ICT to Improve Research and Education Networks

Greig KrullSaide

Quality Assurance in Higher Education25 April 2013

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

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

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)

ICTs in Higher Education Areas

Research Teaching

Administration

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, forums

etc

Resources are shared via a global network, both technical and social

Weller (2011: 98)

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)

Context

Communities and Groups

Identity and Presence

Reputation Connections

Conversations

Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012:2)

Kietzmann et al (2011)

www.flickr.com/photos/langwitches/3458534773/

Access and Impact of ResearchAccess PointsWeb searching

Citation Tracking

Assessment Services

Alternative Metrics - Bookmarks, blogs, tweets etc

Exampleshttp://scholar.google.com

http://scholar.google.com

Web of Knowledge; Scopus (subscription)

Altmetric (subscription); Impact Story (free); ReaderMeter

Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012)

Personal or Institutional Profiles

• Staff Profile• Department Profile• Personal Website • Blogs

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)

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?

Social Networking

Openness for your media

Media ExamplesVideo YouTube

VimeoImage Flickr

PicasaPresentations Slideshare

Prezi

Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012)

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)

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)

Curation

• Diigo.com (www.diigo.com)• Delicious (http://delicious.com) • BitLy (https://bitly.com)• Scoopit (www.scoopit.com)

Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012)

Manage and Share Research

• CiteULike (www.citeulike.org) • Mendeley (www.mendeley.com)• Dropbox• Google Drive

Goodier and Czerniewicz (2012)

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

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

SANReN

www.sanren.ac.za

African Networks

http://www.ubuntunet.net/

http://www.tenet.ac.za

http://kenet.or.ke/

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

Discussion

What does this mean for our quality assurance processes and systems?

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

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

Thank you

greigk@saide.org.za

greigk_za

Greig Krull

Discussion

www.saide.org.zawww.oerafrica.org

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