Leaders and followers:

communities of practice in digitally-engaged

research

Dr Ann Grand, Institute of Educational Technology Dr Anne Adams, Institute of Educational Technology

Dr Richard Holliman, Faculty of Science

Engaged research

• Survey of Open University researchers

– 2013 Vitae Careers in Research (CROS) and the Principal Investigators and

Research Leaders (PIRLS) online surveys (www.vitae.ac.uk)

– CROS (n=57); PIRLS (n=114)

• How would you define ‘public engagement with research’?

• Describe an activity involving PER

• What publics have connections with your research?

Public engagement with research

• How would you define

‘public engagement with

research’?

• Describe an activity involving

PER

• What publics have

connections with your

research?

Dissemination 51%

Collaboration 17%

Dialogue 13%

Useful 11%

Functional 6%

Negative 2%

Personal

“I enjoy giving public lectures”

Utilitarian

“I’m paid to do it”

Philosophical

“as in Habermas’s conception of the

public sphere”

Public engagement with research

• Define ‘public engagement

with research’

• Describe an activity

involving PER

• What publics have

connections with your

research?

Presenting 29%

Partnerships 20%

None 11%

Activities 10%

Schools 10%

Digital 4%

Writing 4%

Not possible 2%

Unclassifiable 10%

Presenting 29%

Partnerships 20%

None 11%

Activities 10%

Schools 10%

Digital 4%

Writing 4%

Not possible 2%

Unclassifiable 10%

Digital engagement

• Researcher interviews – Questions focussing on:

Public(s)

Processes

Participation

Performance

Purposes

Politics

Levels of engagement • “That means for each of the different … engagement levels … you have to

cater for the people that are very active, they want tools that support them in

producing stuff, getting out their blogs, editing. The people that casually do

something, they … probably have more questions than answers, they want to

raise awareness about the things they do, and so on. I think that, in general,

applies to any sort of research community; that once you go out of the core of

people that are really specialised on exactly this, and open up to the public, the

ways you communicate have to change as well.”

Interviewee 14

The fully-wired “a number of us have personal blogs,

that we blog about our work and use our

social networks … a combination of

Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, to tell the

wider community about the work that

we’re doing … [X] uses his blog as his

research journal but also as a way to

disseminate what he’s found out and get

people interested. Similarly, I have a blog

that tries to capture both my research

and teaching interests and combine

them…” Interviewee 6

The experimenter “I have a Twitter account but I’m not an

avid Twitter user. I’ve tried to use it more

and I’ve got slightly better but I wouldn’t

say it’s made any impression on the

outside world, really. I have a Facebook

account, but that’s just for keeping in

touch with my research students; it

doesn’t make any impact externally.

A colleague and I made some videos with

a little hand-held camera of the work we

did in [country] and they’re on YouTube,

where they’ve got not very many hits.

So we’ve done that, the sorts of things

we’ve been asked to do by the university

but to my knowledge, we haven’t gone

viral!”

Interviewee 13

The dabbler

“We have our individual profiles on the

Internet and our research centre has a

webpage but … … what I find difficult is

to keep them up to date myself. I learn

how to change the webpage or

something like that and a year later I

have forgotten, so it becomes ‘I’ll do it

another time’. For example wikis and

things like that, we are not so digitally

savvy, in our group.”

Interviewee 2

The unconvinced “My priority is to get on with the research,

deliver publications, further knowledge,

rather than spend all the time packaging

up a small amount of work for general

consumption.”

Interviewee 4

“People have a Twitter account,

Facebook accounts, blogs – these are

not properly monitored; there is hardly

any quality control.”

Interviewee 15

Muddling through [Name] and I muddled our way

through; it wasn’t actually that

difficult. I’m a bit of a novice at

social media, I’ve always kept my

head down out of fear of the

workload that it could generate, but

it is part of my remit in this job, I’ve

got to engage with it so I’m very

glad that [Name] is much more au

fait with that side of things than I

am. He can help me out!

(Researcher 3)

highly-wired dabbler

experimenter

I’m new!

unconvinced

A muddling community?

PI: We need to

engage with

everyone – let’s try

Co-PI: We need

a digital

engagement plan

Co-PI: Scientific

publications are the

important thing

Co-PI: How about

x tweets, y blogs

per partner?

RA: Social media

shouldn’t have

rules; it’s about

freedom to express

Project Manager: Other projects

are doing it – we should just do it!

RA: Well, I just

won’t use social

media

Co-PI: I’ve just tweeted a photo of

us talking in this room! RA: So have I

Original graphic by Dr Anne Adams

Engaging Research blog http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/per/

Engaged research

• Project seed funding

• Engaged Research Awards

• Definition of ‘engaged research’

• Changes to promotion criteria

Ann Grand ann.grand@open.ac.uk

Institute of Educational Technology

The Open University

Walton Hall

Milton Keynes

MK7 6AA

www.open.ac.uk

Engaging Research blog http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/per/?p=4654