JISC DataPool Project
by Graeme Earl
The DataPool project will build capacity within the University of Southampton to support effective data management practice across all disciplines, including multi-disciplinary activity, throughout the data lifecycle. A focus on cultural change will be underpinned by development of a clear policy framework, an enhanced technical infrastructure and a strategy for supporting researchers in managing their data in line with the middle phase of the 10 year roadmap identified by the previous JISC funded Institutional Data Management Blueprint (IDMB) project.
Objectives
- Implement an institutional research data policy with guidance for researchers;
- Launch and populate an institutional data repository as part of the research data management infrastructure;
- Embed effective research data management through close alignment with the University’s multi-disciplinary Strategic Research Groups;
- Provide integrated training for PhD students through the institution-wide Graduate Centre and curriculum development;
- Develop the skills of professional support staff such as librarians, IT specialists and bid managers so they can provide coherent institutional support for data management requirements.
Project methodology
The project will take a three-pronged approach:
- Research Data Management Policy ratification and implementation
- Research Data Management System implementation
- Integrated Training, Guidance and Support
By seeking early ratification of institutional research data policy, DataPool will provide the community with evidence of an institutional approach to implementing policy. We have commitment from senior staff such as the Associate Deans Research and the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research, as well as researchers representing different disciplines, with data policy “champions” identified for each Faculty. High quality guidance will be provided on specified and requested topics to enable researchers to respond to, and comply with, the policy.
As part of an integrated data management infrastructure a model for using both an institutional instance of Microsoft Sharepoint and EPrints repository software will be developed for the deposit of metadata that describes the research data to be archived, and for the actual deposit of the datasets into a pilot university data repository.
DataPool will deliver a flexible model supporting service and training for researchers, students and support staff. A series of case studies based on real, disciplinary examples of data management practice will involve different data types produced by postgraduate and undergraduate students as well as researchers. A full data management training programme will be offered through the university Professional Development Unit as part of continuing professional development activities for all academic staff. Data management training workshops incorporated previously into a masters course will be extended to other masters modules. Cost monitoring will be used to model scalability of the training programme and provide an evidence-base for financial decision-making.
 Anticipated outputs and outcomes
- Institutional policy will be shared on the institutional and DCC websites to maximise exposure, with a report on our implementation experience;
- A model for integrating a data repository into the wider institutional data management infrastructure and culture;
- Specialist repository support for discipline-specific data shared with the UK repository community (e.g. through the EPrints Bazaar app store);
- Training materials and case studies to be shared with the community for reuse;
- A model for embedding training in a graduate school programme for PhD students;
- Training needs analysis and training programme for support staff to share with all HEIs;
- Examples of training case studies to enhance continuing professional development for researchers and curriculum development for students;
- Cost-modelling, including cost-benefit analysis of whole-institution data management training commitment.
Further details:Â http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/datapool/
The Future of Technology in Education #FOTE11
October 22, 2011
by Lisa Harris
Key takeaways for me from a great day at Future of Technology in Education (#FOTE11) at the University of London yesterday:
There was angst from the IT department as the ever increasing consumerisation of technology challenges creaking university systems and a too prevalent culture of âcomputer says noâ. It is more productive for staff and students to collaborate and operate outside the system using free online tools (Google docs, Dropbox and Skype do the job perfectly well for me).
Vendors who try too hard to plug their stuff to an ed tech audience risk the ire of the backchannel (you know who you are!)
While a sense of place is still important, (we had a great touristâs guide to Bristol from @nick_skelton ) mobile phones have allowed people to make their meeting plans on the fly (for example, student bars are struggling) and economics keep many students away from campus (eg living with parents). And this is before the increase in feesâŠ
Time and time again we heard examples of poor communication (between university and students, teaching staff and students, IT and staff/studentsâŠetc)
We donât know enough about what students want and how students live â it was agreed we should try *asking them*more often.
The importance of digital literacy â plenty of staff and students just donât have it. Thankfully, there seemed to be general agreement that the âdigital nativeâ is simply a myth. @suebecks gave a great presentation with many fascinating examples of the importance of digital skills to employability.
There was more emphasis on challenges than solutions. How do we take change forwardâŠwe have identified the need for it, but how to make change actually happen? Andrew Bollington provided a reality check, suggesting that appreciating and incorporating the contrasting perspectives of finance, strategy and marketing would be a good start.
@andypowe11 provided a great summary of who and what was shared on Twitter â as you can see, quite a lot!
Originally published on www.lisaharrismarketing.com
EPSRC /Energy USRG meeting
by Graeme Earl
EPSRC presentations on:
- Energy Overview – Dr Jason Green
- Renewables – Dr Neil Bateman
- Demand Reduction/Cities & Energy – Dr David Holtum
- Transport – Dr Nick Cook
- Digital – Dr Jason Green
The Big Digital Debate (Google Central Saint Giles)
by Graeme Earl
The internet has changed the economy â and our lives â for good. Over the last decade the internet economy has been a key driver of growth and jobs. Today, Britain leads the world on ecommerce, spending more and exporting more than anyone else. By 2015, the internet economy is forecast to rise to 10% of UK GDP.
But while the internet economy is a powerhouse of growth for the UK, creative industries, from film-makers to newspapers, are under more pressure than ever before to make the web pay for their content.
The result is an explosion of innovation in high-quality online content. Great content is being delivered in new ways through platforms like Netflix or iTunes to new fast-growing formats like Kindle or tablets. But what are the models of innovation that will help high-quality providers grow?
Different players are betting on different models: advertising-driven, or subscription-based. But can either approach succeed?
And consumer demands are changing too â with news becoming quicker, faster and fewer than 140 characters. And with the bulk of the worldâs online videos just a few minutes long how will what we think of as high-quality content evolve in the future?
Details at:Â http://biginnovationcentre.com/Events/7/The-Big-Digital-debate
Another great #digitalsurrey event
September 22, 2011
by Lisa Harris
It was good to catch up with mobile supremo Jane Vincent from the University of Surrey at Digital Surrey last night. The topic was recent developments in mobile, presented by Jon Bishop, Head of Social Media at PayPal UK (@jonin60seconds). Jonâs slides are available on Slideshare and a detailed review of his talk was very quickly posted by Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit)
The purpose of this post is to flag up some points arising from listening to Jon, that could be pursued in a research project by Jane and myself as a sequel to our investigation from a few years back of the role of mobile communication in e-government. We suggested in this paper that mobile phones may offer the most viable electronic channel through which to encourage large-scale take-up of online public services, but âm-governmentâ would take a significant amount of time to become a reality unless there was a substantial change in social practices.
It was clear from Jonâs fascinating discussion of mobile payments in Africa that the developed world has a lot to learn from successful services developed in Kenya.
In the UK, mobiles have become even more central to peopleâs lives and business is clearly waking up to the marketing potential of location based services. But effective interaction with government services via mobile looks no closer than it did back in 2007.
The Digital Surrey community are by definition enthusiastic adopters of new developments in technology, but Iâm not sure that the general population is quite ready for NFC and QR codesâŠand as Jon noted, 76% of websites are still not optimised for mobile devices.
Infrastructure issues still remainâŠjust try staying connected while travelling by train.
And are smartphones really that smart? My BlackBerry (a recent model) takes forever to simply load a website, and if password access is required, forget it. I certainly wonât be using it to buy anything with. Perhaps a âhype v realityâ project might be a useful exerciseâŠ
Many thanks to Jon, Abigail and the rest of the Digital Surrey team for laying on great weather and free beer, as well as an informative and entertaining evening! For information about upcoming events, check out the website
Originally published on www.lisaharrismarketing.com
Book Review: The Digital Scholar by Martin Weller
September 22, 2011
by Lisa Harris
Iâm sure that regular readers and contributors to Martinâs blog will be delighted with this book. Although he takes care to be objective throughout the text, its subtitle should read something like âwake up and smell the coffeeâ. The real challenge will be getting the book onto the radar (and from there into the practice) of university staff who are still operating along more traditional lines despite massive environmental change.
Martin begins by reflecting on how his research process has changed since writing his last book just 6 years ago, which very much concurs with my own experience:
· Increased quantity of digital content available
· Advice and input from members of his social network
· Wider range of information sources drawn upon (blogs, video, tweets etc)
· Digital files of whatever type are easily sharable and accessible to any interested party, opening up research to new audiences and contributors.
Some key points for me from the book are:
The growth of âgood enoughâ technology such as skype or netbooks (as examples of the classic Christensen model of disruptive innovation) which despite lacking in refinement meet a mass market need for next to no cost â and consequently can displace more âprofessionalâ products and services almost by stealth.
How to navigate the ongoing tensions between the established order and the new possibilities offered by developments in technology? For example, while learning from online resources and a global network of peers and experts offers a compelling alternative to a traditional lecture, the role of universities in providing well recognised social and accreditation functions is more difficult to replicate.
Interesting lessons from the experiences of other industries such as music and newspapers which have struggled to deal with developments in technology. Martin considers how traditional notions of scholarship (Boyerâs categories of discovery, integration, application and teaching) are challenged by the digital age and these aspects provide a framework for the chapter structure.
Worryingly, new researchers are not maximising the potential of new technologies in research. This can be explained by university reward systems which are driven by a conservative and narrow viewpoint of what constitutes âqualityâ. The consequence is that ânew entrants are encouraged to be conservative while the reinterpretation of practice and exploration is left to established practitionersâ â 180 degrees away from most industries where âfresh sets of eyesâ are encouraged to re-energise an organisation by challenging established practices.
In todayâs world where information is abundant and shareable and global networks of expertise and support are accessible, the limiting factors for the individual learner are time and attention. Developing effective strategies for dealing with managing this are critical. (For example, I have switched off Tweetdeck in order to finish writing this post!)
Trying to protect traditional models of academic practice are unlikely to succeed (see newspapers and music) â Martin notes how students or conference participants will circumvent attempts at control, for example by googling for free alternatives to a set textbook, or watching more dynamic video presentations of a particular lecture topic online, or criticising a module on Facebook in a far more direct way than they would do on an official course feedback form.
I very much enjoyed the book, and as a âcall to actionâ I hope its messages get the attention that they deserve J
Originally published on www.lisaharrismarketing.com
Reflections on the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) Conference #PLE_SOU
July 22, 2011
by Lisa Harris
Last week Hugh Davis, Su White and I hosted the 2nd International PLE Conference in the brand new Life Sciences Building at the University of Southampton.
The event provided a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas and experiences around the development and implementation of PLEs, including the design of such environments and the sociological and educational issues that they raise. There were around 90 visitors from all over Europe and as far away as New Zealand and Pakistan.
The event included a number of innovative features:
Un-Keynote sessions in âFishbowlâ formats: a small group of participants move in and out of chairs in the centre of the room when they wish to contribute directly to the debate. This enables the whole audience to experience a lively and intense discussion that is facilitated by the presenter.
Bring Your Own Laptop: for practical real time participation in a specific topic.
Speakers Corner: a time and place is announced for informal discussions on a particular theme.
Pecha Kucha: a simple presentation format where you show 20 images each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically so the presenter has to be concise and stay on track ï
During the event, a number of additional useful tools also emerged. Standouts for me were:
Scoop.it (via @pgsimoes) which is a curation service that allows you to find things that interest you and gather them all into one place or showcase on your blog
Packrati.us (via @torresk) = Twitter + Delicious. It automatically saves tweets or retweets with a url to your Delicious account
Debategraph (via @thanassis_t) enables communities to visualise, synthesise and evaluate contributions from its members and facilitate constructive dialogue around the issues raised.
We had an active backchannel including Tony (@aeratcliffe) who stayed up all night in Canada two nights running to watch the livestream and contribute via Twitter. There were some interesting combinations of online and offline communication. During the first unkeynote, two backchannel participants from different countries were introduced to each other via Twitter by a delegate in the room. On another occasion, delegates moved from the café area into the conference room part way through a session, intrigued by the content of tweets coming from inside the room.
A big THANK YOU is due to all the tech support guys from iSolutions who enabled high speed *reliable* wifi connections (how rare is that?!), live streaming and video capture of sessions (including contributions via Second Life and Skype).
You can watch opinions and insights from presenters and participants , read presentation slides on Slideshare (thanks to David Delgado), see photos on Flickr and read full papers.
Twitter provided some great feedback (and speculation about the location of PLE2012!) ï
Originally published on www.lisaharrismarketing.com
Web Science Conference in Koblenz
June 22, 2011
by Lisa Harris
Just back from a great Web Science event in Koblenz. Social network analysis was by far the most dominant theme, and the full selection of papers can be accessed here.
Where were the business peeps though? A commercial perspective on some of these great ideas would have been very useful. For example, Karolin Kaplerâs excellent presentation titled âsocial media as a new social fetishâ has significant relevance to marketers tempted to evaluate the impact of Facebook communities on the basis of âlikesâ. Karolin discussed the trend of âinterpassivityâ where users substitute an online action for a ârealâ one â for example, setting up an impressive selection of RSS feeds does not mean that any of them are actually read, or âlikingâ a particular cause may not necessarily lead to a charitable donation. Businesses who are currently paying out cash or other benefits for âlikesâ on their page ought to bear this phenomenon in mindâŠ
For a tweet-sized flavour of the conference, check out the Alchemist analysis
And the Rhine boat trip was fabulous J
Originally published on www.lisaharrismarketing.com
Psychology leads multidisciplinary research project
by Graeme Earl
A project to use cutting edge mobile phone technology in behavioural change interventions is the subject of a ÂŁ1.5 million grant from EPSRC, one of just four funded from 144 responses to the original call. Professor Lucy Yardley (Psychology) led the bid for âUBhave: ubiquitous and social computing for positive behaviour changeâ, which will build on the success of LifeGuide, an ESRC funded project that allows researchers to easily and flexibly create and modify internet-delivered interventions.
The new funding will develop systems to use mobile phone technology and knowledge of virtual communities to sense the location, activity levels, company and mood of participants to trigger real-time interventions to change their behaviour. For example, participants in the weight management pilot may be sent menu plans when the systems detect they are close to a âtrigger pointâ by identifying people they are with, the time of day, and their mood.
Lucy Yardley comments: âOur project will change the way you do behaviour change interventions. Historically, these have involved asking people what they have done and what they are planning to do, but we know that doesnât work very well. We will be measuring what people really are doing. We are trying to be with them to intervene at the time they need us.â
The project is a joint bid with ECS, Cambridge and other Universities and will generate unprecedented quantities of data on participant behaviour. There is opportunity for involvement from across the faculty, with S3RI already being coinvestigators, and anyone interested in using digital support for behaviour change is encouraged to contact Lucy on L.Yardley@soton.ac.uk.
Further details:Â http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/research/projects/782
Digital Economy All Hands Meeting – Digital Futures (Nottingham) 11.12.2010
Following the success of the UK eScience All Hands Meetings, we are pleased to announce the inaugural All Hands Meeting devoted to the Digital Economy. The Digital Economy involves the novel design or use of information and communication technologies to help transform the lives of individuals, society or business. This is a fundamentally multi-disciplinary challenge, requiring input from areas including, but not limited to, the arts and humanities, economic and social scientists, medical sciences, in addition to computing, engineering and physical sciences, with the potential to have radical impact on many sectors (for example, transport, healthcare and the creative industries) and societal concerns (for example, quality of life, social and digital inclusion and sustainability). The UK, through RCUK, has invested significantly in this area over the last year with the creation of a number of Digital Economy Research Hubs, Doctoral Training Centres, community projects and other research grants, with a total investment of around ÂŁ120m.
A key goal of the programme is to create a community in the UK that is capable of world class, leading research in the Digital Economy and one that produces trained researchers with the necessary cross-disciplinary skills to have real impact in this area. This Digital Futures conference is a key event designed to encourage the development of this community. The emphasis of this event will be on community building and discussion, with the overall theme of digital futures.