Updated, April 2022
The National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY) was funded for many years to provide information about children with disabilities to the nation. A special initiative of NICHCY was to share what staff learned over the years about effective dissemination. Although NICHCY is no longer funded, its many rich resources about effective dissemination have been transferred to the Center for Parent Information and Resources (CPIR). Here, they remain available as seminal resources to the field, and we are pleased to update and add to the collection.
We welcome your exploration of this special area of the CPIR website, for it’s near and dear to Parent Center efforts on behalf of children with disabilities, their families, and the professionals who work for their well-being and success at home, in school, and in our communities.
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We’re All Disseminators: Why This Info is Relevant to You
Find out why you’re a disseminator and how what we know about dissemination can be put to use in your own area.
Tipsheet: Writing Plainly
This 8-page tipsheet focuses exclusively on how to write in plain language. It’s important to take into consideration the many millions of people who don’t read well or who have limited English proficiency. The tipsheet briefly discusses how the use of plain language was launched as an initiative by the federal government in 1998 and connects you with high-quality websites you can use to guide your “plain language” writing. The tipsheet offers 10 plain-writing tips for starters.
Writing for the Web
Interested in writing content that engages and motivates your web visitors—and, most importantly, helps them find the information they’re looking for? If so, this series of webpages is for you. It’ll give you 6 tips for writing for the web:
- understand how people read on the web
- help readers skim and scan
- put the essential message first
- chunk your information
- use headings and subheadings
- write in plain language
The Dissemination Research Base
Connect with what the research has to tell us about effective practices in dissemination.
First Element of Effective Dissemination: Involve Your Intended Users
Effective dissemination needs to involve intended users from the planning stage on. Why? How?
Element 2: Involve Dissemination Sources
Consider ways to partner with other organizations in your dissemination efforts.
Element 3: Mindfully Craft Your Content
The written word alone isn’t enough to create change or increase users’ knowledge or skills. Crafting the content is vital to dissemination success.
Element 4: Disseminate Through Different Media
Text-only, PDF, audio, blogs, webpages, intermediaries, telephone, email, newsletters, briefs, white papers… so many choices of how you’ll get your message to your users. How do you decide?