The issue of knowledge mobilization or knowledge exchange in these partnerships,
particularly promoted by the CCL, presents new challenges for researchers. What precisely
is understood to represent knowledge mobilization activity has yet to be substantively
determined, as well as what mobilization activities can be feasibly designed and conducted
by researchers who lack the everyday immersion in and networks among the communities
of practice presumably to be mobilized. Furthermore, knowledge mobilization or even
knowledge exchange unfolds over an indeterminate period of time. Within a boundaried
period researchers can predict the kinds of one-way communications they are able to
prepare and deliver, but it is unclear how they are to pre-emptively envision ways that
knowledge generated by a study will emerge in various forms of subsequent enactment.
Finally, if academics choose to participate in projects such as those funded by the CCL,
such requirements demand new skills in a range of communications. Whereas academics
have (or should have) well-developed skills in report writing and argumentative writing for
scholarly audiences, they now are increasingly required to develop skills in manipulating
visual media and participatory formats. They are to translate their language for different
worlds of practice, utilizing a range of communicative technologies. This has implications
either for the sorts of capacities that academics need to develop and mentor in graduate
students, or for new ways of creating research teams—in the future, these might need to
include graphic designers, communication technologists, and adult educators who have
specialized expertise in what may be considered knowledge exchange practices.