Since the beginning of 2022, two Knowledge Brokers have been added to the Impact at the Core team, with a specific focus on collaborating with stakeholders in impact-driven education. By following their tips, you can foster successful and fruitful collaborations that benefit both educational institutions and their partners.
- Start Early: Allow at least three months for engaging partners, with more time for specific or new contacts.
- Seek Help: Leverage colleagues within your institution for their contacts and support.
- Have a Plan B: If initial plans fall through, explore alternatives like guest lectures or case studies based on current developments.
- Understand Partner Needs: Collaborate by aligning with both your goals and your partners', focusing on mutual benefits.
- Set Realistic Expectations: Ensure educational goals guide student projects and clearly communicate achievable outcomes to partners.
- Embrace Flexibility: Adapt and think creatively to overcome challenges and maximize collaboration opportunities.
- Allocate a Budget: Plan for expenses related to collaboration, including gestures of appreciation and reimbursements.
- Offer Excellent Service: Go the extra mile in servicing partners by being proactive, flexible, and thorough in your engagements.
- Maintain Contact: Keep open lines of communication for queries and regularly check in on the partnership's progress.
- Give Proper Credits: Acknowledge your partners' contributions in meetings, social media, publications, and ensure a positive and conclusive end to collaborations, setting the stage for future partnerships.
Begin Early
Securing and involving partners requires time. Expect to need at least three months from first outreach to finalize agreements. For highly specific partners or areas with limited existing contacts, more time might be necessary. When tapping into existing networks or contacts, a three-month timeframe is generally sufficient.
Seek Help
Within EUR, there are certainly colleagues with relevant contacts who can assist with your inquiry. We're here to support you, but consider reaching out to organizations like Erasmus Connects, Erasmus Research Services, or the IDEA Center. Sometimes, we also seek help from the Alumni Office.
If necessary, we may post a call on social media or approach organizations with networks in specific themes.
When you're asking multiple colleagues for help, make sure to keep us all informed. This way, we can coordinate who does what, avoid contacting the same partners, and decide who will take the lead in finding the partner(s).
If students have ideas on how to connect practice to an educational assignment, definitely take advantage of that. Some students might be involved with organizations through volunteering or part-time jobs that have interesting cases.
Have a Plan B
Sometimes, securing agreements with the right partners as initially envisioned might not be feasible. If finding clients for projects proves difficult, consider alternatives like guest lectures, visits to relevant sites, or case studies based on current developments without a partner's direct involvement as viable options.
Understanding Partner Needs
Partners engage for various reasons, from personal or societal motives to explicit business or strategic interests. It's important to articulate your own goals, but also consider the needs and possibilities of your practice partners: "what's in it for them?"
Consider why they accepted our invitation to collaborate. Have they worked with EUR before? If so, how was their experience? What do they hope to gain from this partnership? What can we potentially offer them? What practical considerations must we keep in mind?
Realistic Expectations
Impact-driven education isn't primarily designed to meet the needs of partners. This means that for students, even those highly motivated to address societal challenges, achieving educational goals is paramount. Be realistic in communicating with practice partners about the research results and advice they can expect. Include the academic skills that students need to learn, which may be less interesting for the partner.
Of course, expectations can vary. A group of master's students who can dedicate more time to a partner's important issue may achieve more than a group of first-year students with little prior knowledge.
Flexibility and Creative Solutions
Education operates on tight schedules and numerous pedagogical constraints. Our experience shows that when teachers allow room for collaboration with partners and employ creativity, more possibilities open up.
If you initially sought four partners, each with their own case for a student group, but ended up with only two, consider having two groups work on the same case, each with a slightly different focus.
If you want students to engage with a specific target group in Rotterdam and there's an event or symposium where this group will be present, offer to provide a report or help organize the event in exchange for permission to pose a few research questions.
If a partner finds little value in students' academic research, perhaps they would benefit from contributing to a conference you're organizing, or students could assist with event planning.
Service
Especially in the case of a first collaboration, it's not always clear what the external stakeholder will gain or how much time it will ultimately require.
To turn mutual interest into a tangible collaboration, going the extra mile can be beneficial. This can be in the small details. Offer multiple options (times, locations) for a meeting, actively engage with the underlying issue the organization is facing, or ensure the partner receives a good summary of the research findings. Assist partners in case formulation by making a proposal based on an initial meeting, or offer to translate the case into English. Alternatively, provide a Dutch summary of research results delivered in English if the partner values this.
Maintain Contact
Ensure your partner has your or your colleague's contact details for any queries. Periodically check in to see how the collaboration with students is progressing, addressing any uncertainties.
Credits and Conclusion
We're always pleased when partners collaborate with us, especially on societal challenges. Organizations or contacts often go the extra mile, and it's important to acknowledge this.
Mention your partners in related meetings, like kick-off events and closing sessions. Create social media posts tagging them. Include your partners in publications, such as magazines or on the EUR website, possibly with a photo and quote from your contact, and share a link with them.
Also inform the person who facilitated the contact about the collaboration's outcome and ensure the engagement has concluded properly. Our experience is that students sometimes overlook this. By concluding well, we increase the likelihood of partners wanting to engage again and positively recommending EUR within their networks. If you aim to collaborate with these partners in the future, it's wise to set up future engagements at the conclusion.
This can also be done in collaboration with us, of course.