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Ten digital scholarship questions for researchers
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/elycefeliz/3262326159/> In my talk the other day for the Change MOOC, and in my book, I argue that digital scholarship has the potential to alter the way we conduct research, or at least to add some new tools to the toolbox. Now checklists should be treated with even more caution than a finding that 3D improves learning, so take this as some things to think about rather than a definite checklist you can submit to your research funder. I'd be interested to hear of other suggestions, and also whether this is all stuff people are doing anyway. My feeling is that when it comes to writing research proposals we're all…
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Digital scholarship – conclusions
[This is for the Change11 MOOC] Digital scholarship – Conclusions I hope to add to this as the week progresses as it should arise from our discussions. Some thoughts from my perspective are to revisit the four themes I mentioned in the introduction: Alternatives – ultimately I suspect this, combined with the impact argument, will be significant for digital scholarship. If academics find they can achieve the same, or better, results through alternative means (which may often be quicker), then they will vote with their actions. Impact – I suspect that research funders may play a significant role here, just as they did with open access publishing. They want the…
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Criticisms of digital scholarship
[This is for the Change11 MOOC] Criticisms of Digital Scholarship Although I have tried to avoid some of the more rabid evangelism one often encounters with new technology, it is fair to say that in general I regard digital scholarship as an improving force in scholarly practice, and that it provides ways of working that are often an improvement on existing methods. But it is not without its drawbacks and areas of concerns. In this section we will look at some of these, and consider which ones have the greatest significance and validity. ActionRead Weller Chap 13: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/DigitalScholar_9781849666275/chapter-ba-9781849666275-chapter-013.xmlWatch Turkle Alone Together Ted talk: Watch Lanier You are Not a Gadget: …
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Digital scholarship and research
[This is for the Change11 MOOC] Digital Scholarship and Research You can choose to complete this section, or the alternative one on Digital Scholarship and Teaching (or both). New technologies and the approaches that being digital, networked and open allows has great potential for research. New tools are available, new methodologies and a variety of ways in which research findings can be disseminated now exist. Yet this area perhaps exemplifies the tension in digital scholarship most vividly. There have been many studies recently looking at researcher’s use of new technology, and the results generally reveal a cautious picture of adoption. Action: Read Weller Chap 5: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/DigitalScholar_9781849666275/chapter-ba-9781849666275-chapter-005.xml;jsessionid=543AAE770E2327FAFF05AA94554E28FERead James et al (2009) Lives and…
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Digital scholarship and teaching
[This is for the Change11 MOOC] Digital Scholarship and Teaching You can choose to complete this section, or the alternative one on Digital Scholarship and Teaching (or both). Arguably, teaching is the area where we will see the biggest, and most visible, change as a result of digital scholarship. Even in a conventional lecture setting, students now have access to a vast range of information sources, so the notion of the lecturer as the font of knowledge has disappeared. During any given lecture a student may well be watching a world expert talk on the same subject via iTunesU. Even this small change has profound implications for what it means…
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What is digital scholarship? (#change11)
(this is content for the Change11 MOOC) What is digital scholarship? This is usually the first question people ask when I mention the subject, or rather ‘what do YOU mean by digital scholarship?’. In this section we’ll look at the term, but I should issue a warning – we may not arrive at a clean definition, and that is probably okay. Many years ago I was part of the initial wave of educational technologists who were interested in learning objects. After three years, I don’t think they had arrived at a satisfactory definition of what constituted a learning object, and indeed the search for such a definition began to stagnate…
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Digital scholarship – introduction
[This is for the Change 11 MOOC] Digital Scholarship – Introduction Hello, and welcome to my week of the Change MOOC. This week is concerned with the theme of digital scholarship. If you’re not sure what that means, then don’t worry, we’ll explore that in the next section, but a rough definition might be ‘changes in academic practice as a result of new technology’. Here is a short video introduction from me: As I mention in the video, the week is largely based around a book I’ve just published, called The Digital Scholar. This was published by Bloomsbury, but is available as a free open access book, under a…
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What are the values in a MOOC?
[MOOCs should be this kind of fun] So this week I am coordinating the topic over at George, Dave and Stephen's Change MOOC (you can see my activities here). The topic is, inevitably, digital scholarship. Preparing for it has set me thinking about what the educator and the learners get from MOOCs and how they differ from formal courses. At this point, ladies and gentlemen, I would like you to take out your violins – I have a very full workload. I know, you feel my pain. The trouble with this is that it means any of this MOOC stuff is really done at the fringes of my time. There's that…
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Open as in… doors, arms, ended?
With a fanfare and much waving of pompoms, I can announce that the open access version of my book is now online, via the good people at Bloomsbury Academic. It is available online in plain HTML format, broken down by chapters. I'm excited about this because now I can point people at it and pass it around freely. A couple of people have requested other formats, eg epub, pdf, etc. I could do these, but my feeling is that what's significant is the Creative Commons Non-Commercial licence. If anyone wants to take the HTML version and create an Egyptian hieroglyphics version delivered via 1988 version of HyperCard – well, they…
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For-profits – the revenge of teaching?
<Image by Kaptain Kobold http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/98688066/> There is some anxiety in the UK at the moment at the threat posed from for-profit universities. The concern is that with high student fees, cost becomes an issue, and so the market is ripe for commercial providers to enter and undercut the incumbents. We can all think why this might be detrimental to higher education and society in general. Courses would be stripped back to only the profitable elements, other functions of universities might disappear, it increases the notion of education as commodity, etc. I wouldn't disagree with any of these concerns, and this should not be read as a defence of for-profits. But there…
