Shawna Reibling, RIR – Laurier
Educating new graduate students about knowledge mobilization is a good way to educate the next generation of professors about knowledge mobilization principles and ensure that graduate students are prepared to make a difference in the world.
En faisant connaître la mobilisation des connaissances à ceux et celles qui commencent leurs études supérieures, on se trouve à former la prochaine génération de professeurs aux principes de la MdC, tout en préparant ces étudiants à agir concrètement dans le monde.
This year Wilfrid Laurier University has taken knowledge mobilization education to a new generation of graduate students – those just beginning their programs. At Laurier there are many programs that have direct community based work embedded in the curriculum: community psychology, social work, music therapy, entrepreneurship, etc. These programs have outreach, community involvement, community based research and social innovation all incorporated into their programs and course work.
But beyond this, the hunger for making research relevant to people in the community extends beyond such focused, applied programs. When offering skills to these new graduate students, I collaborated with my colleague in the library Michael Steeleworthy, on a presentation entitled: “Your digital footprint: what does the internet know about digital (professional) you?”
This workshop was meant to get new graduate students to think about their identities online, how they wanted to incorporate knowledge mobilization into their program of study through social media.
We are also extending this training to our faculty, offering a workshop “How to organize your online identity” in October. Please visit http://bit.ly/15yaBES to register and see our workshops.
As part of these presentations we also equipped students with some guidelines around “building your research-related skills to drive your success”
These skills include knowledge mobilization tools and techniques including reaching out to communities, engaging and listening to audiences for your research, writing clear language summaries, etc. To prepare for this workshop we asked Twitter for advice: “What advice do you have for graduate students just beginning to do knowledge mobilization?” Here are the answers:
- @abbaspeaks “easier to motivate graduate students into early #KM, funding often hinges on it”
- @mobilizemichael and @eldancos agreed with advice to “engage community and/or policy leaders so research question is well rooted #integratedkmb
I turn it over to you readers, what advice do you have for graduate students just beginning to do knowledge mobilization?
[slideshare id=25894899&doc=digitalidentity4sept13gradstudentsv1-130904144108-]