Scholarly collaboration across time zones

The barriers to global collaboration of yesteryear were, for example, country boundaries and time zones. Today however, in a world where communication is thriving on new technologies, these barriers have been overcome, not only by the technology itself, but also by the collaborators in a desire (and need) to extend knowledge, seize opportunities and build partnerships. This chapter reports on one such collaboration: a case study where the focus is the writing of a scholarly article between authors from Australia, England and South Africa. The challenges of different time zones, academic calendars, and managing the collaboration are outlined in this chapter. Findings from the case study suggests that the key elements of success are related to the individuals and project management techniques, and not the technology per se. The constructivist learning theory as well as the e-Moderation model are supported by this work and thus extend their application to the academic writing process

Stewardship of the evolving scholarly record: from the invisible hand to conscious coordination

The scholarly record is increasingly digital and networked, while at the same time expanding in both the volume and diversity of the material it contains. The long-term future of the scholarly record cannot be effectively secured with traditional stewardship models developed for print materials. This report describes the key features of future stewardship models adapted to the characteristics of a digital, networked scholarly record, and discusses some practical implications of implementing these models. Key highlights include: As the scholarly record continues to evolve, conscious coordination will become an important organizing principle for stewardship models. Past stewardship models were built on an "invisible hand" approach that relied on the uncoordinated, institution-scale efforts of individual academic libraries acting autonomously to maintain local collections. Future stewardship of the evolving scholarly record requires conscious coordination of context, commitments, specialization, and reciprocity. With conscious coordination, local stewardship efforts leverage scale by collecting more of less. Keys to conscious coordination include right-scaling consolidation, cooperation, and community mix. Reducing transaction costs and building trust facilitate conscious coordination. Incentives to participate in cooperative stewardship activities should be linked to broader institutional priorities. The long-term future of the scholarly record in its fullest expression cannot be effectively secured with stewardship strategies designed for print materials. The features of the evolving scholarly record suggest that traditional stewardship strategies, built on an “invisible hand” approach that relies on the uncoordinated, institution-scale efforts of individual academic libraries acting autonomously to maintain local collections, is no longer suitable for collecting, organizing, making available, and preserving the outputs of scholarly inquiry. As the scholarly record continues to evolve, conscious coordination will become an important organizing principle for stewardship models. Conscious coordination calls for stewardship strategies that incorporate a broader awareness of the system-wide stewardship context; declarations of explicit commitments around portions of the local collection; formal divisions of labor within cooperative arrangements; and robust networks for reciprocal access. Stewardship strategies based on conscious coordination involve an acceleration of an already perceptible transition away from relatively autonomous local collections to ones built on networks of cooperation across many organizations, within and outside the traditional cultural heritage community

Accented Body and Beyond: a Model for Practice-Led Research with Multiple Theory/Practice Outcomes

Dance has always been a collaborative or interdisciplinary practice normally associated with music or sound and visual arts/design. Recent developments with technology have introduced additional layers of interdisciplinary work to include live and virtual forms in the expansion of what Fraleigh (1999:11) terms ‘the dancer oriented in time/space, somatically alive to the experience of moving’. This already multi-sensory experience and knowledge of the dancer is now layered with other kinds of space/time and kinetic awarenesses, both present and distant, through telematic presence, generative systems and/or sensors. In this world of altered perceptions and ways of being, the field of dance research is further opened up to alternative processes of inquiry, both theoretically and in practice, and importantly in the spaces between the two

Supporting community engagement through teaching, student projects and research

The Education Acts statutory obligations for ITPs are not supported by the Crown funding model. Part of the statutory role of an ITP is “... promotes community learning and by research, particularly applied and technological research ...” [The education act 1989]. In relation to this a 2017 TEC report highlighted impaired business models and an excessive administrative burden as restrictive and impeding success. Further restrictions are seen when considering ITPs attract < 3 % of the available TEC funding for research, and ~ 20 % available TEC funding for teaching, despite having overall student efts of ~ 26 % nationally. An attempt to improve performance and engage through collaboration (community, industry, tertiary) at our institution is proving successful. The cross-disciplinary approach provides students high level experience and the technical stretch needed to be successful engineers, technologists and technicians. This study presents one of the methods we use to collaborate externally through teaching, student projects and research

A New Consumerism: The influence of social technologies on product design

Social media has enabled a new style of consumerism. Consumers are no longer passive recipients; instead they are assuming active and participatory roles in product design and production, facilitated by interaction and collaboration in virtual communities. This new participatory culture is blurring the boundaries between the specific roles of designer, consumer and producer, creating entrepreneurial opportunities for designers, and empowering consumers to influence product strategies. Evolving designer-consumer interactions are enabling an enhanced model of co-production, through a value-adding social exchange that is driving changes in consumer behaviour and influencing both product strategies and design practice. The consumer is now a knowledgeable participant, or prosumer, who can contribute to user–centered research through crowd sourcing, collaborate and co-create through open-source or open-innovation platforms, assist creative endeavors by pledging venture capital through crowd funding and advocate the product in blogs and forums. Social media- enabled product implementation strategies working in conjunction with digital production technologies (e.g. additive manufacture), enable consumer-directed adaptive customisation, product personalisation, and self-production, with once passive consumers becoming product produsers. Not only is social media driving unprecedented consumer engagement and significant behavioural change, it is emerging as a major enabler of design entrepreneurship, creating new collaborative opportunities. Innovative processes in design practice are emerging, such as the provision of digital artifacts and customisable product frameworks, rather than standardised manufactured solutions. This paper examines the influence of social media-enabled product strategies on the methodology of the next generation of product designers, and discusses the need for an educational response

Final report of work-with-IT: the JISC study into evolution of working practices

Technology is increasingly being used to underpin business processes across teaching and learning, research, knowledge exchange and business support activities in both HE and FE. The introduction of technology has a significant impact on the working practices of staff, often requiring them to work in a radically different way. Change in any situation can be unsettling and problematic and, where not effectively managed, can lead to poor service or functionality and disenfranchised staff. These issues can have a direct impact on institutional effectiveness, reputation and the resulting student experience. The Work-with-IT project, based at the University of Strathclyde, sought to examine changes to working practices across HE and FE, the impact on staff roles and relationships and the new skills sets that are required to meet these changes

Teaching telecommunication standards: bridging the gap between theory and practice

©2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Telecommunication standards have become a reliable mechanism to strengthen collaboration between industry and research institutions to accelerate the evolution of communications systems. Standards are needed to enable cooperation while promoting competition. Within the framework of a standard, the companies involved in the standardization process contribute and agree on appropriate technical specifications to ensure diversity and compatibility, and facilitate worldwide commercial deployment and evolution. Those parts of the system that can create competitive advantages are intentionally left open in the specifications. Such specifications are extensive, complex, and minimalistic. This makes telecommunication standards education a difficult endeavor, but it is much demanded by industry and governments to spur economic growth. This article describes a methodology for teaching wireless communications standards. We define our methodology around six learning stages that assimilate the standardization process and identify key learning objectives for each. Enabled by software-defined radio technology, we describe a practical learning environment that facilitates developing many of the needed technical and soft skills without the inherent difficulty and cost associated with radio frequency components and regulation. Using only open source software and commercial of-the-shelf computers, this environment is portable and can easily be recreated at other educational institutions and adapted to their educational needs and constraints. We discuss our and our students' experiences when employing the proposed methodology to 4G LTE standard education at Barcelona Tech.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft