The Researcher Online:

Making and Sharing Content

Online

Dr Helen WebsterDigital Humanities Network

University of Cambridge

Before we start...I’d like to model the digital behaviour I’m advocating!

•Feel free to livetweet #RONetwork

•Slides are online: Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/drhelenwebster/

•We’re recording the talk to create a digital artefact. We’ll be focussing on the presentation rather than discussions.

Getting StartedThis isn’t a software training session, but there is...

•... a website listing tools mentioned today and instructions http://researcheronline.wordpress.com/

•... a hands-on follow-up session on 20th February to help you get started

AimsNot to teach tools, but...

•an awareness of the ways in which social and digital media platforms can enhance and be embedded in your work as a researcher

•an understanding of the issues raised by social and digital media tools, potential pitfalls, good practice and future impacts on the profession

•an awareness of and ability to evaluate the various types of digital tool and make informed decisions about your own engagement with them in your practice

How much of what you do is shared?

•List the outputs of your work which are ever seen by others

•Who is that audience and how much impact does your sharing have?

•What are the barriers to wider impact of your work?

Thinking Digitally

•Digital

•Networked

•Open (Weller, 2012)

Traditional vs Digital models

Traditional

•Resource intensive

•Filtered

•Short-tail

•Participation limited

•Closed

Digital

•Cheap

•Unfiltered

•Long-tail

•Participation accessible

•Open

What do you produce in the course of your

work?

What to share?•What digital ‘offcuts’ do you habitually

create in the course of your work?

•What aspects of your work might you capture easily in digital format?

•What aspects of your work might be easily adapted as digital artefacts?

•What might you create specifically as a digital artefact?

Why share?

•Your own professional aims

•The Impact Agenda

•The Open Access agenda

•‘Cognitive Surplus’ (Shirky)

Potential audiences

•Colleagues and peers

•Students

•Educators

•Outreach

•Public engagement

•Knowledge exchange

•Enterprise

The basics

You need to...

1.record a digital file (a device)

2.edit the digital file (software or an app)

3.upload it to the web (a server or a cloud-based platform)

Recording

•Your computer, smartphone or tablet

•A plug-in device: webcam or microphone

•Specialist kit - a digital camera, video camera, audio recorder

Editing

•Proprietary software already be on your computer

•Purchased proprietary software (you may have access to university licensed software)

•Free, open source software

•‘Fremium’ software

Hosting

•Your own web space

•Your university’s web space (including a VLE)

•Cloud-based platforms

Sharing digital offcuts

•Documents: Scribd

•Slides: Slideshare

• Images: Flickr

•Various formats as PDFs: Academia.edu

•Bibliographies: Mendeley

•Research data and outputs: DSpace@Cambridge

Does sharing work?

How much do you need to adapt materials before they will make sense to a primary (often specific, face-to-face) audience and a secondary online (often unpredictable) audience?

Livestreaming

A webcam/microphone plus

•Ustream

•Livestream

•Justin TV

•Google hangouts

ImagesCreating and editing:

•iPhoto

•Photoshop

•some editing possible on hosting platform

Hosting:

•Flickr

AudioCreating and editing:

• Audacity

• (Mac users) Garageband

Hosting:

• Soundcloud

• Audioboo (also includes recording)

• Youtube (with an image or slideshow)

• iTunes (combined with RSS as a podcast)

VideoCreating:

• any device that records and creates video files

Editing

• Windows MovieMaker, iMovie

Hosting (and some recording and editing):

• Youtube

• Vimeo

Slide- or Screencast

Creating and editing:

• Jing

•Recording feature on Powerpoint

Hosting:

•Slideshare

•Youtube

•Screencast.com

Copyright and Copyleft

•Copyright: all rights reserved

•Creative Commons: some rights reserved

•Ethics

Principles

•Where you can, share (and share rights)

•Design for a small scale targeted group, but open to scalability and serendipity

•Lo-fi is good enough, and may be better

•Change your practice - frictionless ‘collateral damage’, not just projects

•Make sure you are permitted to share material!

Distribution and publicity strategy•How will your audience find your

outputs?

•How will you package your outputs and alert people?

•How will you manage the frequency and lifespan of your outputs?

•How will you assess and manage response to your outputs?

SerendipityHow will people find your outputs?

•Searchability and metadata

•Social network amplification

(How) will they subscribe to future outputs?

Subscribability•Keep profiles updated on various

channels

•Set up a Wordpress.com blog and link to or embed media in it

•Copy the html code from the hosting platform

•Paste into the html editor of your wordpress blog post

What could possibly go

wrong?!

Taking it further

•DSpace@Cambridge

•Cambridge University Streaming Media Service

•Cambridge University iTunesU

•Rising Stars Programme

•Cambridge Outreach team / Admissions

•Cambridge Public Engagement team

Researcher Online

http://researcheronline.wordpress.com/

Hands-on session: Wednesday 20th, 12-2pm