day’s approach started with introductions, including a warm up activity asking participants to share resources that helped them keep up with general science news. We then reported out on interview and survey phases of the project, asking for general observations and discussion. In general, the findings of the earlier phases chimed with the experiences of these participants (with PIs having participated in one or both of the earlier stages while media partners were new to the discussion).
The heart of the workshop was devoted to a mini case study exercise. In an effort to ground the discussion of practices and lessons learned in the experiences of grantees, we developed fictional cases based on our research. These were designed to focus the discussion but did not disclose details of any one grant. The mini cases were written to exemplify both successful and challenging aspects of these projects and, because they did not reflect real projects, not put any one PI or media person on the spot. Mini cases were provided a week before, and participants were asked to read them in advance. The cases are appended in the workshop appendix.
This occasioned a lively discussion and, as expected, a number of common themes and issues surfaced. Working with these, we created a guiding framework for the rest of the discussion.
Common themes:
Research area
Relationship of CRPA to research area
Audience
Format
Distribution
Evaluation
Shelf life
Aggregation
Partners
Extensions (e.g., curriculum elements)
Other extensions
Promotion/Marketing
To this conceptual/lens level we added two more dimensions for participant consideration. Using an online poll to initiate discussion, we asked participants to reflect on the phases of their project work and which phase (pre-grant, grant, or post-grant) encompassed the greatest effort. The typical response was that by far the greatest effort was during the grant, a reasonable view.
We then discussed how lens considerations mapped on to these phases (e.g.: What should be front-loaded? How should the work after the grant unfold?) This led to the observation that the post-grant work (for instance, after the media product itself is completed and where the work of aggregating and adapting projects may take place) is, in fact, an equally active phase. However, in some cases the reality is that projects are shelved after an initial airing or museum event, and even opportunities that would not require additional funds are not tapped. This also underscored the need to plan from the beginning for the activities and support for this post-grant stage, and also to bring a focus on logical progression through the stages.
We then turned to the “who” question: Who does the work on these projects, in which phases and at what level of practical or conceptual responsibility? In a theme that was to resonate in Part Two of the workshop, “Looking Ahead”, this question of who, and working out the relationship between the scientist and the media professional was not always straightforward and sometimes reflected the friction on goals and process noted in the interview phase of the project. It became clear that shared language, checklists and tools to bridge this gap would be very helpful. It was also clear that informal science expertise (in the form of university, museum, or graduate student personnel) was a tremendous boon to projects when it was tapped and, here too, tools for identifying and working with these resources would be helpful.
As we closed Day One of the workshop, we asked participants to consider how media-based outreach projects unfold in a larger cycle, namely how a grant, which leads to production work, primary dissemination (for instance a television airing or a museum exhibit), evaluation and aggregation, can in turn lead to results that go beyond the initial plan. We discussed how, when this approach is supported strategically, it has the capacity to open up new opportunities in several dimensions. The content may be able to reach a larger audience across a broader range of formats, and in turn the project team (PI and media professional) can build on results, and experience to extend their work with NSF and in other contexts. This “virtuous cycle”, which enables projects to become more than the sum of their parts, helps build a larger environment for achieving the goal of better communication of research to public audiences.
Day One of the workshop ended with a homework assignment for participants. We asked PIs and media partners to work together, turning to their own current or past projects, and considering the work done in the session on lenses, phases, and teams as relate to their own projects. This was to be fodder for a private discussion and debrief between the two of them, after which we asked them to report out on four prompts and answer these through an online survey, which we then reviewed and compiled to inform Day Two.
The prompts were:
• The key strength of our project was…
• One thing we would do differently if we were undertaking it now would be…
• What practical tools would be helpful?
• What broad categories of public understanding of science do you see your project fitting into?
In general this first workshop session provided a means for grantees to assess and grapple with their own experiences as a context for looking ahead towards future initiatives of this kind. By working through every phase of a project and asking PIs and media partners to reflect together, we found that the group was able to bring to the surface key successes and challenges from all stages, from the intention and initiation of the grant, through production and distribution/assessment.
A by-product of this work was developing a sense of community that came from the fact that many participants had similar experiences (of both successes and challenges) and the spirit of the workshop was clearly aimed toward continuing to share these and work with practical tools to improve both process and outcome.
The focus of Day Two of the workshop was turning from individual project strengths and challenges to identifying how these experiences could inspire tools, practices, and communities to benefit such efforts broadly. Wyn Jennings, Sandy Welch and Valentine Kass set the stage with remarks on the broader agenda of the NSF in this area, reflections on the changing environment with respect to the media, and the enduring need to understand how science works.
We then asked individuals to recap their homework assignments, sharing strengths, challenges, and their sense of where their project fit into broader NSF goals. This echoed the experiences discussed earlier. A particular point raised by the participants was the need to bring editorial clarity to the goals of the project and to find the right tone and approach for the partnership between the PI and the media partner. An additional recurrent theme was the desire for examples of successful projects, as well as practical tools, checklists and the like, with recommendations based on best practices of other projects. Several individuals highlighted a need for community, mentioning a listserv or other approach both for finding expertise and sharing experiences.
We then facilitated a discussion where we asked participants to envision tools for each of the areas we had identified together during the first workshop session and in the homework. For convenience, we discussed these in terms of phases and also thematic considerations. The results of these discussions are incorporated into our recommendations below. The session ended with brief comments from the facilitators and Sandy Welch of the NSF, and with thanks to all participants.
Elements of Successful Initiatives
We found this to be a very impressive group of PIs and partners. They were creative, genuinely enthusiastic and committed to the media-based outreach agenda, its impact on and expression in related NSF initiatives, and to the need to continue to support and engage in broader impacts work. As one respondent said during initial interview, reaching out to the public “is our responsibility as federally-funded research scientists.”
In our initial interviews and in the broader online survey that followed we asked about what the funded PIs saw as successful elements of their projects. Some responded that “getting it done” and “delivering as promised” was a measure of success. Others cited preserving the integrity of the science being conveyed. Most were eager to move quickly from that area of questioning to share related issues and probe what more they could do in future efforts of this kind – their own and that of others — and think about what was needed to do so. All were generous with time and input and it was this readiness to share experiences, learn from others and continue to contribute to efforts this kind that struck us most and informs our own recommendations.
Our recommendations also reflect perceived strengths of the projects and participants we encountered. Recommendations are intended to advance those strengths, make them easier to accomplish for others, and leverage already funded NSF initiatives. As noted, we saw a continuum of teams from relative newcomers to seasoned efforts at working with media and outreach. Across this continuum, we found that contributors to success included the following elements:
• PI/media partnership based on trust and a willingness to prioritize the educational mission of the outreach (as opposed to media for media’s sake).
• Well articulated goals at project initiation: requiring adequate preparation, planning, clarity on audience need, rationale for project form and mode of distribution.
• Ongoing attention to timeline and budget
• Ability to problem solve when something goes wrong as it inevitably does and to stay the course on larger goals related to integrity of the initiative
• Ability to visualize the process of science and convey its excitement as distinct from entertainment as the driver
• Understanding of, and creativity in taking advantage of the strengths and existing resources of partners involved
• Staying the course not only during project creation but later on as well with openness to other uses
• Passion for the work and commitment to the broader impacts mission — a must have and a notable through line with this group of grant recipients
• A coherent and practical approach to coordinating curriculum and other related secondary components of the project within the larger media-based outreach effort
• Clarity about the meaning of informal science education and its place within the project.
Outcomes for Participants
CRPA grant recipients—both research PIs and media partners—reported a range of positive outcomes that went beyond the direct project activity. In many cases CRPA grants conferred status and visibility on PIs that went beyond their specific academic world, garnering attention from deans, public relations offices and outreach departments at their institutions, and legitimizing communications efforts. CRPAs helped both PIs and media partners conceptualize and plan future proposals (be these follow-on CRPAs or other projects). They made such work much more viable and practical. The connections made during CRPAs to product staff, education staff, and partners, created a set of relationships for continuing outreach efforts in both formal and informal ways. It is notable that these catalyzing characteristics of CRPAs benefited both novice and experienced grantees. The CRPA approach supported capacity building and relationships that were highly beneficial in either context.
Reflections and Recommendations
Overall, we also found remarkable consistency of participant feedback between the interview, survey and workshop phases of this project. As has been noted, our main focus was on PI recipients and, in the workshop offerings, participation was extended to media partnerships as well given their prominent role. When we reviewed feedback across all project phases, we found that, while expressed in many ways depending on the nature of the specific project, there was almost universally shared desire for additional resources and activity falling into two broad categories: 1) support resources and 2) growth opportunities.
The first area of support resources is tied to participants’ expressed need for facilitated access to existing tools as well as new ones to further PI CRPA work or other similar work of this nature going forward. It also refers to the desire for a place where PIs and media and other partnership entities can easily share experiences on specific topics, find new partners with needed skillsets and have access to timely guidance and mentoring—a community of practice. The second area of growth opportunities refers to the notion of projects further broadening and deepening their impact through extended shelf life and means of distribution, aggregation and leveraging for multiple agendas.
These two broad areas of discovery influenced the organization of the two-part workshop sessions: Day One with its focus on individual needs used to inform thinking, and Day Two with its consideration of how individual efforts can inform and build for maximum reach and impact. Here both areas are addressed in terms of recommendations that extend the work accomplished by NSF grantees and NSF initiatives to date in a logical and feasible way.
Support Resources
To broaden reach and increase the effectiveness of researcher/outreach organizational partnerships we recommend the following:
1. Collection of existing tools and development of new ones as needed
A set of production tools, checklists, templates etc., should be developed and provided to grantees via a website. These would be specifically targeted for PIs and their partner entities to facilitate planning, development and dissemination of CRPA efforts (and other similar efforts), with special emphasis on media creation, dissemination and leveraging of new avenues afforded by new technologies. Tools developed would take into account those already available through CAISE and elsewhere, including by grantees themselves, and provide easy access to them. Such tools–as well as vetted resources available from other sources such as public media–could also be listed, with links included in grant guidelines. Topics include the following areas: editorial planning documents, timeline, budget and media format checklists, best practice in new and emerging technologies including, for instance, a social media checklist, design guidance, meta-data tagging and archiving guidance, team roles and responsibilities, formative evaluation, user testing guide, distribution, marketing and outreach tips, focus group testing, curriculum models, and audience research.
Support recommendation #1: We recommend that an ongoing digital resource be established — a resource hub — and that these tools be collected or created as needed, and made easily available to grantees.
2. Access to just-in-time one-on-one mentoring resources
We found there to be a consistently expressed need for just-in-time support, from novice to experienced PI/media partner. As a complement to easy access to new and existing tools, this would provide support tailored to specific needs and questions, often at a point when it can positively affect ability to complete on time and on budget as well as anticipate future needs. Guidance would need to be editorially neutral and should not impose a specific editorial direction but could provide valuable advice tailored to immediate needs on such areas as, for example, production process considerations, new technologies opportunities to help fuel project conceptualization and inform rights/distribution needs, timeline considerations, producing with multiple uses in mind.
Support recommendation #2: We recommend that a mentoring resource be established for CRPA grantees (and others as relevant) with in-person or remote mentoring availability via professional consultants with relevant expertise (production, technology, etc.), also integrating peer mentoring over time as well, and that this assistance would support best practices and NSF goals in the context of individual project needs.
3. Development of a partnership meet-up venue
Among those we interviewed and included in the workshops, the media partner selection most often resulted from an already-existing relationship. This was seen as positive but sometimes left gaps in terms of areas of expertise needed, especially those that could be exploited to take advantage of new means and multiple modes of distribution. In addition, media players also told us that they do not have a ready way to connect with PIs engaged in this type of work and would welcome a venue for this. Also as noted, it is not only about facilitating an institutional meet-up, but actually getting to the right individuals within that institution (i.e.: the producer specializing in educational media work, the scientist poised to shape a team and initiative, etc.)
As part of this offering, participants would benefit from a resource that serves as a marketplace for and way of connecting to individuals outside current NSF circles but who are nonetheless engaged in this kind of work, be they evaluators, media personnel or others with educational outreach expertise. This would be framed as a self-vetting and evolving space rather than a specific NSF-vetted list of recommended partners. It would, for example, be of particular value expanding public media relationships, as these offer both distribution as well as other capacity, something that can be tapped to a greater extent than was sometimes the case in current projects.
Support recommendation #3: We recommend the development of a venue that facilitates access to new players, and the broader production community, and makes explicit the potential roles those partners might play both nationally and more locally for content creation, distribution, etc. This will serve as a neutral marketplace rather than a reviewed directory with ratings.
4. Growing a shared community of practice
This was a strong desire of the group and surfaced in many ways and during all stages of our research. It was also underscored by the enthusiasm of this group to engage with each other in the workshop setting. As was noted by us and by the group, other communities do exist that serve the broader impacts agenda in science, including CAISE, Broader Impacts and Outreach Network for Institutional Collaboration (BIONIC) as well as venues provided through professional societies in specific disciplines.
That said, this group and others engaged in or contemplating this kind of work would benefit from an intuitive, easy-to-access community that could provide access to funded project information and principal players, a listserv and community forum to help avoid “reinventing the wheel” and share out tools, tips, and lessons learned, peer vetting, and all in a context affording easy access and relevance. Participants should be able to share experiences in the context of a nurturing community. Rather than compete with existing community destinations it should align with them.
Support Recommendation #4: Working in collaboration with currently funded NSF-efforts (including, but not limited to CAISE and BIONIC), develop a digital resource and ongoing virtual support approach (with potential in-person extensions) that will foster community.
Growth Opportunities
All of the above-mentioned recommendations are intended to support past, present and future PIs and partner entities with relevance across ISE related areas of NSF and beyond. To further amplify the strategic impact of these projects, particularly for their collective impact, and to make the most of NSF investments already made, we also recommend the following:
1. Support aggregation and strategic use of resources
We recommend providing the opportunity for greater organization and leveraging of funded projects through tagging and aggregation of resources to make them visible for use and distribution across the broadest range of audiences, organizations and distribution channels. This is a distributed strategy, meaning that data about the materials will be collected from projects and distributed to venues and platforms where there is a logical targeted use. This will build on and be compatible with the work of venues that already exist such NSF’s own Science 360 service and CAISE, as well as specialized and general resources, be these audience-specific such as PBS Learning Media (PreK-12 and educator professional development), or general digital platforms such as YouTube or Facebook. The approach should be platform agnostic, not favoring any particular platform, vendor, or model, but to the extent possible technically compatible with all of them.
We are recommending that material be aggregated into existing platforms rather than building a new platform and repository. This is therefore a strategy and a service, not a product. Our rationale: The technical environment changes rapidly and this has an inevitable effect on the behavior of the public these grants aim to reach. They consume content in different formats and via ever-changing platforms. Therefore, a strategy designed to reach them should be forward compatible, flexible and provide ease of use for all parties: those providing content, those curating the aggregation, and the users themselves. Ease of preparing materials for aggregation and for use by channels is key. This will allow services and partnerships to grow over time, so that opportunities to extend offerings can be exploited by both NSF and the PI community as they arise.
Connected and equally important will be a related strategy of NSF branding of media-based outreach content, with clear requirements for how this brand should be expressed across formats and distributions. Consistency, clarity and coordination of branding across formats and platforms will be key. NSF is a gold standard for science, and branding can be a key differentiator in a noisy media market. Practical considerations for this work include creating a simple workflow for tagging and managing the aggregation content (database records, images, rights tracking, associated text and links etc.) Coordinated marketing strategies and technical support will also be necessary.
The result of this effort will support a myriad of uses, including facilitating the ability to find and promote material internally within NSF and across public channels. It also will support opportunities for cross-promotion and innovation both in project creation and outreach. Although this recommendation grows from our observations of the strength of the existing CRPAs, and would be supportive of future CRPAs should the program be reinstated in some form, it can be extended to other NSF media-based outreach initiatives as well, be these in ISE, EHR more generally, or in research divisions.
Growth recommendation #1: Develop and implement an aggregation strategy supporting the collection and distribution of media-based outreach projects.
2. Facilitate greater shelf life and broader distribution
The aggregation approach noted above would facilitate greater shelf life and broader distribution by virtue of automatically building and demonstrating critical mass, enhancing value and connecting with other potential uses and distribution venues developed by PIs and their partners. We recommend attention to consistency of rights and metatagging guidelines to facilitate this and well as clarity up front (ideally in grant guidelines) on required deliverables. This early awareness would inform future phases of production and facilitate options later on, including after the term of the grant for shelf life and distribution. This approach, combined with the aggregation strategy noted above, can empower PIs to remain engaged and innovative in their outlook, all supported by a mutually reinforcing community of practice.
Growth recommendation #2: Ask PIs to be intentional and make explicit their plan for potential extensions of their projects in their narrative, including submitting an anticipated rights profile for the project as well as how they will implement metatagging and aggregation. (This can be considered as analogous to the ‘data-sharing’ requirement for NSF grants, perhaps termed ‘media sharing’ requirement.)
3. Provide NSF-wide guidance on aligning media based outreach with broader impacts goals.
Our research brought to the surface the valuable way in which these media-based outreach projects enabled aspects of the NSF’s broader impacts criteria. We recommend that NSF build on this and provide guidance to clarify broader impacts goals with respect to media based outreach (ideally foundation wide). A set of tools and guidelines (which can be based on the material described above) will enable research projects in any division to develop goals and approaches that support broader impacts through media-based outreach, whether under the auspices of ISE or elsewhere. Making the connection between broader impacts and media-based outreach easy to understand will provide help in implementation and evaluation. This will also provide assistance to prospective applicants within ISE, and address how the CRPA program relates to broader impacts criteria overall.
Growth recommendation #3: Prepare and distribute guidelines (including conducting webinar/workshops if needed) on the connections between media-based outreach and NSF broader impacts for use within ISE and at NSF generally, preparing this information in a way that is tailored to all levels and audiences.
Strategic Approach
All of these areas would, we believe, benefit from a common effort with strategic brand organization and guidelines designed to leverage and enhance the NSF brand. Additionally, we believe these recommendations will support and enhance a reinstated version of the CRPA initiative, which participants overwhelmingly found to be beneficial to their broader impacts work.
Whatever specific approaches are chosen, we believe it is strongly advisable to take advantage of the existing projects as exemplars, and mine the cross-promotional opportunities to make this work more visible. It is important to tap and coordinate with the considerable investment NSF has already made in establishing channels to support informal science and broader impacts work to date, such as CAISE, upon which the aggregation strategy described above builds.
Finally, this is envisioned as a strategy that benefits multiple areas of NSF and is designed to be an ongoing resource. It should be developed to be responsive to the expressed needs of PIs on an ongoing basis, becoming an evolving conduit to support PIs, media partners, distribution, and facilitate alignments with relevant entities and new platforms and formats as they emerge.
Next Steps
This final report, as well as an archived version of the workshop and other referenced material, will be made available online. We will work with CAISE to disseminate these materials through their website. We will also pursue additional distribution through BIONIC and all materials will be available to NSF for use at its discretion.
We would like to thank the NSF for the opportunity to engage substantively with past CRPA recipients, their projects, and what we believe to be an important area of continued activity.
CRPA: Looking Back & Ahead 