The Digital Scholar Revisited

The book The Digital Scholar was published in 2011, and used Boyer’s framework of scholarship to examine the possible impact of digital, networked technology on scholarly practice. In 2011 the general attitude towards digital scholarship was cautious, although areas of innovative practice were emerging. Using this book as a basis, the author considers changes in digital scholarship since its publication. Five key themes are identified: mainstreaming of digital scholarship, so that it is a widely accepted and encouraged practice; the shift to open, with the emphasis on the benefits that open practice brings rather than the digital or networked aspects; policy implementation, particularly in areas of educational technology platforms, open access policies and open educational resources; network identity, emphasising the development of academic identity through social media and other tools; criticality of digital scholarship, which examines the negative issues associated with online abuse, privacy and data usage. Each of these themes is explored, and their impact in terms of Boyer’s original framing of scholarly activity considered. Boyer’s four scholarly activities of discovery, integration, application and teaching can be viewed from the perspective of these five themes. In conclusion what has been realised does not constitute a revolution in academic practice, but rather a gradual acceptance and utilisation of digital scholarship techniques, practices and values. It is simultaneously true that both radical change has taken place, and nothing has fundamentally altered. Much of the increased adoption in academia mirrors the wider penetration of social media tools amongst society in general, so academics are more likely to have an identity in such places that mixes professional and personal

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

Like, share, vote

This report explores the potential for social media to support efforts to get out the vote. Overview Across Europe, low voter turnout in European and national elections is a growing concern. Many citizens are disengaged from the political process, threatening the health of our democracies. At the same time, the increasingly prominent role that social media plays in our lives and its function as a new digital public space offers new opportunities to reengage non-voters. This report explores the potential for social media to support efforts to get out the vote. It lays out which groups need to be the focus of voter mobilisation efforts, and makes the case for using social media campaigning as a core part of our voter mobilisation efforts. The research draws on a series of social media voter mobilisation workshops run by Demos with small third sector organisations in six target countries across Europe, as well as expert interviews, literature review and social media analysis. Having affirmed the need for and utility of social media voter turnout efforts, Like, Share, Vote establishes key principles and techniques for a successful social media campaign: how to listen to the digital discourse of your audience, how to use quizzes and interactive approaches, how to micro-target specific groups and how to coordinate offline events with online campaigns. This report concludes that, with more of our social and political lives taking place online than ever before, failing to use social media to reinvigorate our democracy would be a real missed opportunity

Sociology’s Rhythms: Temporal Dimensions of Knowledge Production

From the temporal perspective, this article examines shifts in the productionof sociological knowledge. It identifies two kinds of rhythms of sociology: 1) that of sociological standpoints and techniques of investigation and 2) that of contemporary academic life and culture. The article begins by discussing some of the existing research strategies designed to "chase"high-speed society. Some, predominantly methodological, currents are explored and contrasted with the "slow" instruments of sociological analysis composed of different, yet complementary, modes of inquiry. Against this background, the article stresses that it is through the tension between fast and slow modes of inquiry that sociology reproduces itself. The subsequent part explores the subjective temporal experience in contemporary academia. It is argued that increasing administration and auditing of intellectual work significantly coshapes sociological knowledge production not only by requiring academics to work faster due to an increasing volume of tasks, but also by normalizing time-pressure.The article concludes by considering the problem as to whether the increasing pace of contemporary academic life has detrimental consequences for the more organic reproductive rhythms of sociology

Personalising Twitter communication : an evaluation of ‘rotation-curation’ for enhancing social media engagement within higher education

Social media content generated by learning communities within universities is serving both pedagogical and marketing purposes. There is currently a dearth of literature related to social media use at the departmental level within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This study explores the multi-voiced interactions of a UK Psychology department’s ‘rotation curation’ approach to using Twitter. An in-depth analysis of a corpus of 4342 tweets by 58 curators (14 staff, 41 students, and 3 guest curators) was carried out using a combination of computer-assisted and manual techniques to generate a quantitative content analysis. The interactions received (e.g. retweets and favorites) and type of content posted (e.g. original tweets, retweets and replies) varied by curator type. Student curators were more likely to gain interactions from other students in comparison to staff. This paper discusses the benefits and potential limitations of a multi-voiced ‘rotation curation’ approach to social media management

A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education

This review focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. It provides a synthesis of the research literature in the field and a series of illustrative examples of how these tools are being used in learning and teaching. It draws out the perceived benefits that these new technologies appear to offer, and highlights some of the challenges and issues surrounding their use. The review forms the basis for a HE Academy funded project, ‘Peals in the Cloud’, which is exploring how Web 2.0 tools can be used to support evidence-based practices in learning and teaching. The project has also produced two in-depth case studies, which are reported elsewhere (Galley et al., 2010, Alevizou et al., 2010). The case studies focus on evaluation of a recently developed site for learning and teaching, Cloudworks, which harnesses Web 2.0 functionality to facilitate the sharing and discussion of educational practice. The case studies aim to explore to what extent the Web 2.0 affordances of the site are successfully promoting the sharing of ideas, as well as scholarly reflections, on learning and teaching

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs): analyzing efficiency and legitimacy motivation using systematic review methods and social media analysis

Policymakers frequently endorse evidence-informed policy design. But, in the context of public management reform, the most technically suitable innovations are often not the ones that become widely and deeply adopted. Legitimate (i.e. socially ‘acceptable’) reforms can spread greatly within and across public sectors, despite being inefficient; and efficient reforms may nonetheless remain unimplemented if they lack the legitimacy necessary to gain support. Inefficient reforms may even become “institutionalized”, which means they are regarded as having social value beyond their technical value. At best, the result is ineffectual public management reforms, with attendant opportunity costs; at worst, poorly-targeted interventions directly harm public service delivery and policy outcomes. In between these widespread and un-spread management initiatives, however, are those reforms that gain some traction among governments, yet never really “take-off” to become fully institutionalized. Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) are a recent example of this. A SIB is a type of payment by results (PbR) contracting, in which the commissioner pays for outcomes achieved rather than services delivered, using upfront capital from private investors who earn a financial return if the intervention is successful. As of 2023, more than twelve years after the first SIB was launched in Britain, there have been 276 SIBs in 38 countries, with approximately 745 million USD raised in upfront capital and 1.7 million beneficiaries reached (GO Lab, 2023a). This growth is far less than initially expected; in recent years (from 2019 onwards), the usage of SIBs has decreased markedly. In 2021, only 19 SIBs were launched (raising approximately 25 million USD), compared to 44 SIBs in 2018 (with 54 million USD raised). Thus, the spread of SIBs has been “wide” but “thin” – i.e., to many places and sectors, but only to a very limited number of organizations or programs in each. What explains this truncated reform diffusion? Why did SIBS rapidly appear in successive jurisdictions, but penetrate those public sectors barely at all? And what does this “in-betweener” category of innovation, neither widespread nor un-spread, tell us about the combined effect of instrumental and institutional, or efficiency and legitimacy, pressures for public management reform, and the role of evidence in decision-making? The empirical chapters of this thesis suggest that this reform has been truncated and only ‘thinly’ diffused because it has often been adopted for institutional reasons. The legitimacy benefits have caused decision makers to interrogate the reform idea with lower thresholds of rigour than they otherwise would. Yet, legitimacy benefits can only propel the innovation forward so far and for so long without concrete evidence of effectiveness. Thus SIBs usage has declined, in recent years, with Development Impact Bonds (DIBs) being introduced (and gaining popularity), likely in a deliberate attempt to re-package the idea as novel. Building on seminal works in organizational sociology, this thesis shows how efficiency and legitimacy exercise varying influence over reform processes as levels of uncertainty change over time regarding the effectiveness of an innovation. I use an effectiveness systematic review of SIBs to gauge the changing state of academic knowledge about the benefits of SIBs during 2010-22, as well as a qualitative systematic review to identify broader drivers for the adoption of the reform. I perform sentiment analysis and network analysis on social media data to understand changing practitioner understanding of the reform between 2010-2020 and use framework analysis to understand how rhetorical and discursive techniques have been applied, in this same period, to frame the SIB idea as a worthwhile reform to pursue. Overall, these analyses demonstrate that legitimation is central to the early-stage diffusion of management innovations that, ultimately, spread widely but only thinly

Being social: Missing pre-requisites for online engagement, exchange and inclusion

Despite cautionary analyses and critiques by some scholars, cyberoptimism and what Steve Woolgar calls cyberbole continue to characterise much discussion of social media in the context of democratic politics (e-democracy) and citizen engagement and participation, and is evident in claims of emergence of the ‘social organisation’ and ‘social business’. This paper synthesises the findings of three recent research studies, which show that the allegedly democratising social interaction and dialogic affordances of Web 2.0 are not being realised in many applications. Key missing prerequisites for engagement, exchange and inclusion are identified and highlighted as issues for attention in research and practice

Understanding the structure and role of academics' ego-networks on social networking sites

Academic social networking sites (SNS) seek to bring the benefits of online networking to an academic audience. Currently, the two largest sites are Academia.edu and ResearchGate. The ability to make connections to others is a defining affordance of SNS, but what are the characteristics of the network structures being facilitated by academic SNS, and how does this relate to their professional use by academics? This study addressed this question through mixed methods social network analysis. First, an online survey was conducted to gain contextual data and recruit participants (n = 528). Second, ego-networks were drawn up for a sub-sample of 55 academics (reflecting a range of job positions and disciplines). Ego-networks were sampled from an academic SNS and Twitter for each participant. Third, co-interpretive interviews were held with 18 participants, to understand the significance of the structures and how the networks were constructed. Academic SNS networks were smaller and more highly clustered; Twitter networks were larger and more diffuse. Communities within networks are more frequently defined by institutions and research interests on academic SNS, compared to research topics and personal interests on Twitter. Emerging themes link network structure to differences in how academics conceptualise and use the sites. Academic SNS are regarded as a more formal academic identity, akin to a business card, or used as a personal repository. Twitter is viewed as a space where personal and professional are mixed, similar to a conference coffee break. Academic SNS replicate existing professional connections, Twitter reinforces existing professional relationships and fosters novel connections. Several strategies underpinning academics’ use of the sites were identified, including: circumventing institutional constraints; extending academic space; finding a niche; promotion and impact; and academic freedom. These themes also provide a bridge between academic identity development online and formal academic identity and institutional roles