Open scholarship in the age of digital competition

1. Open scholarship in the age of digital competition • Gráinne Conole, • PhD Research Day • BDRA, 21st February 2012

2. Key questions • How are new open, social and participatory media changing educational practice? • What are the implications for research? • How are researcher roles changing? • What new digital literacies are needed? • How can we effectively harness the power of these new media? Short survey on social media: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3F535LJ

3. Outline • Today’s digital landscape • Digital scholarship • Examples of using social media for research • Tips and hints • The OU’s approach to openness • The change nature of ‘community’ • Recommendations • Final thoughts • Personal reflection Image by Gilly Salmon

4. Today’s educational context • Rapidly changing technological environment • New digital literacy skills needed for learners and teachers • New openpractices are emerging • New forms of online community and interactivity

5. Social & participatory media Collaborative editing Recommender systems Social networking Virtual worlds and games Messaging Blogging Social bookmarking Mash ups Media sharing Syndication Conole and Alevizou, 2010 http://magicineducation.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/web-2-0-world-map/

6. Peer critiquing Open User generated content Collective aggregation Networked Personalised Social media revolution The machine is us/ing us

7. Evidence • Horizon report, 2011 • NSF Cyber-infrastructure report, 2008 • IPTS e-learning 2.0 report, 2008 • Review of Web 2.0 tools & practices, 2010

8. Horizon report 2011 • Abundance of resources challenging traditional educational roles • People expect to be able to work & learn anywhere, anytime • World of work increasingly collaborative • Technologies increasingly cloud based • Importance of digital literacies • New evaluation metrics for new forms of scholarship and publishing • New business models needed • Challenge of keeping abreast of new technologies

9. Technologies to watch • E-books • Mobiles • Augmented learning • Game-based learning • Gesture-based learning • Learning analytics

10. Horizon reports • Mobile and e-books • Gesture and augmented • Learning analytics http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2011/

11. Ed tech trends • Mobile learning • Personalised learning • Cloud computing • Ubiquitous learning • BYOD • Digital content • The flipped classroom • Debt/drop out http://learn231.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/trend-report-1/

13. Research processes Research innovation Research strategies Conole and Alevizou, 2010 Effective use of new technologies requires a radical rethink of the core learning and teaching processes; a shift from design as an internalised, implicit and individually crafted process to one that is externalised and shareable with others. Change in practice may indeed involve the use of revised materials, new teaching strategies and beliefs - all in relation to educational innovation. Gill Clough Giota Alevizou

15. A typology of new technologies (Conole and Alevizou, 2010), Review of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/EvidenceNet/Conole_Alevizou_2010.pdf

17. Digital identity Finding your digital voice Working across tools Degree of openness Personal/professional

18. Play Collective intelligence Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking Judgement Performance Transmedia navigation Simulation Networking Appropriation Multitasking Negotiation Distributed cognition New digital literacies Jenkins et al., 2006

19. Digital scholar: Open Digital Networked Weller: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2010/07/thoughts-on-digital-scholarship.html

20. Blogs facebook Twitter Working across social media Courses and conferences Publishing as you go Using new media for research

21. So why use blogs? • Of the moment reflections • Digital archive • The power of peer review • Record of events, reviews and resources • Wider audience reach and hence profile • Link into facebook and Twitter • Complements traditional publication routes

22. Blogs: promoting digital scholarship

23. Using facebook

24. Twitter - ideas for harnessing Web 2.0?

25. Matt Lindgard set up a quick survey to ask people how using twitter impacted on how much they blog • 49 comments • 1027 views • summaries & additional content • 19 links • 6 references Working across social media http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2266

26. Twitter and facebook #fb

27. Combine effect and impact • Active blog posting • Use of Twitter • Participation in online conferences • Webinars • Podcasts • Use of social media sites like facebook • Publishing online draft publications • The role of institutional research repositories

29. ltc.umanitoba.ca/blogs/futurecourse/ Open courses: CCK10 and discourse

30. OU learning & teaching conference • Went virtual in 2010 • Use of Elluminate and Cloudworks • Ca. 3500 unique views • Significant discussions and resource aggregation • International participation Works just as well for research events - virtual or blended

31. Open publishing as you go...

32. Think about strategies to make the most of each of the following and then think about how you can do this both in a face-to-face and virtual context Conferences Networking Publishing Tips and hints

33. A personal example Conferences • Purpose:presentation & feedback • Network, network, network! • Potential collaborators & bid partners • Put in a symposium of experts • Expertvalidation workshops • Put papers/presentations online • Follow upcontacts afterwards: email, fb, Twitter, blogs, etc. • Work up into aresearch paper • Work the hashtag • Live blog or follow conference-related blogs

34. Networking • Build links with international colleagues • Get on national-level committees • Invite key researchers in your field to be involved in a joint research activity • Invite people to give seminars at your institution • Build connections online via Twitter, facebook, etc. • Participate in online events • Leave comments on blogs

35. Publishing • Write books - edited or single authored (post drafts) • Become an editor for a special issue of an online journal • Keep publication list up to date in your research repository • Set up a writing group or workshop (real/virtual) • Co-write with lots of different people (using a wiki) • Disseminate publications via Tweet, fb etc • Post up drafts for comment on blogs etc • See Twitter, blogs, journals, books as complementary

36. Design Courses design & shared openly Delivery Use of free tools & resources Research Sharing of research data Open Evaluation Critical reflection Open practices

37. X-Delia Open Research Open Design Open Evaluation Open Delivery

38. Practicing what we preach • Adopting open practices: resources, communication, archiving, publishing, reviewing, and data collection • OpenLearn - OER repository • Online seminars and events • Blogging research, events, critiquing on other’s blogs • Active use of social media • Setting up a departmental collective space - for blogging, aggregation of resources, pod/vid-casts, interviews, etc. • Use of the social networking tool, Cloudworks • Depositing of publications in our institutional repository • An open-review journal JIME • Collective intelligence for research data iSpot

39. The changing nature of community • New open, social and participatory media enable new means of communication, collaboration, sharing and co-construction of knowledge • What does ‘community’ mean in these new online spaces? • How can it be fostered, supported? • A Community Indicators framework to guide the design and evaluation of communities

40. The nature of community • Complex, distributed, loose communities are emerging • Facilitated through different but connected social networking tools such as facebook, Twitter, Ning • Users create their own Personal Digital Environment • Mix of synchronous and asynchronous tools • Boundary crossing via the power of retweeting • Links between interests, rather than places

41. So what is a community? • [Community does not] imply necessarily co-presence, a well-defined identifiable group, or socially visible boundaries. It does imply participation in an activity system about which participants share understandings concerning what they are doing and what that means in their lives and for their communities • Lave and Wenger, 1991 • Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. • Rheingold, 1993

42. Community as a process • Constantly evolving and changing • Shifting groups and depths of relationships • Dynamic, evolving and potentially transformative • Both directed and serendipitous interactions

43. Community indicators Participation Sustained over time Commitment from core group Emerging roles & hierarchy Cohesion Support & tolerance Turn taking & response Humour and playfulness Identity Group self-awareness Shared language & vocab Sense of community Creative capability Igniting sense of purpose Multiple points of view expressed, contradicted or challenged Creation of knowledge links & patterns Galley et al., 2010

44. Participation • Three types of hierarchical roles • Veterans: support and encourage groups and newbies • Trendsetters: make a difference • Posters: need to be incentivised to turn from lurkers to active contributors

45. Cohesion • Through support, tolerance, reciprocity and trust • Language and tone are critical factors in the development of an online community • Emotional and peer support

46. Identity • Central to the notion of community are issues of membership and exclusion. Some people are in, others are out. Communities range from being open to anyone who shares particular ideas or interests to communities accessible only to those who meet certain criteria of geography, ethnicity, gender, etc • Erickson (1997)

47. Creative capability • Importance of conflict, disagreement and negotiation in the process of collaborative knowledge creation and developing understanding • Social discord as a catalyst for knowledge construction and expansive learning

48. Framework for sociality • System needs to accommodate both evolution of practices and inclusion of newcomers • Both individual and group identity are important • People more likely to use systems that resemble their daily routines, languages and practices • Metaphors that mimic real life practices are likely to be more successful Bouman et al., 2007

49. Can social media change academic discourse? Rich multimedia representation of content Multiple communication channels Accessible anywhere, anytime Abundance of free tools and resources Higher impact to wider audience Great peer critiquing Digital divide narrower but deeper Increasingly complex landscape New digital literacy skills needed Access, privacy and ownership issues Balanced portfolio from traditional publishing routes to more ‘open’ ones

50. Recommendations • For learners • Provide support in developing new digital literacies • Facilitate more learner-centred approaches • Encourage communication and collaboration • Shift from a focus on content to activities • For academic staff • New approaches to teaching and research • Adopting more explicit and reflexive practices • Technology immersion – learning by doing, through the technologies • Encourage a networked community of academic staff