Key Action Steps for a Successful Campaign

Icon of piece of paper showing circles and arrows to form steps

Just as your planning and preparing for instructional practices in the classroom requires collective efficacy and predetermined steps to achieve completion AND success, so too does your communication and collaboration amongst stakeholders. 

During the annual planning process we will identify the challenges and situate them within the calendar year so that your decision-making is more informed by the community and is more proximate to the community because they were involved in the process.

Clarify the Objectives and Measures of Success

  • Defined as evaluation / objectives / measures of success over time.

  • This is not just about engaging a lot of people. It’s the quality and diversity of the engagement that matters.

  • We measure engagement using the following metrics;

    • Number of ideas viewed

    • Amount of collaboration on creating solutions: the diversity of the crowd engaging in ways that do not happen in affinity spaces.

    • Collaboration across stakeholders: measured not just by how many people came, but from which stakeholder groups.

    • Participants feel they learned something (post challenge survey).

    • Participants felt empowered (post challenge survey).

    • Participants felt involved (post challenge survey).

    • Participants were able to comment/reflect on each other's "knowledge," including the sharing of facts, experiences, and analogies, creating empathy within the group.

    • Increased integration of different viewpoints in a generated idea-solutions.

Develop a Series of Challenge Questions

Develop a series of challenge questions that will lead to a trajectory of learning – as defined in Step 1.

    • Do we have a problem for which prior solutions have been tried and have not been successful? Or, do we have a problem that is unique and new to our community? AND…

    • Is it a problem that a broad swath of the community would have some…

    • Is the problem one for which multiple perspectives, parallel solutions and ways to innovate exist?

  • Avoid asking an abstract question. Example: How can we solve child illiteracy in America?

    Ask a specific question. Example: “What can individual school districts in the U.S. do to significantly raise reading proficiency rates over the next three years?”

  • List and order your questions in accordance with impact, or from easiest to more difficult.

Decide on the Right Incentives

  • District leadership can socialize its intentions in advance by promoting and creating a sense of anticipation.

  • Example: How to “tease” and ramp up excitement about the results:

    The district can tell its stakeholders that within “one week” (or a suitable time frame) after the completion of the event, the leadership team will send out a detailed report followed by the releasing of the data through various channels.

  • Highlight examples of “knowledge fragments,” great ideas or insights to foster interest and enthusiasm.

  • Top collaborators are identified by aggregating points for contributing a wide array of knowledge (including creative associations).

    The list (and scoring for top collaborators) emphasizes the importance of collaborative knowledge.

  • Identify rewards/recognition criteria that draw in participants and signal the collective nature of the awards.

    The rewards should indicate the need to share knowledge and build on others’ knowledge. The value for participants should be the impact on the sponsoring organization, school, or district.

Give participants a reason to be part of something exciting (vs. disincentivized to participate).

Closer Look:

Deciding On the Right Incentives

Tip 1: In addition to pre-crowdsourcing messages to stakeholders, post-crowdsourcing feedback is needed, especially for internal or external participants who might be involved in future crowdsourcing.

Examples of knowledge fragments that constitute the chosen solutions and who contributed them should be highlighted as it is particularly helpful in setting the grounds for future participation.

Tip 2: Ask the judges to determine the winners, if they are based on a pre-established and published list of criteria. An objective scoring sheet (including all the criteria and weights) can be used. 

Reward / Recognition Examples:

  • An opportunity to discuss winning solutions with senior leaders; receiving something of value from the school or district. 

  • Recognition in a school/district newsletter or communication.

Invite Stakeholders from Across the District and Community

  • Pilot will be conducted using a tightly defined stakeholder group.

  • Previous research has shown that most innovative ideas are brought to bear not by so-called “experts,” but rather, by those with marginal expertise.

  • Using our Diversity / Stakeholder Circle, begin to decide and plan the order in which these stakeholders should be included, and for which challenges.

Above: Diversity / Stakeholder Circle

Intentional and Purposeful Campaign Planning

  • Campaign Launch starts with the marketing of the campaign checklist.

  • Broadcast your open call to the various forums and communities where the most passionate and engaged stakeholder/participants may be found.

  • Start to build a sense of excitement. Have a countdown clock on the platform and also rebroadcast the open call just prior to start.

  • After some time has elapsed in the crowdsourcing event (usually hours), do one last open call broadcast blitz to get more registrants, telling them about the most exciting aspects of what’s been posted thus far and how many others are already participating.

Managing In-Campaign Moderation

    • Identify the moderator  

    • Ensure that “prime the pump” material will be added by early participants 

    • Decide if you will have one combined engagement phase or two, with the knowledge sharing phase coming first, followed by the integration phase

    • Identify likely “integrators.”  Also identify whom you would like to “nudge” to participate to ensure that they do 

    • Estimate the number of times you expect participants to log in 

    • Options include anonymous or pseudo-anonymous engagement 

Fidelity to Post-Event Planning

Post-Campaign Checklist: Maximizing the Impact of the Event

  • We will provide a report that delivers:

    • The various groups of stakeholders that have contributed to different solution-based ideas.

    • Which solutions have the most diverse participation.

    • Listing of solution ideas.

  • At the close of the crowdsourcing event, remind the moderator/leader that you’ll be sending them a list of ideas to evaluate.

  • Gather the collectively produced solutions that emerge (many times, inside the discussion threads) during the crowdsourcing events.

  • Ask the moderators to determine the winners based on a pre-established and published list of criteria.

    An objective scoring sheet (including all the criteria and weights) can be used.

  • Close the loop with the participants by sharing with them a report containing the chosen solutions and the implementation plan.

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