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Presentation at the annual Emerging Technologies for Online Learning conference focusing on networked scholarship. The concept of networked scholarship is expressed in different ways in the literature, ranging from digital scholarship to social scholarship to open scholarship. In this presentation, I discussed two themes that have arisen from my 3+ years of qualitative and ethnographic studies into the practices of higher education scholars. Both of these themes help us make better sense of scholars’ digital participation and networked scholarship. They also help us better describe online scholarly networks and the lives and practices of digital scholars. The first theme refers to the notion of scholars using networks to enact digital/open scholarship and circumvent restrictions to the sharing of knowledge. The second theme is one that I am still developing. Specifically, in my research I found that social media and online social networks function as places where some academics express and experience care.
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SLOAN-C Emerging Technologies Conference, Dallas, TX, April 2014
Networks of Care and Conflict: Academics’ Online Participation
George Veletsianos, PhD Canada Research Chair
Associate Professor School of Education and Technology
@veletsianos #et4online
Two competing narratives of the web
The web as a monstrous place
The web as a wondrous place
A continuum
I want to talk about what happens at the middle
Questions guiding my research
• How do academics use emerging technologies (in particular, social media/networks)?
• How is digital and open scholarship enacted?
• What do current scholarly practices look like?
• What is the experience like?
Digital Scholarship, Open Scholarship, Social Scholarship
– Digital Scholarship – Martin Weller
– Social Scholarship – Gideon Burton – Christine Greenhow
– Networked Participatory Scholarship:
the “emergent practice of scholars’ use of participatory technologies and online social networks to share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and further their scholarship” (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012, p. 768).
“Educational Technology,” as a field is plagued with editorials and perspectives
Need to move from “state-of-the-art” to “state-of-the-actual” (Selwyn, 2011)
Faith-based field?
Why you should care #1
The future of Higher Education is currently being designed.
Solutions are frequently not based on evidence.
Empirical research will help us improve designs.
Why you should care #2
a worldwide economic downturn
globalization and competition
changing demographics
curtailment of public funding
pressures for accountability
impact of emerging technologies
(Morrison, 2003; Schwier, 2012; Siemens & Matheos, 2010; Spanier, 2010).
purpose of education - Employment?
Rebirth of edtech
Especially important at a time of pressures
Socio-political, cultural, and
economic pressures
Social media use is a professional issue 1/2
How do instructors use social media to foster engagement?
How can we use online social networks to expand the diversity of a classroom?
In what ways can researchers use social media to disseminate their scholarship?
Social media use goes beyond professional issues 2/2
Social media use goes beyond professional issues 2/2
What do we do when we are online and why? e.g., Visitors vs. Residents (White & LeCornu, 2011)
How does our professional identity impact our participation and how does our participation impact our professional identity?
In-between the extremes, are stories of people.
Stories of academia.
Stories that explain who we are as scholars, educators, and people.
What follows is a summary of two themes from 3+ years of qualitative
and ethnographic studies
Theme #1
Networks of Conflict
Theme #2
Networks of Care and Vulnerability
Networks of care & vulnerability
Social media and online social networks function as places where
(some) academics express and experience care.
• Caring for one another online takes many forms
Networks of care & vulnerability
Identity
Digital Identity
We create it Intentional web presence
Lowenthal & Dunlap (2012)
It is created and/or structured for us Acceptable Identity Fragments (Kimmons
& Veletsianos, 2014)
• Personal-professional continuum. • “Sanitized” participation. • Pressures to participate • Other issues?
Discussion
Thank you
www.veletsianos.com
@veletsianos on Twitter veletsianos at gmail.com
This presentation: www.slideshare.com/veletsianos
