Experiences of packaging research outputs into extension materials

Abstract

Research dissemination is one component of research that still faces many hindrances, which counteract the numerious impressive arrays of research technologies being constantly generated. This in turn defeats the primary objectives of research, which aim to build knowledge and raise awareness through its uptake and scaling up. It has long been realized that there are many technologies that remain under-disseminated which, if they were being fully disseminated, could be adding to the number of uptakes of technologies by end users. This paper details the experiences of the linking project during the process of packaging research outputs into extension materials. The paper also discusses several options that may reduce the bottlenecks occuring in dissemination of research. Based on the Authors' experiences in packaging extension materials, issues discussed include the accessibility of research outputs, the academic nature of reasearch papers, the relevance of messages and medium to target audiences, dissemination budgets, and skilled human resources. The Authors recommend that research projects should incorporate dissemination resources including adequate finance and skilled personnel at project conception level, and allocation of realistic time-frames for dissemination activities going beyond project phase-out in order to maximise impact of research.