1. COMMUNITY BASED LEARNING BEST PRACTICES

2. OVERVIEW
Presenters
Choton Basu, Associate Professor of ITSCM and Irvin L. Young Professor of Entrepreneurship
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Denise Ehlen, Director of Outreach for the College of Business and Economics and Innovation Hub Coach/Mentor
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3. OVERVIEW Session Goals (Participants will…)
Develop knowledge of best practices in outreach scholarship and community-based research
Learn new strategies to begin to engage in community based learning
Acquire knowledge of resources to support community based learning

4. DEFINITIONS Community-based research
Collaborative—faculty/staff/student(s) and organization/partner(s)
Identify needs and method to address problem
Scholarship of engagement (or outreach)
Discovery
Integration
Application
Engaged scholarship refers to faculty/staff projects satisfying three criteria: 1) involves a community, 2) benefits a community, and 3) advances the faculty/staff member’s scholarship.

5. DEFINITIONS Also called community-based participatory research
Designed to ensure and establish structures for participation by
Communities affected by the issues being studied
Representatives of organizations
Researchers
Involves
Co-learning and reciprocal transfer of expertise
Shared decision-making power
Mutual ownership of processes and products of the research enterprise
Balance research rigor with responsiveness to the community

6. SALIENT FEATURES/VALUES
Includes discovery, application, and integration
Carried out WITH the community
Partners involved in every stage (including definition of scope and data analysis/interpretation)
Genuine partnerships draw on all assets
Indigenous knowledge in the community is tapped to advance knowledge
Project parameters include sustainability (and/or capacity building)
Partners are empowered
Refer to handout Analytic framework for community-based participatory research

7. ADDITIONAL ELEMENTS Community-based participatory research involves
Promoting social change
Guiding partnerships across sites
Generating instrumental and practical knowledge
Increasing focus on process
Power-sharing between researcher and community
Researcher must credit community members with the ability to understand complex research challenges

8. See also handout: Key questions
DEVELOPMENT
Guiding questions
Who are the partners and the community?
What is the issue to be addressed?
What outcomes will be achieved?
How will progress toward objectives/outcomes be measured?
What resources does each partner contribute?
What will the partners need to continue the project in the future?
Plan ahead to allow sufficient time to build partnerships and understanding.
See also handout: Key questions

9. CRITICAL ELEMENTS Assembling research team
Developing structure for collaboration
Defining research question
Identifying funding
Choosing research design
Designing participant recruitment and retention strategies
Designing measures/instruments
Collecting data
Designing intervention
Analyzing and interpreting data
Disseminating results
Refer to handout Critical elements in community-based participatory research

10. BARRIERS To remove barriers to community participation
Offer educational experiences
Vision workshops that involve researchers and communities
Understand resources/strengths of locals
Generate awareness of shared concern with problems
Transfer skills
Discuss research methodology
Review tension of matching experimental design and community action
Hold group meetings and structured interviews
Hire/engage local coordinators
Make written plans detailing types of expertise required at each stage of the project

11. BARRIERS [continued] To remove barriers to community participation
Create issue-specific operational mechanisms (ad hoc groups) for internal review of operations and measures of accountability
Appoint researchers as guardians of the data during the study—transfer guardianship to community at the end of the study
Evaluate the collaborative process throughout the cycle
Problem analysis
Intervention design
Implementation
Evaluation
Dissemination
Institutionalization

12. EXAMPLE—Needs Assessment
Partners
Institute for Water Business
Advanced Student Apprenticeship Program (ASAP)
Water Council Small Business Channel
Research Project
Needs Assessment
Lessons Learned
Refer to Small Business Channel Needs Assessment

13. STRATEGIES

14. STRATEGIES

15. RESOURCES

16. QUESTIONS?