Toolkits, Tools, and Other Resources

The ESC provides this list so that engaged scholars and practitioners may be aware of the numerous resources available to assist them in fostering engaged scholarship and developing the array of skills necessary for working successfully in collaborative, community-engaged contexts.

Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) Regional Engagement Toolkit

The APLU Council on Engagement and Outreach developed this online set of tools with the following objectives: to serve as a “go to” site for university faculty and staff to approach various facets of regional engagement; provide carefully curated information about and links to resources pertinent to regional engagement; and offer tools and templates for use in various aspects of regional engagement.

Building a Better World: The Pedagogy and Practice of Global Service-Learning

Developed by scholars and contributors from a number of colleges and universities, and focusing on critical service-learning, this website features a blog, wiki's, tools, syllabi, and other resources.

Broader Impact (BI) Wizard: Tool for Addressing the National Science Foundation's Broader Impacts Requirements

The U.S. Centers for Ocean Sciences Education and Excellence (COSEE) have developed a "Broader Impact Wizard" to assist scholars in developing broader impact statements that will satisfy the National Science Foundation's Criterion II. The Wizard's five-step process produces outlines of important points for BI statements and helps frame discussions with BI partners. A helpful video is included at the Wizard website containing further information about the Wizard and an introduction to constructing effective broader impact projects.

Broader Impacts Guiding Principles and Questions for National Science Foundation Proposals

The National Association for Broader Impacts (NABI) Broader Impacts Working Group has developed a guiding document for the U.S. National Science Foundation’s broader impacts criterion.

Civic Prompts: Making Civic Learning Routine across the Disciplines

The Association of American Colleges and Universities’ new online publication addresses how to infuse civic learning and democratic engagement across all majors.  The monograph’s civic prompts help professors consider how they can cultivate a disciplinary-linked civic lens in courses, explore the public purposes of the major, reformulate projects and assignments to raise civic inquiries, and design pedagogies that encourage students to turn knowledge into action.

Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC): Committee on Engagement

Engaged Scholarship: A Resource Guide (Draft), (2005); 800-2000-1242-2005, Final Reports/Committee on Engagement 08/09/2006. Developed by the Committee on Engagement of the Big Ten Academic Alliance (formerly the Committee on Institutional Cooperation), this 30-page report/resource guide provides a definition of engagement and offers suggested benchmarks and exemplars.

Community Foundation for Greater New Haven (CFGNH): Making Research Work in Your Community - A Guidebook to Successful Research Partnerships

Since 2008, community and university researchers have partnered on a series of projects aimed at addressing health issues in New Haven, CT. During these partnerships, the collaborators reflected on what they experienced as best practices in community partnered research. In 2012, they launched a qualitative study to gain insights from both community leaders in New Haven and university researchers on practices that would benefit both partners. This guidebook was created as a result of their work together and the findings of their interviews with 20+ community leaders and university researchers. It is intended to help communities and community organizations in their decisions to: conduct their own research; work effectively with university researchers; and maximize the value of community-university research relationships.

The Democracy Collaborative Community Wealth Innovators Series

The Democracy Collaborative is releasing a series of detailed guides meant to help change agents catalyze conversations that bring communities together to map the challenges they face, the assets they hold, and the vision they share. Through the Community Wealth Innovators Series, the Collaborative is working with "leading practitioners in the field to document the inspiring new models and critical lessons learned in on-the-ground efforts to build more inclusive and equitable local economies."

Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Toolkit (U.S.)

The Toolkit was designed for use by U.S. federal employees and others who want to employ crowdsourcing and citizen science in their work. It offers a five-step process for planning, designing, and implementing a crowdsourcing or citizen science project. At each step, it provides a list of tips for keeping projects on track. Case studies with success stories and project challenges are also included.

GlobalSL.org

GlobalSL.org amasses evidence-based tools and peer-reviewed research to advance best practices in global learning, community-university partnership, and sustainable development. It is edited and overseen by researchers and practitioners who work with multiple methods and represent diverse fields, all concerned with the question of how to responsibly and ethically grow partnerships between educational institutions and communities.

James Madison University, Working With(In) Communities: A guide to partnering with Outreach and Engagement

This guide was created to help explain how JMU Outreach and Engagement can help faculty implement community engagement while developing various forms of scholarship. It makes use of several helpful examples of faculty work to illustrate concepts, but is not meant to represent all university engagement efforts at James Madison University.

Loyola University, Center for Experiential Learning: The Scholarship of Engagement

Toolkit on promotion and tenure.

Meaningful Collaborations Workbook

A workbook for Community Leaders, Educators, and advocates working with Science Institutions. Created by the Independent Community-based Organizations (ICBOs) to navigate partnerships with science institutions to better implement informal science education projects in undeserved communities. Themes explored include Power & Privilege, Trust and Transparency, Realities and Relevance, and Commitment and Collaboration. 

Michigan State University, Points of Distinction: A Guidebook for Planning and Evaluating Quality Outreach

A faculty committee at Michigan State University developed Points of Distinction: A Guidebook for Planning and Evaluating Quality Outreach as a tool to assist academic units, faculty, and the higher education community plan, monitor, evaluate, and reward outreach and engagement efforts. This 50-page guidebook is divided into three sections focused on planning and evaluating outreach and engagement at the academic unit, individual, and project levels. A four-page matrix describes the dimensions of quality outreach and engagement: significance, context, scholarship, and impact. An appendix includes tools for defining outreach and engagement, unit planning and priority setting, rewarding quality outreach and engagement, evaluating unit outreach and engagement, developing a faculty outreach and engagement portfolio, and evaluating individual outreach and engagement.

Ohio State University, Office of University Outreach and Engagement—Documenting Engagement

Resources that provide guidance for documenting engagement activities.

Ohio State University, Office of University Outreach and Engagement—Resources for Outreach Work

Resources to assist universities in discussing, developing, and/or evaluating outreach and scholarship. 

Purdue University, The Guide: Documenting, Evaluating, and Recognizing Engaged Scholarship
 

The Guide was developed to facilitate faculty advancement based on the scholarship of engagement at Purdue University and beyond.

Towards a European Framework for Community Engagement in Higher Education (TEFCE) Toolbox

The TEFCE Toolbox is an open access institutional self-reflection framework that supports universities to improve how they address societal needs through partnerships with their external communities. It was developed and piloted over two years through a process involving 180 experts and practitioners from eight EU Member States.

University-Industry Demonstration Partnership, Researcher Guidebook: A Guide for Successful Institutional-Industrial Collaborations

This 2012 guidebook addresses the opportunities and challenges unique to institution and industry collaborations, specifically targeting active researchers (at all career stages).

University of Arizona, Promoting An Inclusive View of Scholarship

Useful resource from University of Arizona’s promotion and tenure policies.

University of California San Francisco, Clinical and Translational Science Institute Community-Engaged Research Guides and Resource Manuals

Guides and resources about conducting community-engaged and translational research, written by faculty and community members under the auspices of the UCSF CTSI Community Engagement program. The collection includes materials developed for both scholars and community partners.

University of Minnesota, From Transaction to Transformation Professional Development Learning Module for Community-Engaged Leaders and Learners

Created by University of Minnesota's Office for Public Engagement, the module offers an interactive roadmap for conducting public engagement, based on explorations of common scenarios in community-engaged scholarship and featuring video recorded commentary by University of Minnesota scholars and practitioners. Organized into seven short sections, the module is free of charge to use and takes ten to twenty minutes to complete.

User's Guide for Evaluating Learning Outcomes from Citizen Science

The result of over three years of NSF-funded work, the Guide was developed by Cornell Lab of Ornithology researchers for practitioners who want to evaluate learning outcomes from their citizen science projects. Citizen science is defined as "the engagement of volunteers and scientists in collaborative research to generate new science-based knowledge." The Guide includes an overview of evaluation techniques, tips, and best-practices for conducting evaluations, a glossary of terms, and an extensive set of templates and worksheets to help with evaluation planning and implementation.

User’s Manual on Institutionalizing Community University Research Partnerships

A handy reference and a ready tool-kit for university and college administrators interested in establishing and improving Community University Research Partnership initiatives in their institutions. It provides practical guidelines and steps that will help deliver on policy commitments made to promote Community University Engagement/Community University Research Partnerships in higher educational institutions. These guidelines, supplemented with best practices from around the world, are are intended to show a way forward; they offer insights into how institutions can build and sustain Community University Research Partnership practices and structures.

Vidoyen

Vidoyen (a combination of the words “video” and the French word for dean, "doyen") is a catalog of two-minute video recordings from academics, scholars, experts, and thought leaders. Primarily being used by scholars in Canada and the United States, its creators see it as a means expanding access to trusted knowledge from educated and insightful sources.

Approaches to Training in the Public Humanities

Provided by the National Humanities Alliance, this resource provides replicable models for builidng public himanties training programs.

Publishing Values-based Scholarly Communication 

Learning outcomes of this resource include understanding publicly engaged scholarship and describing the challenges of published engaged scholarhsip. Recognizing the usefulness of the HuMetricsHSS Framework in identifying the values of publicly engaged scholarship and to create a set of values based scholarly communication.