Effective dissemination of worthwhile outputs to a potentially diverse audience is a principal objective of the QuBE consortium. We feel that of the project’s designated target audiences, those most likely to catalyse change will be the deans and senior managers of business schools, employers and national bodies concerned with business education. As these could be characterised collectively as a business audience we have sought to offer QuBE deliverables in a form that business-people are used to and prefer.

Therefore QuBE outputs are presented in a structured form – the ‘QuBE Toolbox’ – that the potential user can inspect at various levels of detail and in one of five categories, namely; Research reports, Quality briefings, Diagnostics, Thinkpieces and Case studies. The Toolbox menu also offers ‘supporting resources’ – a searchable repository of assets that would be normally be found in appendices to a report, such as questionnaire, survey and data collection proforma.

Research reports include academic articles and processed surveys. The visitor can download these but as the complete original work might run to between 15 and 25 pages, our dissemination managers have distilled the sense of the document at three additional levels of detail. The topmost level is a ‘soundbite’ – that is, a sentence that succinctly conveys what the document is about. The second level is a short abstract. This leads to bullet points summarising the key findings. This four-level approach also prepares material for use as courseware (eg) by Directors of Quality.

In practical terms a visitor to the QuBE Toolbox can click on ‘Research reports’ to see all the soundbites. The hypertext links offered by each soundbite enable the visitor to inspect an abstract of the related research and the key bullet points. If these answer the need at that time the visitor can then click through to view the full original report and download it as required. Alternatively, the menu offers a direct route to Summary or Original full reports.

QuBE quality briefings and thinkpieces typically occupy less than two A4 sheets. A quality briefing or thinkpiece selected from the Toolbox menu list will open on the browser screen. In each case the reader is offered the option of a single-sheet PDF version for easy downloading and printing. Generally, documents are posted in PDF format although a Word version is used for certain outputs such as a questionnaire proforma. Files for diagnostic tools are optimised for colour printing at the designed size for the artefact (for example, the QuBE Dialogue Sheet for Quality Management Enhancement should be printed in A0 size but, if preferred, could be printed A1 size).

The purpose of these information and knowledge management processes is to enable people who are in a position to make a difference to scan quickly what is available in the QuBE collection – both in the Toolbox and in QuBE’s online Library. They can then use hypertext links to drill down for more detail on items that would appear to be of use at a particular time. The dynamic SiteMap (button top left on the home page) offers a linked list of every QuBE published output. In addition, an RSS feed is also provided on the homepage.

All QuBE materials are freely available for download and fair use. All we ask is that the QuBE project is acknowledged as the source. Online registration as a new user allows one to post comments and feedback. Do let us know if you use the materials and how we might improve them.