Digital Researcher 2012

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Digital Researcher 2012.

British Library 20.02.2012.

Having been placed on the waiting list for this event I was pleased to discover three days beforehand that I had managed to squeeze in as one of the 113 participants in the Digital Researcher 2012 workshop at the British Library. There were many more virtual participants via Twitter and Facebook.

Dr Tristram Hooley, event director,  set the context for the day by proposing that, whilst digital technologies in general, and social media in particular are transforming academic life, the current  evidence suggests that researchers are not using social media to its full potential due to a lack of training and development in the use of these tools. Yet there is a growing recognition that, given the social nature of the research process, recent developments in digital technologies have much to offer the research community.

The day consisted of 4 workshops: Identifying knowledge, Creating knowledge, Quality Assuring knowledge and Dissemination of knowledge of which participants were able to attend two. A flavour of the materials, tools and topics covered can be accessed from the presentations posted in advance of the sessions. I attended Identifying knowledge and Quality Assuring knowledge, which, though very different in style, were both stimulating and informative: the first about the tools which can help to meet the challenge of information overload, the second on the pros and cons of open publishing and the associated issues of intellectual property.

The highlight of the day for me was the opportunity to reconnect with Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University, who gave the keynote address to close the event. Drawing on his recent book, The Digital Scholar, itself an exemplar of the move towards open access publishing, Martin outlined how social media is impacting on many aspects of academic life, including the challenge of teaching in the attention economy, how universities adapt to a pedagogy of abundance from a pedagogy of scarcity, how digital distribution of knowledge may produce new forms of public engagement with university research.

Attending the event has given me ideas for ‘Developing the Digital Researcher’ workshops at City University London, details of which will be announced soon.

If you would like to know more then please contact me.

Neal Sumner
n.sumner@city.ac.uk

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