Use of ICT to Improve Education and Research Networks
1. ICT to Improve Research and
Education Networks
Greig Krull
Saide
Quality Assurance in Higher Education
25 April 2013
2. Agenda
• New modalities of teaching, learning and research
• Accessibility of local research content
• A differently skilled generation of scholars
• Impact of ICT on global higher education and research
• Alignment of ICT strategy with institutional strategy
• ICT Research Networks in Africa
3. Value of Openness (open content, data, and
resources), Transparency, Easy Access to Data and Information
Massively open online courses are being widely explored as alternatives
and supplements to traditional university courses
Workforce demands skills from graduates that are more often acquired
from informal learning experiences than in universities
Interest in using new sources of data for personalizing the learning
experience and for performance measurement
Role of educators continues to change due to the vast resources that are
accessible to students via the Internet
Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid
learning, and collaborative models
Key Trends in Higher Education
The NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition
4. Staff training lags behind while digital media literacy continues its rise
as a key skill in every discipline and profession
Emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and
researching outpace sufficient and scalable modes of assessment
Too often it is education’s own processes and practices that limit
broader uptake of new technologies
Demand for personalized learning is not adequately supported by
current technology or practices
Academics not using technologies for teaching and learning or
organising research
Significant Challenges
Johnson et al (2013)
5. ICTs in Higher Education Areas
Research Teaching
Administration
6. The Charge of Openness
• Open Courses
• Open Research
• Open Educational Resources
• Open Access publishing
Open Education
Based on digital
content, which can include
debates, video, text, audio, f
orums etc
Resources are shared via a
global network, both
technical and social
Weller (2011: 98)
7. Impacts of ICT in Research Networks
• Gain recognition
• Communicate your research to a wider audience
• Increase the visibility of your work
• Grow your networks
Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012:2)
10. Access and Impact of Research
Access Points
Web searching
Citation Tracking
Assessment Services
Alternative Metrics
- Bookmarks, blogs, tweets etc
Examples
http://scholar.google.com
http://scholar.google.com
Web of Knowledge; Scopus (subscription)
Altmetric (subscription); Impact Story
(free); ReaderMeter
Goodier and
Czerniewicz
(2012)
12. Professional / Academic Site Profiles
• LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com)
• Academia.edu (www.academia.edu)
• ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net) – mainly Sciences
• Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com)
• Slide Share (www.slideshare.net)
Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012)
13.
14.
15. Think about…
• What professional / academic profile services are you using?
• Which do you actually use and why?
• What are your colleagues at your institution or other
institutions using?
• Do you have an easily accessible, comprehensive list of your
publications online?
17. Openness for your media
Media Examples
Video YouTube
Vimeo
Image Flickr
Picasa
Presentations Slideshare
Prezi
Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012)
18. Improving availability of your outputs
• Create or maintain your online presence
• Use your university repository or website
• Archive – put online what you can
• Use discipline-specific repositories
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search
_engines
• Change the way you publish, move to open access
– Directory of Open Access Journals www.doaj.org
• Become “open”
• Take metadata seriously
Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012)
19. Self-archiving
• Put online all your outputs that you can
• Placing an article or version thereof on your own website or
institutional repository
• Check publisher copyright agreement
– Sherpa Romeo (www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo)
Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012)
21. Manage and Share Research
• CiteULike (www.citeulike.org)
• Mendeley (www.mendeley.com)
• Dropbox
• Google Drive
Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012)
22. Research and Education Networks
• Promote and advance continuous communication,
collaboration, knowledge creation and exchange
• Obtain cheaper and more bandwidth and share research
facilities
• National Level (NRENs) e.g. SANReN, TENET
www.sanren.ac.za
23. SANReN
• South African National Research Network (SANReN)
• Government approach to cyberinfrastructure
• Ensure successful participation of South African
researchers in global knowledge production
• High-speed network dedicated to research traffic and
research into research networking and broadband
infrastructures
www.sanren.ac.za
26. ICT Strategy
• Must link to Institutional Strategy
• Vision and commitment of the leadership to deploying ICTs
• Require strong institutional policy (resource allocation)
• Major financial investment needed
Challenges
• Lack of institutionalised incentives for academic staff to engage
with technology
• Limited ICT infrastructure remains a major barrier
• Actual implementation of the strategy
28. Conclusions
• Consider your digital literacy skills
• Continuous professional development (lifelong learning)
• Maintain your online presence
• Promote Sharing!!!!!
• Make your outputs available
• Communicate and Connect
• Make use of networks
29. Acknowledgements
• Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Estrada, V., Freeman, A., and
Ludgate, H. (2013). NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition.
Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
• Goodier, S. and Czerniewicz, L. (2013). Academics' online presence
guidelines: A four-step guide to taking control of your visibility. OpenUCT
Initiative.
• Kietzmann, J., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. and Silvestre, B. (2011). Social
media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social
media. Business Horizons. Pages 241-251
• Weller, M. (2011). The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming
Scholarly Practice. London: Bloomsbury.
• SANREN www.sanren.ac.za
New Media Consortium (NMC) – international community of educational technology experts – research looks at impact of educational technology globally in next 5 yearsOpenness – without barrier to access or interaction, remixableMOOCs – High profileSkills – communication, critical thinking – self-directed related to personal goalsAnalytics – monitor progressResources – always connected, who is expertModels – using technology
Training – rare in skills and techniques, more about thinkingApplying citation based metrics to social mediaLimit – seen as outside role of researcher or educator to experiment with technologiesPractice- more of one-size fits all, but very earlyLack training, time, expectation
Data processing - Increases in bandwidth and computing power available have made it possible to conduct complex calculations on large data sets Link researchers globally - Greater access to academic resources, greatly enriching research possibilities, Link researchers globallyDigital searching - online full text databases and digital research libraries + Google, Wikipedia Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) - Content dissemination and student support, Online AssessmentGrowing interest in the social networking in education working sites, wikis, communication tools and folksonomiesEarly uptake included systems for: admission and records, examination and transcripts, finance and management informationBetter and increased access to services and informationMIS to support strategic decision-making and policy implementation;
Access - Publish cheaply and quickly onlineAlso Open Data
Keeping in contact with colleagues and collaboratorsResearch needs to be found to be readIncrease citations
Communities/Groups – engagement in communitiesIdentify/Presence – identify you as a scholar, your visibilityReputation – standing and extent of influenceConnections – relevance and appeal of your work for othersConversations – engaging with others and others with youSharing – allow others to exchange and distribute your information
Assessment services – search for publicationsBookmarks in mendeley etc
Profile – present scholarship, research interests, publications, teaching resources and achievementsImportant to keep up to date
Linked in professional asite – jobs, groups, discussion, connections
Academia.edu aimed specifically at Academics. Your can find papers on the web associated with your name. Add CV, presentations, resources, blogs, websites.
Many social media toolsTwitter – link to articles, conferences, follow academic tweetersFacebook – combine personal and professional, beware of privacy
No longer just articles to share – various formats, think about copyright
Open Access – visibility, opportunity to useMetadata – locate information, describe – makes it easier to find, adding tags, keywords etc
Build staff capacity in the areas of ICT procurement and contracting
Sharing pages and bookmarksDiigo – bookmark pages, highlight, annotateDelicious – save the links you want to go to later – not have to struggle through bookmarksBitlyScoopit – share in magazine format
Cite – stores papers and citations not links
Ubuntunet Alliance – REN for Africa, support NRENSTENET - TERTIARY EDUCATION AND RESEARCH NETWORK OF SOUTH AFRICA