Constructing A Professional Presence - HEA Professional Presences For Academics Workshop -...

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This presentation formed part of the HEA workshop on Professional Presences For Academics and looked at the different social sites on which academics should develop an online presence in order to promote themselves, engage students and employers and publicise their research.

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Constructing A Professional Presence For Academics

Thomas Lancaster

Overview

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Twitter Hash Tag

#heaprofpres

We Encourage Discussion!

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Plan For The Day

10:00am

Welcome and HousekeepingThomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University

10:05am

Professional Development At Birmingham City UniversityDavid While – Birmingham City University

10:15am

Constructing A Professional Presence For AcademicsThomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University

11:00am

Leveraging Your Online Presence To Develop A Professional Learning NetworkSue Beckingham – Sheffield Hallam University

11:30am

Coffee

12:00pm

Practical Computer Session On Constructing Professional PresencesThomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University

1:00pm Lunch2:00pm Employability From The Higher Education

AcademyMark Ratcliffe – Higher Education Academy

2:15pm Examples Of Online Promotion For AcademicsThomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University

2:35pm Questions and Discussion3:00pm Finish

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HEA Computing 2012 Workshop

“Enhancing The Employability Of Computing Students Through An Online Professional Presence”

http://www.bcu.ac.uk/tee/events/previous-events/employability-workshop

Contains copies of talks and set of teaching materials (the “step by step” what to do)

We Are Following On From…

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Resources

Why Do Academics Care?

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“Savvy scientists must increasingly engage with blogs and social media. A new generation of young researchers has grown up with an ever-present Internet. Publishers have been quicker than academics to react to this new world, but scientists must catch up. Even if you choose not to blog, you can certainly expect that your papers and ideas will increasingly be blogged about. So there it is — blog or be blogged.”

Paul Knoepfler (In nature)

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110727/full/475425a.html

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Personal marketing

Personal brand building

Media, research and speaking opportunities (contacts)

Career prospects

Promotion of university and course

Promotion of wider research area

“Humanisation” of research

Demonstrate social media and employability interests to students

Why A Professional Presence?

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Your Professional Presence is the cumulative set of web sites, online contributions and social media profiles which define who you are to someone looking at you online

Often, this is in addition to any information supplied about you to your university

Can direct people to a preferred view of yourself

Can rely on people directly finding out about you using search engines/links/recommendations

What Do We Mean? (Informal)

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Selectiveness!

It is impossible to be active with every single social media website and opportunity out there

This workshop will take a balanced view looking at some of the services (both general and academically aimed) which it is worth considering joining

However, you should pick and choose which of these opportunities are most suitable for you to engage further with…

Most of this workshop relates to “what I do…”

Immediate Principle

Examples Of Professional Presences

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Students…

http://www.ashleyksmith.com

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And Also…

http://jagdevbhogal.wix.com/jbwebsite

http://jagdevbhogal.wordpress.com

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Wider Computing Community

http://www.tubblog.co.uk/

Components

Professional Website

Contribution to Institutional Web Sites

Social Media Presence

Academic Research Profiles

External contributions to increase overall visibility

What Makes A Good Professional Presence

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Choose An Available Name

http://namechk.com

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Important to make yourself “findable” in Google

Want to receive invitations to progress yourself

Industrial engagement

Contacts to work with students

Speaking engagements

Ranking

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Work out what “moniker” you will use to represent yourself online

Decide on the main marketing text and images that you can use to represent yourself

Set up your Facebook account and Google account (as so many other services require these/integrate with these)

Work out when/how you will keep your sites and profiles current and accurate

Pre-Planning

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General Professional Resources

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Very important – the web site is owned by you and transferrable

Should relate “your name” in some format

Should be a .com or .co.uk, ideally without hyphens

e.g. yourname.com

Website contains general background and information about you relative to your career (e.g. expertise, teaching and research)

Professional Website

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http://thomaslancaster.co.uk/

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Ideally part of your main website

e.g. yourname.com/blog

Can also be hosted by a third party service

e.g. hosted WordPress, hosted Blogger

But, you lose some control

Create posts relating to the wider interests within your subjects (the news, your teaching, your research)

Your Blog

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http://thomaslancaster.co.uk/blog/

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Important to own your Facebook identity

Register a “vanity url”

Use the privacy settings to control who can see what parts of your profile

There are many differing views about how to use Facebook within education

Use apps like BranchOut to monitor professional contacts

Facebook

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http://branchout.com/ThomasLancaster

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A Google account is necessary to access many widely used services

Try and establish a recognisable name that can be used on many social sites

Google Account

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Google+ is Google’s social network and the results can feature in Google search engine results

Google Authorship of blog posts currently a powerful way to get search engine traffic

Google+

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2nd biggest search engine in the world

Many people are visual learners and head directly to YouTube

Short videos can relate to teaching, research

YouTube

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Main professional social network

Used to keep a record of work and experience and to develop professional Connections

LinkedIn

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Popular site used to collect and share images

Replicates “pinning” images to a noticeboard

Can pin your own images or curate them from other sources

Infographics popular for sharing

Pinterest

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http://pinterest.com/thomaslancaster

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Provides short updates about areas of interest

Promote events and activities

Often used to produce a “second level of networking” within academia

Twitter

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https://twitter.com/drlancaster

Institutional Websites

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Profiles on institutional web sites are valued

But they can sometimes be difficult to take control of

They rank well in the search engines

Institutional Web Sites

Specific Academic Resources

The LinkedIn Publications view can be used to list all of your academic publications

Use the Abstract to provide the content to match with the publication

The suggestion is to link these directly to the official source for the publication (such as the Digital Object Identifier page)

LinkedIn

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Social network aimed specifically at the academic community

Can follow other academics based on their research interests

Academia.edu

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Alternative social network for academics

Can be used to ask questions, gain answers and find people to work with

ResearchGate.net

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Primarily a reference manager, but also a further social network

Can be used to create an online archive of papers

Mendeley.com

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Provides a search engine for academic literature

Used widely in the industry due to its convenience

Makes available a Profile Page showing citations and reach of the research

Monitor who has cited your work

Can manually add missing publications

Google Scholar

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Alternative academic search, but with fewer direct options for academics

Can edit publication details, but needs manual verification by Microsoft

Microsoft Academic Search

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Unique identifier given to each researcher to manage their publication lists

Solves the problem where multiple researchers share similar names

Generate citation metrics

Integrates with ORCID

ResearcherID

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http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1534-7547

Third Party Sites

Providing content for other sites is an excellent way to grow your social reach

Invited Blog Posts

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Use relevant forums and question sites to demonstrate your wider interest and expertise

Engage On Other Sites

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http://www.quora.com/Thomas-Lancaster

Document Sharing Sites

Used mainly to share copies of slides

Can also be used to share other types of documents

Useful for widely circulating copies of presentations

Can be provide presentations in a format whereby they can be embedded within other pages (similar to YouTube videos)

SlideShare

The Challenge!

Keeping everything up to date!

Work out processes for:

Adding a new teaching area

Publishing a new academic paper

The Biggest Challenge

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What does your profile on each site look to:

A standard person who finds the site through a search engine?

A non-logged in user who follows the link to your profile?

A logged in user on the site?

What other information is being posted on the Internet about you?

The Checks

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Use sites like Klout.com

Measures your engagement with others on sites like Twitter and Facebook

Finding Out Your Influence

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http://klout.com/#/DrLancaster

Any Questions?

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