Fast Track Impact Mark Reed

This week, Mark talks through a series of good practice principles for engagement and impact, published in his recent blog post- Add your own feedback and ideas hereThe blog builds on a number of sources, including:Mark’s Impact Culture book (see the bottom of this page for his impact culture toolkit)NCCPE engagement guidanceMark’s “Re-thinking impact…” paperYou can download a written transcript of this episode here

This week, Mark explores what the recent REF2029 guidance means for impact, including a discussion of what we might be expected to write about in the new engagement and impact narrative, and an evidence-based approach to writing a 4* impact case study.NCCPE engagement guidanceMy “Re-thinking impact…” paperWhat made a 4* impact case study in REF214 paperMy 4* REF2021 impact case studyImpact templates (in the Google Sheets menu, go to File > Make a copy to save an editable version)3i analysis templateFast Track Impact Planning TemplateYou can download a written transcript of this episode here

This week, Mark talks to Michael Parker, Director of Operations at The Conversation, a news outlet that specialises in working with researchers, giving them editorial control on a global platform. Drawing from their work together creating the Media Impact Guide and Toolkit, Mark and Michael discuss how researchers can harness the media to get more impact from their research and provide evidence of both the reach and significance of the impacts that arise.Read the Media Impact Guide and ToolkitFind out more about The Conversation Sign up for next year’s Exchange conferenceYou can download a written transcript of this episode here

Eric Jensen is an expert in impact evaluation who has written a textbook on many of the most useful methods you'll need and leading two companies that specialise in impact evaluation consultancy and training alongside his academic research on environmental issues. In this interview, he provides tips to help you design a more effective survey to evaluate your impact, and explains how you can repurpose widely used impact planning tools as evaluation tools, that will help you improve your practice as much as they will give you evidence of impact.Find out more about the Institute for Methods Innovation via his Methods for Change website Learn about Qualia Analytics software to help you both collect and analyse impact evaluation dataWatch Eric training with Mark and others on the use of Theory of Change to evaluate impactRead Eric's book, Doing Real Research: A Practical Guide to Social Research You can download a written transcript of this episode here

This week, Mark interviews Laura Tucker (Vertigo Ventures), Tobias Schoep (GrowImpact), and Sarah Morton (Matter of Focus) about the platforms they have developed to help researchers keep track of their impacts. Find out more about each platform:GrowImpactOutNav from Matter of FocusImpact Tracker, part of the impact ecosystem from Vertigo VenturesYou can download a written transcript of this episode here

This week, Mark interviews Rachel Blanche from Queen Margaret University Edinburgh to find out how arts-based methods can provide depth and rigour to an impact evaluation. They discuss a range of approaches including visual, performative and narrative methods, the types of evidence these methods can generate, how these approaches can empower participants in determining what’s meaningful, and how evaluating in this way can itself generate further impacts.Rachel shares two examples of arts-based methods used to evaluate impact in healthcare research – a theatre project capturing data on dementia care (citing this paper) and (a participative creative inquiry on osteoporosisThe paper we mention writing together about evaluating impact with arts-based (among other) methods can be accessed hereWatch the training Rachel and I ran on evaluating impactAnd you can find out more about Rachel's work hereYou can download a written transcript of this episode here