Digital Libraries, Personalisation, and Network Effects - Unpicking the Paradoxes

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Summary Findings of NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants (2007-2010)

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: While this resource may seem like a surprising choice for this list, it provides a summary of outcomes from the first round of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants, including a survey of project directors and a summary of end-of-grant “white papers,” which distill lessons learned from the projects. Among other things, respondents reflected on the importance of goal setting, teamwork, and contingency planning, all foundations of good project management. Anyone planning their first digital project and applying for funding would find this report an interesting read. This report and associated white papers would make a good classroom exercise wherein students highlight the types of challenges that one might encounter with digital projects and then plan a project wherein they minimize the potential negative impact of these. Students may also use this artifact to guide their reflection on projects that they have undertaken and focus on lessons learned

A decade of E-learning policy in higher education in the United Kingdom: a critical analysis

Both as discourse and as practice, e-learning in Higher Education (HE) is shaped by many factors, the most critical of which are the political motivations driving its adoption. In this dissertation I attest that e-learning policies relevant to HE issued by government departments and non-departmental public bodies in the United Kingdom (UK) between 2003 and 2013 were predominantly underpinned by neoliberal ideology. The enquiry is grounded in the Critical research paradigm’s intention to expose, critique, and ultimately overcome sources of oppression. Thirteen policy texts were analysed via two critical lenses. First, via thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) of the corpus I identified recurring themes. These were then clustered around a trilogy of master narratives: Marketisation, Instrumentality, and Modernisation. Through an ideology critique of these master narratives, I uncovered and unpacked the motivations underpinning claims made in relation to e-learning. My second mode of analysis was a detailed Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of each document. CDA sees the wider context as essential to making sense of a text (Bloor and Bloor 2007; Van Dijk 2008). My critique, therefore, considered each document within its historical and socio-economic context, and examined the extent to which the three master narratives were evident both over time, and across England, Scotland, and Wales. How policy is communicated and presented is as important as what is said (Barnett 2000). Indeed, ideologies can be both enacted and obscured by language (Jones and Stilwell Peccei 2004; Henriksen 2011). My analysis, therefore, also examined the role of visual presentation, lexical choices, and rhetorical techniques in communicating the policies. Taken together, the two prongs of my analysis demonstrate that − although there are variances in different contexts and at different times − overall, the policies considered were motivated by neoliberal imperatives aimed at placing HE within the realm of the market and enhancing the UK’s economic competitiveness. The policies also persistently reflect a deterministic and uncritical perspective towards technology. Furthermore, many of the claims made are exaggerated, unsubstantiated, contradictory, and even duplicitous, or are justified via reference to contested discourses. While neoliberal ideology is privileged and promoted across the corpus, alternative value systems are not. I argue that this problematic framing of e-learning is intensifying the negative impacts of neoliberalism on HE’s role as a public good, as well as exacerbating social inequalities. Furthermore, it is channelling e-learning into a restricted form that limits any possible pedagogical or egalitarian opportunities that the judicious application of digital technologies in HE teaching and learning might support. I reflect on the implications of this for HE and for society, and for the professional practice of Learning Technologists. Finally, I present an alternative vision for e-learning in HE

Deprivation of Liberty in the Shadows of the Institution

ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. During the 20th century the locus of care shifted from large institutions into the community. However, this shift was not always accompanied by liberation from restrictive practices. In 2014 a UK Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of ‘deprivation of liberty’ resulted in large numbers of older and disabled people in care homes, supported living and family homes being re-categorized as ‘detained’. Placing this ruling in its social, historical and global context, this book presents a socio-legal analysis of social care detention in the post-carceral era. Drawing from disability rights law and the meanings of ‘home’ and ‘institution’ it proposes solutions to the Cheshire West ruling’s paradoxical implications

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Deprivation of Liberty in the Shadows of the Institution

ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. During the 20th century the locus of care shifted from large institutions into the community. However, this shift was not always accompanied by liberation from restrictive practices. In 2014 a UK Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of ‘deprivation of liberty’ resulted in large numbers of older and disabled people in care homes, supported living and family homes being re-categorized as ‘detained’. Placing this ruling in its social, historical and global context, this book presents a socio-legal analysis of social care detention in the post-carceral era. Drawing from disability rights law and the meanings of ‘home’ and ‘institution’ it proposes solutions to the Cheshire West ruling’s paradoxical implications

The changing role of the day centre for older people in addressing loneliness: a participatory action research study

Amid global interest in a ‘loneliness epidemic’ narrative, a fixation on the health consequences of loneliness in old age and the effectiveness of interventions in reducing the experience has emerged. Despite this, a lack of appreciation and chronic defunding of day centres, services that may serve the very purpose of addressing loneliness, has also ensued. Instead, controlled and standardised interventions have been favoured. With increases in ageism and loneliness reported since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic however, the suitability of such interventions and the context of loneliness itself may have changed. To investigate the potentially significant contribution day centres may play in addressing loneliness, this study will present an intimate and detailed understanding of their role. In collaboration with an adult day centre in the North-East of England, a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study commenced in September 2020 in an attempt to understand the nature of the day centre in the lives of older people, and their experiences of loneliness in this context. Led by the voices of seventeen older co-researchers, telephone questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, walking methods, photovoice and life story work were carried out, alternating between face-to-face and telephone contact across a sixteen-month period. A story of the collective emerged that demonstrates both the value of a PAR approach to loneliness-based research with older adults and the methodological adaptations needed to better empower older people to participate as co-researchers. This led to a reconceptualisation of loneliness that challenges the individual pathology narrative inherent within existing theorisations, to look beyond medicalisation and toward a more contextual, and inherently relational, understanding that allows for the negotiation of loneliness. The community loneliness experience and framework, respectively, capture the nature of the feeling of loneliness, and how it manifests in one’s community through the configuration of social capital and social ties, social and spatial conditions and processes. In moving towards a contextualised understanding of loneliness, this thesis calls for the reframing of day centres as sites for relational practice, and the need for social work practitioners to assume a more central role in identifying and addressing loneliness experienced by older people

Accounting in the limelight: audit, calculation and governance in UK television

This thesis consists of three standalone empirical studies examining the operation and intertwining of accounting in the UK television industry. The first study examines the enrolment of auditing during a series of scandals involving the mishandling of premium rate services in UK television. Through a textual analysis of media coverage of the premium rate scandals, the study traces the mobilisation of an audit investigation commissioned by UK broadcaster ITV in the immediate aftermath of the press revelations. Using t’Hart’s (1993) framework of symbolic actions, the study illustrates that throughout key phases in the scandal process, ITV strategically used the audit investigation to control the official narrative of the scandals whilst protecting itself from further critical scrutiny. The study contributes to the literature on the role of auditing in crisis management, and how this role is implicated in the construction of organisational scandals and wrongdoing in domains other than financial accounting. The second study turns to the long-lasting consequences of the audit-based responses to the 2007 premium rate scandal. Through an in-depth field study of audience vote verification in the 2017 National Television Awards (NTA), the study explores how audit and assurance ideals are appropriated by agents outside the professional audit field to create a new infrastructure of trust. In doing so, the study draws on Giddens (1990, 1991) to argue that the NTA case can be understood as a mimetic adoption of the expert system of audit. It also elaborates on the implications of expert systems, showing that on the one hand, the dis-embedded nature of audit expertise facilitates its expansion into new domains. On the other hand, it could also result in audit expertise becoming more context dependent and thus more reliant on personal trust rather than systems trust. The third study examines how calculative practices are implicated in understanding and shaping television audiences and their viewing behaviour. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with UK television broadcasters, the study traces the interlinkages between recent Big Data-driven innovations in audience measurement and the desire by broadcasters to exercise control over an increasingly fragmented media audience. It focuses on the practices of enumeration, categorisation and calculation involved in producing knowledge of viewer behaviour, as well as the consumerist ethos underpinning such practices. The study’s empirical context of cultural consumption in the everyday private sphere lends itself to a relatively novel application of the governmentality thesis by Miller and Rose (1990). Taken together, the three studies in this thesis illustrate how issues of accounting are deeply implicated in the shaping of contemporary television. In so doing, they seek to further an understanding of accounting and the social. They also highlight the significant governance potential of media content and events, and the role of accounting therein

Policy to practice: a critical analysis of the ‘valuing people’ strategy

This qualitative investigation set out to analyse the impact of ‘Valuing People: A New Strategy for Learning Disability for the 21st Century’ (DH, 2001) on the lives of people with profound intellectual and multiple impairments (PIMD) and their family carers. Data was drawn from three distinct sources. The investigation began with a critical discourse analysis of Valuing People (VP). The findings informed the development of a semi-structured interview schedule for use with family carers caring for an adult with PIMD. It was deemed important to the study to include an individual with PIMD in as meaningful manner as possible. Therefore, following careful ethical deliberations, filmed excerpts of a woman with PIMD engaged in aspects of her daily routine, representing the main themes of VP, were used to elicit focus group discussions with paid care workers in different parts of London. The findings from the different data sources were triangulated, highlighting how a focus on a social model of disability in VP excluded those with PIMD. This neglect was confirmed and elaborated by the family carers and also the paid care workers. The findings further highlighted deficiencies in the volume and nature of provision of appropriately skilled staff, the availability of specialist services and residential respite for families. There was also a general feeling that things had not improved and much concern about the future. The film elicitations demonstrated the use of VP language among care workers but with little understanding of the concepts of rights, independence, choice and inclusion. By situating this hermeneutic exploration within a critical approach, the main findings have demonstrated the manner in which people with PIMD are marginalised within the policy, rather than having their differences recognized and ultimately their needs met

Perceptions and practice of Gov2.0 in English local government

Gov2.0 is an emerging and contested subject that offers a radical alternative to the construction of relationships between residents and their local authorities. This research investigates the practice of Gov2.0 and practitioners’ perceptions of this in English local authorities. The research combines analysis of practices through a content analysis of 50 principal local authority web sites and use of Q-methodology to identify the shared subjective frames of reference of 52 local government actors. The literature surrounding Gov2.0 is found to be lacking a clear theoretical model. A model is presented as a basis for an exploration of the practice and common understanding of the subject. Levels of inconsistency in adoption of Gov2.0 that are not defined by political party control, geography or authority governance structure are identified. The results of the Q-methodology examination of individual perspectives are discussed, and four frames of reference which provide a foundation for variations of practice observed are proposed. This research offers a theoretical model for understanding Gov2.0; it identifies four distinct frames of reference held by practitioners regarding Gov2.0 and presents an analysis of the range of adoption practices within English local authorities