Toolkit: Summary of Consultations

Summary of consultations

9 July 2010

The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement is developing an online resource (including useful tools, case studies and contacts) to support senior managers and staff of higher education institutions to embed public engagement. The resource draws heavily on the work of the six beacons for public engagement, which were set up to pilot how such change can be effectively brought about within higher education.

We are also consulting on a set of resources for staff and students who wish to learn more about how to conduct effective public engagement activities, which has a very practical focus on the different techniques you might try, with links to case studies and information about training and funding.

The final products will be launched at our national conference on the 7th of December.

Consultations

At the moment the development of the resource is in full swing. The NCCPE is gathering input from University staff and other stakeholders to inform the development of this online resource. We have already organised several consultation events (in collaboration with Involve - an engagement charity) at different locations throughout the UK which have considerably sharpened our thinking.

We started out with a basic framework for the resource and at each consultation we have adapted the approach, which then formed the basis for the next consultation. This iterative process is gradually reaching its final stages.

This summary captures some of the important ways that the consultations have influenced the development of the resource:

For the senior managers' resource:

The Underlying Framework for this resource (537kB, PDF)  is a matrix describing what an increasingly 'engaged' university might look like.  The resource is intended to contain a range of FAQs and case studies that describe how different institutions have gone about embedding public engagement.

There has been lots of really useful discussion, suggestions and ideas from the consultation so far. In summary the overall feedback from the participants included the following suggestions.

  • The purpose of the resource should be around supporting change processes. A good way of approaching this was to build around people and their motivations for public engagement.
  • The resource should recognise that there is already likely to be a lot of public engagement underway in any institution, possibly 'under the radar' and that any approach should begin by recognizing and possibly rewarding the public engagement activities that are already underway.
  • Rather than having a plethora of tools and documents, the resource should be kept tight and simple and focus on delivering inspiring tools that can be used to stimulate conversations within institutions and that serve as a catalyst to ask some searching questions.
  • Despite the title suggesting the resource is directed to senior managers, the people most likely to use this resource are the change agents. Therefore the resource should provide them with tools for making the case for public engagement in a way that will resonate with senior managers.
  • The idea of a self assessment tool has been greeted with enthusiasm. The consultations have resulted in some rethinking of the initial self assessment tool. Participants have suggested that we provide a 'slimmed down' version, and change the different levels of 'embedding' from emerging-developing-embedded to erratic-developing-growing-embedded. The tool needs to leave room for interpretation and be adaptable to individual situations.
  • The self assessment is not intended as a league table. Rather it provides a tool for institutions to do an honest assessment of where they are and where they would like to be, identify the gaps and give an opportunity to work on these areas by providing inspirational stories of change and practical examples.
  • The opportunity to have access to more in-depth information for each of the focal areas is useful. Proving supporting resources for inspiration, examples and links to people and institutions was valued. A tight set of resources was preferred over an excessive databank of resources.
  • This resource for senior managers should be seen as part of a wider support system, and NCCPE should continue to explore what other support they can provide beyond these resources.  

For the practitioners' toolkit:

Overall the following suggestions have been made:

  • The resource should be tailored to different levels of experience and commitment to public engagement. Their comments largely corroborated NCCPE's intension to have a "Beginners Guide" and "Top Tips for more experienced researchers" with various resources behind them.
  • The toolkit should be honest; people want to hear about what was learnt from the case studies, the pros and cons of engagement in certain situations and with different methods.
  • The practitioner toolkit should have a focus on sharing learning, collaboration and support. It was suggested that the toolkit could benefit from some kind of social media space, notice board or key contacts resource. Participants accepted, however, that it would be wrong to try to reinvent the wheel and if successful communities exist elsewhere they should be linked to rather than replicated.
  • There should be effective linkages between the practitioner and the senior manager toolkit, with some participants calling for a resource within the practitioner toolkit which helps them to make the case for public engagement activities both to middle and senior managers and potential funders. Help with articulating the costs and benefits of engagement was seen to be helpful.
  • The name Practitioner Toolkit, and indeed Senior Manager Toolkit were found to be problematic for some in the workshops. People felt that in actuality people wear strategic and operational hats in their role at different times. Some suggested that the name of the toolkits should move from describing what the roles are to what a person does. It was suggested that we instead call them something like "Public engagement toolkit" and "Strategic Toolkit".
  • The workshop attendees were presented with a draft engagement designer, which would allow the user to identify appropriate engagement methods based on their responses to a set of questions about their requirements. It was felt that the engagement designer could be useful, particularly for those already convinced of the value of public engagement. There was a general feeling that the tool should be as simple as possible, with questions all on the same page and real time results the user can see change depending on the way they answer the questions. As there will be minimal information on the page, a function such as "hover over" should be in place to allow the user to bring up more information about the questions if required.  

Next steps

Further consultations

There will be one more consultation event on the 27th July, in Bristol, from 11 - 3. If you are interested in participating in this full day workshop, please contact NCCPE for more details.

We are setting up telephone interviews to consult people who are keen on giving your input, but are not able to come to our consultation events. We are organising a series of 90 minute phone conferences over the coming weeks to engage with a variety of university staff and to secure their input.  Do please contact the NCCPE if you would like to join one of these.  

Contributing content

We are also encouraging senior managers and practitioners from higher education institutions to contribute case studies, resources and contacts to make the toolkit as useful as possible to the sector. If you have any relevant resources that would inspire and assist others, please fill in the attached form specifying the type of resource, a brief description and your contact details and we will get in touch with you. Please note all contributed content will be attributed - and linked to your website.