With the science of integrated knowledge translation (IKT) only beginning to emerge, how do we teach others about IKT? Since 2019, the IKTRN has published four casebooks. These casebooks include 35 examples of real-world teams using an IKT approach, providing detail on what they did, what worked well and what was challenging. Dr. Anita Kothari, IKTRN Deputy Director and Associate Professor at Western University, saw the potential of these casebooks as a teaching tool in her graduate-level knowledge translation (KT) course. To share her experience using the IKTRN casebooks as a pedagogical tool in her course, Anita obtained permission from her 18 students to share their work via a recently published report.
We connected with Anita to talk in more detail about the process of using the casebooks as a teaching tool, the lessons learned, and how using the casebooks enhanced her students’ learning about KT and IKT.
What inspired you to use the IKTRN casebook series as a teaching tool in your KT course?
AK: I’ve been thinking a lot about how people could be using the casebooks and so one of the things that I thought could be done is that the casebooks could be used somehow in the classroom. I remembered when I took a health policy course in graduate school at the University of Toronto, we were asked to write case notes for some cases. We were given a template and it was very policy-oriented, but I just remember that exercise as being unique and very useful. So I adapted that for this particular KT class.
The case notes that we did as graduate students were published into a book if the case note was good enough. And it was a textbook that professors could then use with their students, with the case note essentially providing background information.
How did using the casebooks compare to your usual methods for teaching IKT in your course?
AK: I usually do a final paper and then the assignments leading up to the final paper are in support of the final paper. The case notes were something very, very different, but I still liked the idea of helping students get to that final assignment. I had them do a case note in groups first. Working with three or four other students on a case, they worked together to develop the case note. I gave them class time to discuss and I would walk around and give very specific instructions. They then had to do a presentation. This process allowed the students to develop some more skills and understand how to pull in all the pieces of the case note.
After that, they knew what they had to do for their own independent case note. As they started working through their own case note, I still asked them to do an outline as a presentation. I didn’t expect them to know everything at that point, but at least to be thinking about the issues they wanted to talk about and to put the pieces together and present that to the class. It was another way I planned to provide feedback. Because of COVID, we had to adjust our plans and the students didn’t end up presenting live. Instead, they pre-recorded their presentations and posted it on the course website for their peers to comment on and for me to provide feedback.
I think the process worked well because if students didn’t understand, there was course correction with everybody. In a very gentle way, I was able to lead that class discussion to help that student kind of pivot so that when they did the final paper they were doing it the right way. It was a very open, supportive process.
What value do you think was added by having the students analyze the cases in terms of the research literature on IKT/KT?
AK: I think that it was a different starting point. In the past, the students would have started with the literature and they would have had to try to understand how to apply that literature. And sometimes that can be really hard if you don’t have a lot of working experience. It can be hard when you’re just reading about this theory, or you’re reading about this framework, and it’s laid out in a scientific method way. It’s hard to understand how those theories and frameworks actually play out. Whereas I’m hoping that when the students read the case studies from the IKTRN casebooks, it was just more real for them – this is what the project was, this is how it happened. And then with that idea of ‘this is actually how IKT happened’, the students could start that alignment with the research literature on IKT and KT. I was just hoping it would be a different entry point into the literature.
What challenges did you encounter while using the IKTRN casebook series as a teaching tool in your KT course?
AK: I think one challenge for students was identifying the KT or the IKT issue in the case. Sometimes students would focus on the clinical issue or the intervention as opposed to focusing on the KT piece or the IKT piece. Or they might have picked a KT or IKT issue, but maybe it wasn’t the one that I would have seen. It may not have been the most important KT or IKT issue, but they picked it maybe because they knew there was a lot of literature on it. So a lot of people picked KT or IKT issues that were concrete and they could get their head wrapped around, such as knowledge brokers, rather than less tangible ideas that might be harder for novices in the field to grasp.
However, because I did review every single outline, I was able to help the students find the right literature. For example, they might have picked out something in the case, but they may not have known the phrase used in the KT or IKT literature to describe what they saw. I was able to offer suggestions for key terms or key authors to help them find the right literature.
In your foreword of the recently published report, you state that case studies “can help learners understand the ins and outs of knowledge translation and integrated knowledge translation in a way that might not yet be captured in the literature.” Do you feel that using the casebooks in your course in fact helped students achieve this?
AK: As someone who has experience in the field, I understand that a lot of learnings don’t get transformed into published articles. A lot of learnings and a lot of processes are in the gray literature, including these IKTRN casebooks. So I think maybe the students who go on to study KT or IKT in depth will subsequently understand that some of the things that happened in those casebooks were actually ahead of the published literature.
What would be your recommendations for another professor/educator looking to use the casebooks for teaching IKT in their setting?
AK: I think it would depend on what level the student was at. At a graduate level, I would support repeating what I did in my KT course. I think an undergraduate class could do it as well, but with more help and support, such as by giving them the readings that could support the case and asking them to do the synthesis and application part.
But there could be other ways. The teacher could take the case and the case note together and assign both to a student and ask them to do something with that, for example. Like maybe they could do an expanded case note or maybe they could critique the case note. Or, if you have students doing graduate work in the field of KT or IKT, it might be kind of fun to do a conversation as a panel, where the original authors of the case could then respond to the case note.
Be sure to visit our IKTRN casebook page and the case note report.
With a key goal of the IKTRN being to continue to build capacity for knowledge users and researchers to do IKT, it is exciting to see IKTRN products being used in creative ways to teach others about the theory and practice of IKT!