Dissemination

Dissemination means to spread something widely. It permits others to use what you have created and build on it to advance educational practice and scholarship. There are now countless ways to disseminate scholarly work, and you do not have to choose just one. Examples include dissemination through conferences, peer-reviewed academic journals, textbooks, mass media, wikis, blogs, social media, online repositories, and preprint archives. Dissemination also requires attention to intellectual property and accessibility issues. Evaluating your reach can be done with quantitative metrics that count how often others have used your work and can be complemented and contextualized with qualitative information. Dissemination itself requires planning and prioritizing what and how you disseminate based on the resources that are available to you. Ultimately, a good understanding of the audience that you want to reach and your own personal goals will allow you to select productively among the myriad dissemination options available to you.