About k'nexus - Connecting research and practice

Making research usable

There is no shortage of information. The challenge is knowing what matters.

k’nexus curations bring together research on important topics in health professions education and work with experts to make sense of it: what we know, where the field is now, which ideas and studies matter, where there is uncertainty, and what educators might want to think about in practice.

A curation is more than a collection of resources. It is a way into a field — synthesising and contextualising the research while giving educators pathways to explore further.

The ambition is to be simple, not simplistic: to make complex knowledge easier to enter and navigate without flattening the questions, tensions and uncertainties that make it meaningful.

Designed for learning in practice

Health professions educators learn continuously — in classrooms and clinics, in conversations with colleagues, while solving problems, preparing for tomorrow and trying to keep up with a changing field.

k’nexus is designed for that reality.

Different moments call for different ways of engaging. Sometimes you need a concise overview. Sometimes you want to hear the conversation. Sometimes another educator’s experience helps you see your own situation differently. And sometimes you need to follow the research further.

k’nexus brings these different ways of learning together — so that reliable knowledge can become part of everyday professional learning and practice.

Bringing practice into the conversation

Research is one part of the picture.Through Voices, educators from different settings share what happens when educational ideas meet practice: the challenges they encounter, the adaptations they make, and what they are learning along the way.

Voices brings context into view. It makes visible how educational ideas take shape differently across systems, cultures, professions and local conditions — and what those differences can teach us.

Together, these perspectives help us ask a question that research alone cannot answer:

What does this look like where you are?

Conversations that explore and connect

k’nexus also creates space to explore ideas through conversation.

Our podcast brings researchers, educators and other voices together to question assumptions, explore tensions and connect evidence with experience. It creates room to follow ideas further — to hear different perspectives, challenge what seems familiar, and consider what research might mean in practice.

The conversation is part of the learning: an opportunity to follow ideas further, hear different perspectives and look again at practices that may have become familiar or taken for granted.

Seeing and hearing the people behind the ideas also brings another dimension to the research — one that allows curiosity, disagreement, uncertainty and experience to be part of the conversation.
 

An evolving learning network

k’nexus is designed to grow through the people who engage with it.

New curations bring new areas of research into focus. New Voices add experiences from different contexts. Questions, challenges and suggestions from educators help us see what matters in practice — and what k’nexus should explore next.

The aim is to create an ongoing movement between research and practice: research offering new ways to understand educational challenges, and experiences from practice generating new questions, perspectives and conversations.

In that way, k’nexus grows not only by adding content, but by learning from the connections it creates.

How k’nexus came together

k’nexus grew out of work at Teaching and Learning at Karolinska Institutet to explore how research-based knowledge can better support educators’ continuous and professional learning.

A central question was how trustworthy educational knowledge could become easier to find, engage with and use as part of everyday work — while also creating stronger connections between research, educational practice and the experiences of educators across different contexts.

That ambition found a strong counterpart in an idea developed by Lara Varpio. From her perspective as a health professions education researcher, Lara had become increasingly concerned about the distance that can develop between educational research and the realities educators face in practice. 

Our proposition was both simple and ambitious: what if we deliberately invested in that connection?

These perspectives became the starting point for k’nexus

At Karolinska Institutet, Teresa Sörö brought a continuous-learning and educational-design perspective to the initiative, shaping how research synthesis, media, contextual perspectives and opportunities for participation could work together as a coherent learning environment.

Samuel Lundberg brought the media-production perspective, developing the audiovisual formats and workflows that make it possible to bring conversations, expert contributions and educators’ experiences into the same learning environment.

Together, these perspectives began to shape k’nexus as more than a collection of educational resources. Curations could make research easier to navigate. Educators’ experiences could bring context into the conversation. Different media could create different ways into the knowledge. And the movement between research and practice could work in both directions.

Jonathan Sherbino joined as a creative thought partner, bringing the perspective of a clinician educator together with extensive experience in health professions education, editorial work and podcasting. Together with Lara, he has helped shape the conversational side of k’nexus — including the development of the podcast as a video format where ideas, expertise and the people behind them can meet.

Bridget O’Brien brings additional editorial and methodological expertise, with particular responsibility for k’nexus curations on health professions education research methods.

k’nexus continues to develop through this collaboration between Karolinska Institutet’s Teaching and Learning team, international scientific and creative partners, contributing experts and educators, and an international Advisory Board.

Who is behind k’nexus?

k’nexus is led by Teaching and Learning at Karolinska Institutet and developed through an international collaboration between health professions education researchers, educators and leaders.

At Karolinska Institutet, the team leads the initiative’s strategic development, educational design, digital environment and production. The scientific and editorial work is led by Lara Varpio, in collaboration with Jonathan Sherbino and Bridget O’Brien, contributing experts and the k’nexus team.

An international Advisory Board brings perspectives from different regions and educational contexts and contributes to the continued development and global relevance of k’nexus.