The Ed Techie

The ethics of digital scholarship

I was asked to give a presentation at the Higher Education Academy summit on ethics and teaching last week, from a digital scholarship perspective. Being a chap of low morals and vague ethics, it was interesting to consider digital scholarship purely from this angle. Like much of educational technology or open education, the tendency is often to promote it as an unqualified good, but, inevitably, it's a bit more complicated than that.

I started by asking the question "What is teaching?" As well as being about imparting knowledge, developing skills it is also a process of enculturation, particularly in higher education. That is why going to university is such a life-event, because you are often taken from one culture, and brought into another. This obviously has huge ethical implications anyway, but the question I wanted to explore was what if that culture has changed, but the enculturation process hasn't?

If we want to force students to engage with aspects of digital, or open, scholarship, there are a number of ethical considerations. Firstly, to what extent is it right to force people to operate in the open? As George Siemens reminds us, learning is a vulnerable process, so increasing that vulnerability has ethical considerations. While we like to look at the successful communities created by courses such as DS106, Phonar, Rhizo14, etc. there are many learners who these approaches don't work for, and who feel excluded from what seems like an online clique. 

Even things that seem straightforward ethically are complicated on closer examination. Open access can be argued to be a moral approach, partly because it is funded by Government money. But what about a lot of teaching research that is, in effect, funded by student fees? Similarly, should that content, paid for by students be released openly? And conversely, is it unethical not to use the best OERs around for a subject you are teaching and rely just on your own notes?

My overall argument was that there are ethical considerations if we want to push a more digital scholarly enriched curriculum, for example should undergraduates release their final year research data openly, and do they understand issues such as deanonymisation? But as importantly there are ethical considerations for NOT adopting such approaches, particularly if these are the types of skills and cultural values that students should be developing to be successful citizens, employees, researchers, or whatever. That has always been the argument of higher education, that skills such as critical thinking, analysis, reasoning etc are good to develop for the benefit of the individual and society more generally. There are digital, networked flavours of all these skills too.

You'll see, in typical ethics fashion, I didn't really come to an answer, just lots more questions. The slidedeck is below.

 

The Ethics of Digital Scholarship from Martin Weller

Battle for Open webinar

As part of Open Education week, the OER Research Hub organised some webinars. One was around my Battle for Open idea/forthcoming book. It was my first attempt to condense the book into a presentation. The areas I covered were: the roots of open education; Open access publishing; OERs; MOOCs; Open scholarship; The Silicon Valley narrative; some warnings, and conclusions.

For the 4 areas of openness (OERs, MOOCs, OA and open scholarship) I tried to set out the success of the open approach and also the key areas of battle. 

You can watch/listen to the webinar here. The slidedeck is below:

The Battle for Open from Martin Weller

Open scholarship, social media & libraries

I gave a presentation to a conference of university librarians in Aarhus, Denmark last week. Social media and the role of the librarian was their theme. I won't pretend to be an expert on libraries, but taking Shelby Foote's quote that "a university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library" you could argue that the factors affecting higher ed are the same for libraries.

The talk was kind of a cross over between my Digital Scholar book and the new Battle for Open one. My argument was that openness represents a key direction for libraries, and that social media plays a vital role in this. I then set out four such areas: MOOCs, OERs, Open Access and Open Scholarship, and the role of social media in each. You can view social media as the glue binds these, or the substrate, that underlies them. For instance, social media creates a pressure for open access, since people want to share articles, and there is no point tweeting a link to an article that asks someone to pay $50 to view it.

The talk went well (I think) and provoked some good discussion. Anyway, the slidedeck is below:

 

Open scholarship, social media & libraries from Martin Weller

Academics and online impact

I presented at the OU's communications conference yesterday. I was asked to talk about how you create an impact online. I'm always a bit cautious about giving advice on this, as I didn't (don't) have a plan, so it's all been trial and error and messing about. But I guess that is my advice - just get started and try stuff out, don't wait to go on the "Creating academic impact online with blogs" course, just do it.

I was lucky to share the stage with two great OU colleagues. Meg Barker is an expert in relationships, and has a good blog associated with her book Rewriting the Rules. Natalie Starkey's expertise is in comets and asteroids and does a lot of TV work and writing for the Guardian, as well as blogging. I went last, so the previous two subjects had been sex and space. I then had to follow up with... educational technology. Do you ever get the feeling you made the wrong career choice? 

Anyway, my presentation is below. I make the point that I don't really know what all the stats mean associated with blogs, but they must mean something, right? 

Academics & online impact from Martin Weller

What do all these numbers mean?

<image - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmorgan8186/5946796450/>

Bloggers, or anyone who maintains an online profile, have an ambiguous relationship with visitor stats and data. On the one hand we like to dismiss them as meaningless, but then secretly feel chuffed when we can outscore someone. I've tried to promote them as one way of measuring impact, but with the caveat that context is important. For instance, if you're a blogger in a relatively obscure area, such as Barry Town football club, then your range is limited and unlikely to compare in absolute numbers with, say, a blog reviewing Apple products.

I recently passed 300,000 views on this blog, over about 700 posts - that's not as exciting as it might sound as I've been going since about 2006. My friend Liam says he gets about 200K a year on his mobile tech blog. Here are some more stats from tools I use:

• Slideshare - 220,000 views over 6 years on 59 presentations
• Blipfoto - 92,000 views over 420 entries
• Flickr - 49,000 views over 1,140 photos
• Citations on academic articles - 1,620 (according to Google)

The first thing to ask is how reliable is this data? Tony can probably answer that better than me, but I think the blog traffic doesn't take into people who subscribe via RSS, so in that case underestimates. At the same time it does include my own obsessive self-clicking, so that may even out. It may also include bot traffic which doesn't really mean anything at all.

But if we take the data as accurate for now, the more interesting question is what does it mean? I would like to make the case that 300,000 visits to my blog equals 300,000 careful, considered reading of my posts, but the data doesn't back that up. Google analytics tells me that my average visit duration is 57 seconds. I suppose that is just about the time it takes to read a blog post, but it probably doesn't compare well with time taken on reading academic articles. My bounce rate is high too, at around 85%, so people come in, read a post and then go elsewhere, but I think that's fairly typical for blogs, I'm not providing a newspaper where you want people to go from one feature to another.

Blipfoto probably has the highest return on audience per post, and does better than Flickr. This provides a nice comparison as I have linked my blipfoto account to twitter, so it automatically tweets when I post, but I haven't done this for Flickr (which I think of more as a repository). I get 219 views per post on blipfoto versus 42 on Flickr, so we could say that the effect of linking to twitter is a 5-fold increase in traffic (if that's what you want). But I would say that Blipfoto is the most personal of these tools and the least connected to my professional life, so I wouldn't argue for any professional impact here.

What I think we're struggling with here is the newness of all this. What is the value of a slideshare view versus a download of a paper? Is there a conversion rate? I've tried to keep a foot in both the traditional camp, through publications, and the new forms of dissemination, so these figures might offer a reasonable comparison between the two. Looking at my citations you could crudely say that one citation is worth about 200 blog views (or vice versa).

However, it's probably futile to try and measure these things. It's not as if citations are a particularly reliable metric anyway, so we shouldn't use those as a currency to convert everything else into. It will also vary widely depending on discipline, and individual. And more importantly, we already have plenty of systems that our career path requires us to game, so why invent more?

Make no mistake, turning altmetrics into performance measures linked to real things like promotion, job security, money would have negative effects. For example, there is a correlation between number of posts and views, so if I was purely chasing the numbers I should post more often, regardless of quality (what quality?), or I might think I could get better numbers from splitting this post into three separate ones. This already happens in traditional outputs, I remember someone advising me not to write books because for the same effort I could have 5 REFable publications. This return on investment view ignores the internal validity of the form. I also tend to think of blogging as a social function, connecting with friends and peers, but if I'm linking it to direct returns then it's another example of monetising relationships that Brian is so uneasy about.

But when I've tried to make the case for digital scholarship and tenure, it is something along these lines that I want to argue - that the impact you see here is as valid as the impact we have chosen to recognise and measure. So we need to start thinking about what these numbers do mean for academics - we just need to make sure we don't turn them into the thing itself, with all of us chasing and parading numbers. But maybe that's inevitable as soon as you shine a light on them, in which case, ignore this post.

My new favourite open scholarship example

When I give talk on digital or open scholarship I often end by highlighting the unpredictable benefits that arise, usually by pointing to some examples of my own practice. I have a new favourite which isn't about me, so thought I'd share.

Katy Jordan is my PhD student at the OU (although none of which follows is at all attributable to my supervision, Katy did it all on her own inititiative). Her research is examining academic networks on sites such as Academia.edu. She is a whiz at data visualisation, and also a serial MOOCer. So she took the Infographics MOOC earlier this year. For her final project she decided to plot MOOC completion rates on an interactive graph, and blogged her results. This was picked up by Phil Hill over on e-literate who blogged and tweeted it.

MOOC completion rates are a subject of much interest of course, and so Katy's post went viral, and has become the de-facto piece to link to on completion rates, which almost every MOOC piece mentions somewhere. She tells me it was even mentioned in Private Eye.

I like it because it's a good example of how openness in different forms spreads out and has unexpected impact. The course needed to be open (or rather, free) for Katy to take it, she was at liberty to share her results, and did so as part of her general practice. The infographic relies on people openly sharing data about MOOC completions, and the format of her work means others can interrogate that data and suggest new data points. The open network then spreads the message because it is openly available. I've encouraged her to write it up as an article, because people like a definitive piece to point to, but really it's a good case of why new dissemination and research methods trump older ones (for this instance). 

It's hard to predict or cause these sequences of events (being picked up e-literate was key I think), and so you can't tell people this will definitely occur, but a closed approach anywhere along the chain would have prevented it. We'll never know the lost opportunities of closed approaches, so we should highlight the benefits of open ones.

It's kinda personal

Jim Groom and Tim Owens have been running a Domain of One's Own project at UMW. And to my delight they've kicked it off with a staff development program based around reading my book. I think all universities should do this!

You can see some of the posts here. As the author it's been very interesting to see some of the reactions from what I guess are atypical readers. I think most of the people who read my book are kind of interested in the subject, so there's an element of preaching to the converted (although I try not to do any preaching). But with Jim's faculty I guess they're people who wouldn't have read it. And the book brings out different concerns and reactions in them, many of which hadn't occurred to me. This going beyond your usual readership is a salutary lesson for any writer, and has made me rethink some of the way I write.

In his post Jim comments:

"I understand it would be impolitic for Martin to mention this in the book given his audience, but for me that is the real radical line of reasoning for open scholarship—a clear picture of just who the people behind the ideas ideas are, and what “such people” represent more tangibly as human beings."

I don't know about impolitic, I just forgot to mention it. Whenever I do sessions on social media for educators I always address this point. Getting the balance right is difficult. Jim is absolutely correct, it's the personal that leads to engagement, and this is a very different voice from the objective one of academic papers (which is not to say it's better or worse, just different). So you need to put an element of personal in there, the people I follow on blogs and twitter don't just broadcast cold ideas. But having said that, one of the mistakes I think people make when they first start blogging is to go too personal. I'm not particularly interested if you went to the cinema last night and the film was quite good and then you had a curry. 

So It's about that bridging between personal and professional. Now if you went to the cinema, and had a revelation about open access while watching a 3-D slasher movie, I'm interested. I think the personal element is essential in good online presence (but that doesn't mean I want to know when you've had an argument with your spouse). Which raises the question, are there some roles where it's effectively impossible to do good social media? I think it's very difficult to be a police officer or politician or senior manager online as you end up having to sanitise every output to the point where it becomes unengaging. If you don't there are people who will use it against you. So, as you go higher up the career ladder maybe effective online presence becomes more difficult.

In Amis's The Pregnant Widow the main character finds financial success but as soon as he does, his ability to write poetry dries up. You can't have both. Maybe that's the way it goes with social media.

 

Open scholarship as resolution to the academic dilemma

There is something of a tension at the heart of the relationship between academics and the institutions that employ them. Institutions want to have academics with a high profile and external recognition. But they also want them to do work for them, as they're paying the wage. Academics want to have a high profile and external recognition, but also recognise that a good proportion of their work may need to be for the institution in roles that don't attract much of this.

Usually this balance is fairly easy to maintain, but the problem is that much of the work involved in scholarship doesn't directly benefit the institution. Consider these examples:

• Examining PhDs
• Giving keynote talks
• Being external examiner on a course
• Sitting on project advisory boards
• Reviewing papers for journals
• Being an editor, or sitting on a conference committee
• Writing journal papers

Performing many of these can come under the type of work you need to do to stay current in your field (examining PhDs is a good way of being up on research I've found), but others less so. Giving the same keynote for the tenth time might help the individual do some networking, and could possibly lead to a joint research bid, say, but the direct benefit for the institution is rather tenuous.

As an aside these are also the type of 'glue' functions that keep scholarship functioning, and operate on an unspoken reciprocity basis - eg if you don't examine PhDs then you can't expect people to do the same for you. There is a strong element of game theory here. You could indulge (or an institution could demand that its staff indulge) in selfish behaviour. This might lead to gains for you, but only if others continue to be benevolent. If everyone opts for selfish behaviour then we get the familiar tragedy of the commons - the whole system becomes unsustainable because it would be foolish to be anything other than selfish.

When times are good, this tension is less evident. But when times are tough, and staffing levels low, then this tension comes to the fore - "you can't attend this committee meeting that you're now on, because you're in Cyprus giving a keynote? But you didn't attend the last one because you were in Edinburgh doing a PhD viva."  Or, "you're teaching load has doubled, John has retired, can you take on his PhD students as well?"

Maintaining an external profile is still important to the individual (indeed, when job security is low, it becomes an increased priority as you may find yourself looking for a new post). So, how to do it when there are competing demands on your time? There are obviously lots of negotiations and ways of stressing academic credibility, etc which will vary from person to person and institution to institution. But part of the answer is also to engage in open scholarship.

This came to mind as I struggled to manage my own workload the other day (yes, time to break out the violins). In doing my workload planning for the year it became apparent that I was (as all good footballers say) committed 150%. We pretended this wasn't the case to make the figures fit, but it means there is no slack in my diary, and that's before new things such as FutureLearn come along.

I currently turn down about an invitation a week to speak at various events because I've invariably got meetings for the various OU projects I'm leading on already in the diary (ramp up the violins). I managed to write a paper before Christmas but I'm struggling to produce another one. It is a good paper I think, but I need 3 to 4 days uninterrupted to write it and put the data into order. Traditional scholarship is just very time consuming. This is a good thing, it means the outputs are (hopefully) of a high quality. 

But you may get squeezed on this, and this is where open scholarship comes in. While I haven't managed to write my paper, I have managed to produce a couple of blog posts. I can do these in a lunch time, or on a Saturday morning when I'm trying to avoid watching James Martin misuse the word literally on Saturday Kitchen. MOOCs may play into this also, if your teaching load is increased, then making courses open at least gains some external profile (although, as I am learning, it does involve a lot more work too). The same might be true of presentations shared via YouTube or Slideshare. 

So, the question that is usually asked of open scholarship type activities is "how do you find the time for all this extra stuff?" We may be seeing this inversed - how do you find the time for the traditional stuff? 

Digital scholarship, tenure & barometers

I use this blog as well as our university repository system to keep track (and shamelessly publicise) those journal article things that your grandad told you about.

I have a new article out in RUSC (the open access journal from the University of Catalonia). It has the snappy title of "Digital scholarship and the tenure process as an indicator of change in universities". You can access the PDF here through our repository, or at RUSC here.

It's an extension of some of the stuff I covered in the book, and I'm making the argument that how universities respond to the challenge of recognising digital scholarship can be taken as a barometer for how well prepared they are for dealing with the complexities of operating in a digital, networked context. Here is a quote from the conclusions:

"Recognising and rewarding digital scholarship has a significance beyond the promotion of individuals. For universities, as they seek to manage change to a digital, networked society, it acts as a strong indicator and vehicle for change.

There are two main reasons for prioritising the recognition of digital scholarship. The first is the message it sends to individuals within the university. Because they operate in an open, digital, networked manner, digital scholars are often well known in their institution (for example, many of their colleagues will read their blogs). If a well-known digital scholar struggles to get their work recognised, then it sends a message to the rest of the university that this is not the type of activity that is likely to be rewarded, with a subsequent decline in its uptake. The reverse happens if that digital scholar is rewarded; it sends the positive message that academics should engage in this type of activity.

The second reason for recognising digital scholarship is to encourage institutional innovation. For example, universities are beginning to explore the use of Facebook to support students, or the use of blogs to disseminate research findings to the public, or new models of course development based on third-party content and crowdsourcing. There are very real benefits to the institution from these approaches, such as reaching new audiences, increasing the university profile without advertising, increasing student retention through improved peer support, lowering the costs of course production, developing new research methodology, etc. But it is difficult to realise any of these institutional approaches to new media if the university does not have a solid base of digital scholarship experience to draw upon. Having a range of digital scholarship experience amongst the faculty will be the key resource in realising the change required for many universities, and an appropriate reward and tenure process acts as a means of facilitating and encouraging this."

Blogging was the best decision

I have an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I was asked to write a piece about the role of blogging in academic life. In many ways this is a tad quaint, blogging is hardly the new kid on the block (indeed it is now ripe for the X is dead meme). But maybe that's the point, it's been around long enough that we can assess its impact in real terms, and not just as the new shiny thing. My approach was to take blogging as a representative for new forms of scholarship, and how it had impacted upon my practice. 

There is nothing in it that will be a surprise to readers of this blog (it doesn't contain unusual cake recipes for instance), but it was quite nice to reflect on blogging from some position of maturity (by which I mean having been blogger for a few years now, not that I am mature, which of course, I'm not). The gist is probably in this paragraph:

In terms of intellectual fulfilment, creativity, networking, impact, productivity, and overall benefit to my scholarly life, blogging wins hands down. I have written books, produced online courses, led research efforts, and directed a number of university projects. While these have all been fulfilling, blogging tops the list because of its room for experimentation and potential to connect to timely intelligent debate. That keeps blogging at the top of the heap.