Margaret Adamson

25 November 2015

The Social Scholar

What are scholars doing, and using?

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• Exploring scholarly ideas, sharing knowledge, debating and critiqueing, advising and reflecting, connecting with other researchers, reaching multiple audiences, re-envisioning their identities (as public intellectuals).

• Social media transforms practice, and practice transforms social media (Veletsianos, 2014).

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Affordances and dependencies• Overcoming spatial and temporal limitations

• Allowing active or passive engagement• Sharing more than one kind of content at one time• Blurring of boundaries and roles• Permanence• Dependence on power and connectivity• Use is led by advocacy, not evidence driven (Kimmons,

2014)• Linear development or lateral development – doing the

same things using new tools

What is a social network?

Video removed for copyright reasons

source: https://youtu.be/3rIB-IXzA_Y

Research Activities• Collection

• Curation• Collaborating & Conferencing• Creating & Crafting• Conferencing

Collection

• Citizen Science• Crowdsourcing

Collaboration

• Twitter• Tweetchats• Support

Curation

• Zotero• Mendeley• Kifi• Dropmark• Twitter Lists• Folksonomies and tagsonomies

Image removed for copyright reasons.

source: http://daveowhite.com/relevance/

Creating and Crafting

• Blogging• Institutional repositories• Academia.edu, ResearchGate

Identity

• ORCID• Conscious and subconscious identity/identities• Why is this especially important for researchers?• PIRIUS digital identity health check

• Is attribution broken?

Attribution

• How easy is it as a newcomer to break into a field?

“Breaking In”

Scholarship of discovery

• Move from validation by knowledge gatekeepers and disseminators to social constructivist model• Social review – soft peer review• Social media spaces can eliminate inaccuracies,

reach wider audience• Social media spaces change control• Need to re-examine relationship between funder,

scholar and public

Scholarship of integration

• Collaborative generation of large data sets across institutions/organisations• Big Data• Creates issues around who owns the asset• Issues for data security, privacy

Scholarship of learning & teaching

• Scholars’ teaching practice is informed by iterative, data-driven approaches – use classroom research to inform instructional design• MOOCs one example of widening SOTL• Learning analytics• Teaching practices that position student learning

as participation in a public or semi-public discourse• These knowledge flows challenge the value,

nature and identity of academics as experts

Scholarship of application

• Merging of theory and practice• Institutions expect scholars to contribute to

public discourse in innovative ways, yet hamper them with social media policies, research ethics policies• The University must turn outward again

Twitter Tips

• Profile• Followers• Content• Tone• The 1 in 4 Rule• Twitterese• Use other tools

Activity: Tweet Analysis

• Group 1: how many of the tweets are useful, and how many are white noise

• Group 2: are there any dominant tweeters?

• Group 3: how many of the tweets gained a wider reach?

Blogging

• Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr• Quick and easy• Reach a wider audience• Google loves blogs, but post titles are important• Engagement is key – not number of views or post

frequency• Different writing style, unlike other academic outputs• Write to show development• Not only text• Integrate with other social media and allow onward

sharing

Image removed for copyright reasons.

source: https://bloggingforhistorians.wordpress.com/2013/08/07/how-to-write-a-blog-post-the-inverted-triangle-approach/

Impact & Reach

• Altmetrics – the online impact of published papers• Used in conjunction with conventional

bibliometrics• Free bookmarklet from altmetric.com will collate

shares and mentions from social media and visualise these for you• Use alerts, subscriptions and saved searches

Management

• Time management• Content management• Risk management• Use tools wisely, and develop “tool agility”

“Of the network of activities that scholars are involved with – writing, researching, interacting with peers, presenting at conferences – only a small part is apparent to a student doing research. Every idea, paper, experiment and artefact is, in reality, attached to a person or group of people who helped bring it about. Imagine the impact of tools that place those people and relationships at the centre of any research inquiry; concepts clearly linked to people: connections between those people and others clearly indicated; a much more complete picture of the topic would emerge, more quickly than is possible with current tools”.

New Media Consortium, Horizon Report 2009