[iDC] Notworking online collaboration in science and education

[Kimberly De Vries]

Danica,

I have been struggling with these same issues at my own school, where we are
just getting to the point of most faculty finally putting syllabi online in
Blackboard.  I'm yelping from the periphery that really they ought to give
wikis and blogs, or maybe del.icio.us a try, and not just in class, but in
their own work.

I find that lack of time is indeed the main reason given for not trying and
using all  (or any) of the available tools.  But based on conversations with
my colleagues, the issue is not how much time is needed to use the tools
(and so changing the tools may make little difference).

Rather, many people don't have time to rethink their teaching practice, or
their creative/intellectual practice in order to take the new tools into
account.  I was similarly reluctant until personal reasons, time and money
all coincided sufficiently to make my spending that time worthwhile.  In
retrospect I wish I'd been a little quicker off the mark, but it has
required a really substantial investment of time on top of my regular work.

Now I'm also trying to find ways to help my colleagues take advantage of the
resources available and I've decided that a Freirean approach has the best
chance of success.  By that I mean that rather than telling them they need
to this that and the other, I'm trying to organize a series of workshops in
which I start by showing them what others have done, and then try to help
them think about what would enhance the teaching or research they are
already doing rather than requiring them to make big changes.  Then I hope
(pending funding) over a year to keep the workshops going so that about 20
people who really commit can develop something they will actually use--and
they'd get a small stipend for participating, and assistance in preparing
something about their project for publication.

Will that do the trick?  I don't know, but just sending links and
cheer-leading, and even offering a little money alone have so far failed to
get us anywhere here at CSU Stanislaus...

And, If anyone has tried anything that has really worked well, please share!

Best wishes,

Kim

On 10/6/07, Danica Radovanovic <danica.radovanovic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you Tania for mentioning Lenoir's article. It is good primer how
> net/not working in scientific
> and academic institutions can be changed, as you described, by adjusting
> the content
> (interesting, appealing projects) and the software (new CMS with
> personalized interface).
>
> Indeed, I agree with you on academic gate-keeping of research papers,
> online databases from broader
> scientific audience, but as you have mentioned situation is changing and I
> can observe from real practice
> and participate in projects of open access/archiving or self-publishing of
> the authors involved in science, art,
> technical documentation, etc. Seems that situation varies from different
> geographical spots, economy, education
> system and other factors of a country.
>
> Tania gave great reference of US research institutes and developing their
> own collaborative networking platform,
> and I would like to get back to the topic of net/notworking, above
> mentioned, especially within science communities
> on international level (for example: idea of 'within Europe there is
> eConsortia with 50 members countries
> and each country has its micro online science community').
> .
> What I would like to find out (more in depth) is what makes that online
> (academic, scientific) community
> interactive, interesting and useful?
> iDC list is also 'micro' online community with own intern communication
> form.
> What makes online community with its users or/and coordinators/moderators
> more active, networking and not being idle?
> I have three basic components: (interesting) Content, Users, eMarketing.And managing of course.
>
> What would be yours beside these three? Some ideas?
>
>
> And the second related topic to think about:
> Almost every institute, university, eConsortia, library,   or edu/sci.
> center has online community and online community manager, person who
> manages community, blogs, wikis, forum, listservs, etc.
> In other words, person (online community manager) who is behind the
> virtual door of community (either micro or macro), should
> coordinate/motivate individuals from different countries/backgrounds,
> 'train', teach them through eTutorials or other methods to use existing
> tools so contribute to community, for the future expansion of them building
> their own micro- online community incorporated into larger one.
> How would you inspire other professionals involved in science and
> education to use web 2.0 applications as a tool for social networking and
> their own work? They cannot say 'lack of time' as from Tania's primer, as
> it is (in some cases) incorporated in their work.
> How to motivate, teach and guide people from diversity of culture,
> education (some of them are, e.g., intimidated by using 'new tools', web
> 2.0 applications or using ICT's in general or are not good in English,
> etc.)?
>
> Thanks,
> Danica
>
>
> On 10/4/07, Tania Goryucheva <tangor2 at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you, Danica,  for sharing your experience and concerns.
> >
> > This reminded me of a quite interesting article by Timothy Lenoir
> > "Making Studies in New Media Critical" published in "Media Art
> > Histories" edited by Oliver Grau. The article basically reports
> > about  a project, involving few US research institutes, which was set
> > up to develop a new media platform to foster collaborative forms of
> > scientific research, documentation, knowledge share, public awareness
> > etc in the domain of nanotechnology. It has a very interesting
> > approach from the methodological point of view, though I brought it
> > up as a reference to comment on the raised by Danica issues of
> > collaborative action/non-action, networking/not-working.
> >
> > As the author and also developer of the project himself points out,
> > despite the common approval of the idea, the actual participation of
> > the scientific community in the project at the early stage, when it
> > was launched and tools were ready to use, did not take off. When
> > people were asked why don't they use it, the typical answer was -
> > "lack of time".
> >
> > It's interesting how the developers responded to encountered
> > unwillingness of scientists to participate in somebody else's
> > program. For example, they tried to adjust the software to
> > communication patterns of people, by adding a special e-mail feature
> > (apparently most of people are more eager to communicate and exchange
> > with information via e-mail rather than web-sites). But particularly,
> > which I find also strikingly symptomatic, integration of tools for
> > personal profiles updating and their representation within academic
> > networks with advance tracking system, increased participation
> > significantly. The motivation is pretty obvious here.
> >
> > Though later in the text T. Lenoir writes that within few months
> > preceding his article, the  climate had changed, and scientific
> > community had become more concerned about the issues raised by the
> > project, he also mentions in this regard that institutional
> > authorities (NIH? and National Nanotechnology Initiative) "mandated"
> > top-down to include "societal and ethical considerations" into
> > research frameworks.
> >
> > It would be interesting also to put the question of academic
> > collaboration and networking into the perspective of the relation of
> > academic world to public sphere. If you think, for example, how
> > academia, academic publishers particularly, elaborately guard
> > academic papers, publications, journals, preventing the open public
> > access to them by means of ridiculous fees and all kinds of multiple
> > gates-keeping online systems, usually pretty inconveniently designed
> > from the user perspective. (not to mention copyright enslavery,
> > restricting authors from dissemination of their own texts
> > independently, or commercial patenting of the knowledge whose
> > production is initially funded by public money)
> >
> > It looks like the internet, which is an efficient new media
> > embodiment, or extension, of public sphere with all meanings
> > attached, is treated by academic institutional world still
> > predominantly as the tool for internal purposes, self promotion and
> > knowledge policing rather than for efficient inter-cultural
> > information exchange and productive knowledge dissemination. There
> > are of course progressive projects and initiatives happening, and
> > climate is  indeed changing, but still on the whole it does not fully
> > match neither needs of society nor technological potential.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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