The ARIS Broader Impacts Toolkit: An Online Guide to Support Broader Impact Project Development and Evaluation for Researchers and BI Professionals

Abstract

The Center for Advancing Research Impacts in Society (ARIS) Broader Impacts (BI) Toolkit is a collection of online, interactive tools focused on the generation of broader impacts activity plans that satisfy the criteria of proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF). The BI Toolkit includes a set of ARIS Guiding Principles, a Planning Checklist, the BI Wizard, and the BI Rubric. Over a three-year period, the ARIS BI Toolkit was pilot-tested with BI professionals located within ten institutions geographically distributed across the United States. The participating institutions represented a range of R1 and R2 institutions, Land-Grant Institutions, and Minority Serving Institutions with BI professionals serving in centralized and decentralized capacities within the institutions. This paper discusses the development of the ARIS BI Toolkit, its evolution through usability testing, a description of the BI Toolkit as it currently exists, and goals for future expansion.