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Using technologies for research
Gráinne Conole and Alex HardmanPRiE conferenceLiverpool John Moores University, 27/06/09
+1. Changing technologies
What do you think have been the main, significant changes in practice because of technology in recent years?
How has your own use of technologies changed in recent years?
What are the main ways in which technology is now impacting learning, research, work?
+Discussion Increasingly more difficult to actually speak to people – email culture!
Implications for the future of the species!
3 weeks to see supervisor whereas email get a reply the same day!
Lose of writing skills with a pen! Typing skills better. Highlighted pens great technology! Computer-aided qualitative data software – NVIVO etc – do they potentially changing our practice or are we replicating existing technologies?
80/20 rule 80% of users only us 20% of the functionality
Facilitating for using stats programmes – a lot of programmes can be automatic but your mind can then be too passive; but what you get out is only as good as what you put in – need to be able to critically understand the data
E-publications are great! Much easier now
The free movement and culture!!! E-thesis available online
+2. What's your personal digital space?
What are your top five activities and tools in terms of Finding and using information Communicating
What do you do?
What software do you use?
What hardware do you use?
Where do you do it?
+Discussion Girlie approach! Like phone etc like to talk to people, whereas Peter
uses his own website, uses as a communication route – my supervisors can see what I have been up to, they can follow what I am doing and my experiments and trials
Methods space (sage publishing social networking space)– talking to other researchers about problems you are having online in social networks – about 1500
Social network space for early career researchers, most active topics are things like ethics
Amount of information and how you filter out the rubbish! How can you filter? Google scholar for quality??
Learning services – like Taylor and Francis and you can select the journals you want a summary from
The power of RSS feeds – getting the information to come to you!
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Google docs – for collaboration, can work on the same file remotely, collaborative mindmap –mind42.com
Online learning communities – allows you to subscribe to email list to keep up to date
Ref manager and cite-u-like, connotea – for free referencing of publications, can dump out in endnote format
The missing reference!!!
Also the value of shared reference site De-licious – social bookmarking, librarything – for books plus pictures
International students away from family – mobiletalk – be able to talk inexpensive, skype – universities need to not blocked
+My Personal Digital Learning Environment
InformationWriting (Word)Finding (Google) Blogging (Wordpress)Presenting (Powerpoint)Recording (Audacity)
CommunicationWriting (Email)Talking (Mobile & skype)Texting (SMS & twitter)Learning (Audio conferencing)Presenting (Video conferencing)
Hardware: Laptop, iphone, ipod, portable hard disk, camera, flip video camera
Learning, research, work
Where: Dining room table, hot desking space, hotel rooms, airport lounges
+3. Technology-mediation
What research activities do you currently do?
How do you think technology can be used to support: Group or project communication and collaboration Research dissemination and wider community
engagement Conferences Ways in which you present yourself and your work Data collection and analysis
+Research activities
Collect data
Attend conferences
Write papers
Collaborate
Network
Longitudinal study and have considered trying to find what communication form they will find most useful but on other hand – get out of my space grandma!
Work at Cambridge – learning landscapes project – getting them to be co-researchers, they had cameras etc and got them to document what they were doing and bought them in to discuss; but context is important!
Visual sociology of your desk/workspace and talk about why – multitasking using spaces for different reasons
Use of audio logs to collect emotive reactions about using technologies
Imagine that an artefact was very advanced technology – means of specifying what they would like the technology to do – voice recognition, document summarisation
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Online questionnaires for collecting data
Collecting data face to face, surveying literature, networking – refining all the time a spiral
+Why do people attend conferences?
+ Brian Kelly conference amplification http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/
lessons-learnt-from-the-amplification-of-the-cilip2-event/
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/952282/Conference_Amplification
+4. Three examples of Web 2.0 tools
Slideshare Sharing Powerpoint presentations, disseminating your
research to a wider audience
Blogging Reflection, archive of research, peer critique,
disseminating
Twitter Just in time findings, ideas, social and work,
community
+Slideshare Means of sharing Powerpoint presentations
http://www.slideshare.net/grainne
+Blog
Reflection
Archive of ideas
Dissemination channel
Dialogue
Identity and community
+Blogging
Commoncraft introduction to blogging http://www.commoncraft.com/blog
Reasons to blog http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/10/top-ten-
reasons-to-blog-and-top-ten.html
Mix of social and work
Community based
The lstest news
Great conference back channel
Integration with other apps
Dissemination root
Subtle practice - retweet
+Uses of twitter Commoncraft introduction
to Twitter http://
www.commoncraft.com/Twitter
Top reasons for using twitter: http://online-social-
networking.com/top-reasons-for-using-twitter
+Alex & Gráinne’s Aha moments! …With slideshare
…With blog
…With twitter
http://www.flickr.com/photos/avdleeuw/2621070473/
+5. Focusing on the social...
What for you is different about web 2.0 technologies?
What web 2.0 technologies do you use and how?
Three examples Conference back chat – esym09 Social networking for education – Cloudworks Peer review and publishing – JIME and JOVE
+Conference back channels
Evolution or revolution: The future of identity and access management for research http://www.eduserv.org.uk/events/esym09 Live conference broadcasting Hash tag (#) for conference #esym09 Ning social networking site All presentations as video podcasts on slideshare Fielding questions via twitter etc.
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Changing practices through use of social networking
Many repositories of good practice, but little impact
Blogging
Twitter Slideshare
Flckr
Youtube
Commenting
Live commentary
Tagging
RSS feeds
Embedding
Following
Cloudworks: Education 2.0
+Core concepts
Clouds: Learning and teaching ideasDesign or case studiesTools or resourcesQuestions or problems
Cloudscapes:ConferencesWorkshopsCourse teamStudent cohortResearch themeProject
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+Journal of interactive multimedia education
http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/
+Journal of visualized experiments
http://www.jove.com/
+6. Academic discourse What are the implications for the future of research and
the nature of academic discourse and publishing? i.e how and where we communicate and disseminate our research findings
What impact do you think blogging, twitter, slideshare etc are having on "academic discourse"?
What is the relationship between these and traditional forms of communication and publishing?
What do you thinking is likely to be the impact on traditional channels and measures of worth - publishing houses, Research metrics??
+Some blog posts on this
Some blog posts The nature of academic discourse
http://e4innovation.com/?p=45 The ABC of academic discourse
http://e4innovation.com/?p=151 Quality discourse http://e4innovation.com/?p=105 Blogging a health warning http://e4innovation.com/?
p=66
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Function Pre 2005 Now..
Text/Data Word, Excel Google docs
Presentation Powerpoint Slideshare, podcasts, YouTube
Finding info Google Google+, RSS feeds
Managing info Bibliographic tools, repositories, e-journals
Social bookmarking, blogs, wikis
Personal management
Microsoft exchange Shared calenders & to do lists
Communication Email, forums, chat Skype, elluminate, social networking
Visualisation Mindmaps Compendium, mind42, cohere
Shift from information to communication
Co-evolution of tools and practice
Conole, forthcoming in Lee and McLoughan
+7. Researcher 2.0
Given the characteristics of web 2.0 and the current practices with see with social media, what would a "2.0 researcher" look like? what are implications for research?
+Researcher 2.0
Modern technologies Researcher 2.0 Web 2.0 practices
Location aware technologies
Adaptation & customisation
Second life/immersive worlds
Google it!
Badges, World of warcraft
User generated content
Blogging, peer critique
Cloud computing
From individual to social
Contextualised and situated
Personalised research
Experiential research
Inquiry learning and research
Peer learning and support
Open Research
More open and visible Reflection
Distributed cognition
+Change +ve impact -ve impact
Free resources Specialised niche use Literacy skills
Ubiquitous accessTechnology as core
tool for learningNarrower, but
deeper digital divide
Many communication channels
Increased peer dialogue
Fragmentation
Free tools Personalisation Lack of institutional
control
Media rich representations
New forms of sense making
Lack of digital literacy skills
Instant & multiple distribution
Information repurposed to meet
different needs
No centralised repository of knowledge
User generated content
Variety and acknowledging
individual contributions
Quality assurance issues
Social profilingKnowledge sharing and
community buildInappropriate descriptions
Pros and cons…
+8. Other uses
Collaboration Wiki – for group collaboration Google docs Video conferencing Mindmapping to build up research questions or themes
Data collection Audio or video diaries and logs Surveys via mobile phones Web tracking and google analytics
Data analysis SPSS for quantitative Nvivo for qualitative
GC
AH
+Cutting edge research experiments
Olnet A social-technical infrastructure to support users and
researcher of Open Educational Research http://olnet.org
SocialLearn – coming soon… The future of learning! Learning 2.0 http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/sociallearn/
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+Evaluation
Workshop format
Workshop content
Things I found helpful
Things that I did not find helpful
What one thing do you now plan to do as a result?
+Available from
Top tips for academia http://www.techademia.co.uk
Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/grainne
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