Developing a dissemination plan

Each proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) seeking support for improving engineering education must include a plan for disseminating the innovations and results that a funded project will generate. Authors may select from a variety of tactics: papers published in archival journals, conference papers, workshops, web sites, multimedia CD-ROMs, books, conference exhibits, etc. Despite the wide variety of available tactics, dissemination plans often fail to account for the behavior of the faculty members that dissemination plans are designed to reach. Faculty members, like all people, make changes in stages instead of moving from pre-awareness to action in one giant step. Various models with different numbers of stages and a diverse selection of names and characteristics of the various stages have been offered. Despite the assortment of individual change models, the kernel truth that faculty members change in stages and that effective dissemination plans are designed to facilitate transitions one stage at a time should not be overlooked. The paper presents a six-stage model for individual change that has been employed in several industrial marketing plans: pre-awareness, awareness, interest, search, decision, and action. Characteristics of an individual at each stage in the change model are presented. Once the nature of an individual at each stage is better understood, then appropriate dissemination tools that can help an individual move from one stage to the next are explored. Exploration of tools will emphasize the observation that tools that are appropriate at one stage may be ineffective for individuals at a different stage. Hopefully, the individual change model and exploration of appropriate dissemination tools will help faculty members develop more effective dissemination plans.