Introduction

​Knowledge Exchange & Commercialisation (KEC) encompasses a broad set of activities related to engaging with external partners, from commercialisation of research to provision of consultancy or training or engaging with the public. Whilst there is comparable data on level of activities, this survey aims to collect more structured data on how your institution is structured to support KEC (the top bits of this diagram - Source: Tomas Coates Ulrichsen, 2017):

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Why a new survey?

We have seen from our work in the HE sector that many universities are concerned with how they structure and deliver their KEC support, and how this compares to others. Sector-wide surveys like the Higher Education Business & Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey gather information on KEC activities and outcomes. However, there is surprisingly little systematic and granular information on how universities organise themselves to support their KEC delivery, in terms of structures, roles, and career development.

This survey aims to address this by gathering data on how KEC support is structured, resourced and delivered. This survey is split into six sections and will take approximately 30-40 minutes to complete. The survey contains a mixture of multiple choice and free text questions and will cover topics including:
  • How KEC is supported - types and levels of roles, job titles and team structures
  • Strategy, policies, decision making and delegation
  • ​Integration with other functions such as research support, finance, and alumni relations
  • ​Supporting systems (e.g., CRM systems) and how well they support your reporting, such as via the HE-BCI survey
  • ​How ED&I, reward & recognition, and career development are approached
  • Challenges and opportunities in KEC
Our vision is to produce a useful, formative set of data to further the sharing of good practice.
Benefits of taking part
Universities who have taken part in the survey will receive a free confidential report, benchmarking their individual results against an anonymised and aggregated group of relevant peers (i.e., in a Knowledge Exchange Framework-like cluster of similar institutions).

We hope that this new survey will benefit the sector through: 
  • Enabling discussion on the various models of KEC support, and good practice 
  • Stimulating further research and discussion exploring KEC job roles, career development, and reward & recognition 
  • For individual institutions, informing KE strategy development, building a case for investment in KEC support, or for KE concordat action planning. 
Oxentia will also publish the overall findings (anonymised and aggregated only), and periodically re-run the survey to build a longitudinal dataset.
What you will need to complete the survey
  • We anticipate that it will take 30-45 minutes to complete, not including any additional time to gather the answers to some questions.
  • It should be completed by you or someone in your team with a broad understanding of how KE support functions across the institution. We ask about things like how staff are organised, how the KE function links to other functions, how well your systems support your HE-BCI survey return, as well as things like details of reward & recognition schemes for KE staff.
  • The question set was provided as .pdf file in the original email invitation. However, if you'd like another copy, please email KES4@oxentia.com.
  • You will be asked to upload an organogram of the KEC function. Further guidance is given below.
  • You may require input from several team members to complete all the questions, but it has been designed to be as straightforward as possible whilst still providing a meaningful level of detail.
  • If you do not have exact figures to hand, reasonable estimates are acceptable.
  • Progress can be saved so you may return to complete the survey at a later date.
To gather systematic and granular information on how universities organise themselves to support their KEC delivery we will be asking you to upload an organogram. The organogram will need to show where each of the various roles sit within departments and/or faculties and other details including:
  • Job title (please provide accurate job titles, as we’re interested in how roles are described)
  • ​Main function of job (in a few words) if not obvious from title ​
  • Salary ranges for each post within a £10k band (e.g. £20-30k, £30-40k etc.) where known (estimates are fine)
Please consider all roles across the organisation (including roles which might have fractional responsibility), and not just those in a central function.  This might include a central team, roles based within faculties or departments, and roles within specific funded projects or centres.

File formats which can be accepted/uploaded are PDF, DOC/DOCX and most common image formats (PNG, JPEG). We also are happy to accept hand sketched schematics

Please do NOT include individual names or any other personal details. Note that there is a 16MB file size limit and you will not be able to continue to the next question in the survey until you have uploaded this file.

Remember: All data will be held and processed securely, and only ever reported in an anonymised and aggregated manner (apart from in your confidential individual report, where you will see your individual responses alongside an anonymised and aggregated group of peers). No personal data will be gathered. We will only use your responses for the purposes of the survey and your individual data will never be shared with any other parties. You may withdraw at any point during or after survey completion by emailing KES4@oxentia.com.

If you have any questions about the survey or would like us to walk you through any of the questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at KES4@oxentia.com

Many thanks for your support!

Hamish McAlpine
Director for Policy & Engagement, Oxentia Ltd.
Privacy Policy - how we use your data

We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data in accordance with Oxentia's Privacy Policy. This privacy notice explains how we lawfully process your personal data, including the collection, use, storage and transfer of your data. The notice provides information about your privacy rights and our obligation to lawfully protect your privacy while using services provided by Oxentia.

Oxentia is responsible for your personal data and is the designated 'data controller' and 'data processor' for the research being conducted through this survey. This data will be collected and analysed by the Oxentia team and all necessary steps will be taken to ensure that the data is collected and stored in a GDPR compliant manner.

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* 1. Consent

Participation in this survey is completely voluntary. If you decide not to participate there will not be any negative consequences. Please be aware that if you decide to participate, you may stop participating at any time and you may decide not to answer any specific question.

We plan to publish publicly a high-level, anonymised and aggregated report of our findings. All answers will be reported anonymously. Where given the option to provide your contact details, these will only be used for follow-up activities and not to attribute answers to individuals.

If you have any questions about this survey, please contact KES4@oxentia.com.

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