How do we ensure our learning offer at Research in Practice is relevant, useful and based on user needs?
At Research in Practice, we’re passionate about evidence-informed practice. We bring together research evidence, practice expertise, and the voices of people with lived experience.
This means that:
- What we produce is meaningful and relevant.
- The impact of useful evidence in practice contexts is increased.
- Professionals engage the people they support in developing and improving practice.
Much of our work is shaped by co-production meaning that people with direct or lived experience take an equal role in the design, creation and delivery of our products and services. For example, our recent A brighter social care future: Evidence Review was co-produced with group members including disabled people, people with long-term health conditions, older people, people who had experienced mental health challenges, and people with current or past caring roles.
User-centred design
We want to make sure that our learning resources and services are informed by evidence-informed principles with those directly using them telling us how to improve.
Many people come into contact with Research in Practice by attending our national programme of events with us delivering nearly 800 events, every year to professionals across the health and social care sector. For others we are an online resource where they access learning to help them better support the people they are working with.
User experience (UX) design is the process of building products for people that are easy to use, meaningful and relevant. When designing new and improving existing Research in Practice learning resources we believe it is important to apply user-centred design principles to understand what people need and how they are accessing learning.
For example, we gather insights such as:
- An annual consultation with the Research in Practice Partner network.
- Link Officer and Partner engagement feedback.
- Event delegate feedback.
- User journeys and search terms.
- Reviewing events attendance and engagement.
- Website analytics, such as resource downloads and clicks.
- Website surveys seeking further information.
Innovations and improvements
With an extensive and continuous learning offer of online and face-to-face events, publications, podcasts, videos, blogs and online content, UX design can inform and shape how we develop, share and improve our learning resources.
So, what have we been working on?
Content lifecycle approaches
A content lifecycle is the beginning, middle and end of asset production. With so many resources in the Research in Practice workflow at one time our content lifecycle is continuous.
We know that many people working in direct practice are busy, so we want to focus on current topics and support users to easily find relevant and useful learning.
In 2023 we reviewed our learning archive of over 2,400 assets so we could assess their effectiveness, make improvements, and inform new developments. This meant that we focused on:
Our team consider accessibility when shaping learning. We quality assured older content and made accessibility improvements. For example, by ensuring that all podcasts have transcripts. We are also embedding readability guidelines.
We have an extensive back catalogue of learning resources on the Research in Practice website. Part of our work is surfacing and delivering relevant learning and ensuring that people can find what they want and need.
Our content review meant removing unused content and ensuring that resources were tagged with relevant topics and keywords to enable people to search and find what they want. We are also working on content taxonomy improvements. Content taxonomy is a way of categorising content via titling, asset sorting, tagging, or many other ways of organising content to aid discoverability.
We are in the process of reviewing, renewing, and repurposing some older but popular resources with users in mind. For example, some of our most popular content is on trauma-informed practice. We recently reshaped older video content on what does trauma-informed care look like? with reflective questions and related resources to update and connect useful content. Further popular editions are on their way.
Both videos and podcasts now include key talking points from each resource, so you can quickly learn what you need to know and easily discover if it is the right resource for you.
We have also been trialling ‘short read’ publications so readers can quickly absorb key points.
We have also been trialling self-directed learning pathways (with more in development) and we are releasing new types of events, such as the Learn and deliver programme. Designed to support individuals providing workforce development in organisations, the series of events will give workforce development colleagues the tools, knowledge and confidence to deliver learning sessions based on Research in Practice resources.
How can we improve your experience?
You can email us with your feedback and comments at any time.
You can also give feedback via popup surveys featured throughout the website.
Learn and deliver programme
The ‘Learn and deliver’ programme is designed to support individuals providing learning and development in organisations.
Member engagement programme
A programme of member engagement activities that increases access to learning and development opportunities and improves peer-to-peer learning.