posting strategies to your program’s strategy library

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Posting Steps
• Entering Summaries when Editing Strategies (separate article)
• Add Keywords to the Strategies (separate article)

Follow the steps in this section to post strategies to your database, and to help ensure that the Impact Suite recommends the best strategies to your reporters.

When deciding to post a strategy contributed by your reporter, please ask yourself, “Would an inexperienced reporter entering my program today be able to read, understand and replicate this strategy?”  

If the answer is not “Yes, definitely,” we recommend that you either edit the strategy so that it is replicable, and language to the “Situation” field that notes the skills or background needed to understand and use the strategy, or do not post the strategy.  

Given that reporters will be looking for resources to help them hurdle their challenges and to accomplish their goals, reporters receiving non-specific and non-replicable strategies may grow frustrated with the Impact Suite and your program’s leadership.  Feel free to consult us if you have questions as to what replicable resources look like.

We also recommend that you share the specific criteria that you’ll use to evaluate strategies with your reporters so that they’re aware of what’s expected of them.  Unclear expectations and inconsistent criteria may leave reporters feeling frustrated.

IMPORTANT: Editing reporter's strategies contributed via reports will modify their report data.

For example, let's say a reporter wrote, "First, I found a book my student liked," and you re-write that sentence that reads, "First, I found a book about a subject my student likes."

In this scenario, when you pull up this reporter's individual report data, the data displayed will be your edits. Given this reality, please only make edits when edits are necessary to help other reporters replicate a strategy.

Posting Steps

1. On the left, in your Mission Control, click Learning Community.

   
   

2. On the right, Manage strategies.
   
   

3. On the next page, use the drop-down menu at the top left corner of the screen to select whether you’d like to view:

   • Newly submitted strategies;
     
     

   • Strategies you’ve reviewed, but haven’t posted or rejected;
     
     

   • Strategies you’ve posted;
     
     

   • Strategies you’ve rejected
     
     

4. To view and edit a strategy, simply click the screen link alongside the relevant title. This link will take you to a screen for:

   • Editing the strategy, posting the strategy to your database, saving any changes for later review, or hiding the strategy from reporters’ view.

To view and print a strategy you posted, simply visit your program’s private database, select the strategy’s topic, and click on the hyperlink leading to the strategy.

Entering Summaries when Editing Strategies (separate article)

When editing strategies, you’ll notice an area towards the bottom of the page that reads, “Strategy Summary (optional).”  

Summaries are displayed on strategy search results screens to make it easier for reporters to find the resources they need, so we strongly encourage you to enter content here.

On top of that, by entering a summary for each strategy in your Impact Suite (especially those strategies you post), you’ll be able to keep better track of the various types of resources you have in your library when navigating the strategy screening pages (see image below). 

Add Keywords to the Strategies (separate article)

The Impact Suite recommends strategies to your reporters based on three things: 

• a variable of your choosing,
  
  
• the topic of their goal or challenge, and
  
  
• the words the reporters use to describe their situation.  
  
  

When editing strategies, you’ll notice a section at the bottom of the page that reads, “Enter Keywords, Separated by Commas (optional).”  If you’d like to increase the chances of the strategy at issue being recommended to reporters when they use specific words to describe their goal or challenge, enter those words here.  A quick way to do this is to simply look at the main words in the “situation” portion of the strategy and enter those words and their synonyms into this box.  Please separate each word with a comma.