The pilot problem is that you work very hard to develop and test an idea but once the pilot is over you are then faced with the problem of promoting adoption. In European projects where I do a lot of work, there is great emphasis on valorisation to use the rather inelegant name that the EU has given to this process. The need for a new word came about when project networks were mainly satisfied with getting the word out about what they had done whereas the whole point of projects is to blaze a trail for others to follow and adopt and adapt. So just shouting about your wonderful project products and results from a mountain top is not enough, you also have to show that the pilot can be widely embedded and preferably not just in your own instituion. What is needed is some sort of guideline about how to think about this valorisation process especially in terms of educational projects which is what I work on for the most part.
Over at Powerful Learning Practice where I have been flexing my muscles as a Connected Coach, I came across a really neat model to help educators think about what happens after the pilot. The model was developed with the support of Microsoft and can be accessed here. It’s called the scaling framework and divides the valorisation process into a number of different aspects. These are the different dimensions of scaling as described by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach on her blog:
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Dimensions on scale
- Deep and consequential changes in practice (depth)
Transformation change requires you to think deeply and base your design on research in order to understand what causes effectiveness and the change in practice to take hold. - Maintaining these changes in practice over substantial periods of time (sustainability)
- Ongoing assessment and retooling based on need and adapting to negative shifts in context.
- Diffusion of the innovation to large numbers of users (spread)
Deciding how you will modify to retain effectiveness while reducing resources and expertise required is the hardest part of shift for me. I simply do not want to create “light” versions in the name of helping more and more folks “get it”. I want to keep optimality even though it jeopardizes spread. - Ownership of the innovation assumed by users, who deepen and sustain via adaptation (shift)
This is the most exciting aspect of scale. Watching as the community becomes co-evaluators, co-designers, and co-learners. It is exciting to see how users remix your design into powerful aspects you never thought of during the design phase. - The innovation as revised by its adapters is influential in reshaping the thinking of its designers (evolution) This phase involves relearning from users’ adaptations about how to rethink the model.
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It is really worth going over to the Flash tutorial because there you can see the matrix building up and you can then mouseover the different elements and get a feel for what is meant by each cell. I really like the vertical items such as Traps to Avoid and Next Steps to Explore as this really gives a feel for how the matrix could be used in a practical way to move an implementation phase forward. Since my most common role in projects these days is quality assurance, I also think that this would be a great tool to use towards the end of a project when we are facing that massive wall which is valorisation and we are thinking ahead to what on earth we are going to write about in that part of the final report which releases the final tranche of the funding.