Building and using online networks

1. Building and using online networks Elizabeth FitzGerald Institute of Educational Technology,The Open University elizabeth.fitzgerald@open.ac.uk

2. Intro This session will look at online networks and the use of social media, particularly in the context of carrying out research and of being a researcher in those environments. We will look at the pros and cons of using these systems, academic practice, the role of identity and how you might use social media as a PhD student.

3. The evolution of the web

4. Web 2.0 • Term first coined in 1999 by Tim O'Reilly/O'Reilly Media • Generally refers to: • the web as platform (i.e. using it to carry out a range of tasks such as editing, image sharing, email, which previously had to be done via different software packages) • the participatory web - editing and interacting with other people's web pages, rather than simply reading them • the web becoming a dynamic and better-organised medium http://tools.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/downloads/social-software/social-software.pdf

5. Social media • Social interaction online • Highly accessible • Scalable publishing techniques • Democratisation of knowledge content  • Evolution from consumers into content producers • Interactions moved from one-to-many to many-to-many http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

6. More comprehensive example at http://tinyurl.com/soc-media-timeline

7. Common social media principles • ‘Bottom-up' development and self-policing communities • User-generated content  • Ease of use by non-experts • Flexibility and convergence of systems • Syndication options via news feeds • Rating and tagging of content by users

8. Social networking sites (SNS) “Web-based services that allow individuals to • construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system • articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and • view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” (boyd &Ellison, 2007) boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

9. Examples of academic SNS • Academia.edu • Mendeley.com • ResearchGate.net • Less well-used sites include: • iamResearcher.com • Mynetresearch.com N.B. Interesting work being done by Katy Jordan, OU PhD student: http://iet.open.ac.uk/people/katherine.jordan research into analysis of online academic networkssee e.g. http://www.slideshare.net/katyjordan148

10. Open University sites • CloudWorks: http://cloudworks.ac.uk“A social networking site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas and designs.”Has clouds, cloudscapes and cloudstreams. • SocialLearn: http://sociallearn.open.ac.uk“A learning, sharing and social site for anyone who is interested in learning.” • Knowledge Network: http://kn.open.ac.uk“Find and share OU expertise about teaching and learning” - see http://kn.open.ac.uk/gettingstarted.cfm

11. Activity (10 mins) • What Web 2.0 or social media sites do you use? • Do you use these personally or professionally, or both? • Make lists in your groups, e.g.

12. Honeycomb framework of social media Social media is comprised of functional building blocks: • Identity: the extent to which users reveal their identities • Conversations: how users communicate with other users in a social media setting • Sharing: how users exchange, distribute, and receive content • Presence: how users can know if other users are accessible • Relationships: how users can be related to other users • Reputation: the extent to which users can identify the standing of others, including themselves • Groups: how users form communities and subcommunities Jan H. Kietzmann and Kristopher Hermkens (2011)"Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media". Business Horizons54: 241–251.

13. Properties of academic SNS • Identity: Constructing an online academic profile • Communication: Discovery and dissemination of research findings; asking and answering questions • Collaboration: Finding similar or different collaborators; supporting active research relationships

14. Activity (10 mins) • Think up 4 academic experiences or outputs/processes you might want to share, from your research • What sorts of SNS (academic or non-academic) could you use to do these? • Also consider academic experiences or outputs from your research that should you NOT share publicly (either at all, or only to a selected audience)

15. Your digital identity • Consider both your public and private identities • As academics, how much do they overlap? • How much do you want them to overlap? • Risk of over-sharing • Think about your professional persona and reputation Consider: • Having separate accounts on Facebook and other sites, for the public you and the private you • Using the same persona across different SNS to maintain continuity of identity e.g. Twitter: @R3beccaF, blog: http://r3beccaf.wordpress.com/

16. Establishing you’re you • Changing your name and/or institution can result in confusion over identity • Other people with same name as you – same or different discipline • Increasing integration between systems, plus complaints from people about inaccurate data in the cloud/limited functionality of automated aggregator means things are gradually getting better (maybe) • Ultimately, YOU need to take steps to make sure your professional identity is represented accurately online • ORCiD and ResearcherID both useful tools http://orcid.org/ http://www.researcherid.com/

17. Collaboration and dissemination tools • Online storage/hosting pre-prints of papers • ORO or other eprints repositories • Academia.edu, ResearchGate.net, ORCiD. • Personal website/blog • Conference presentations • Slideshare, Prezi • Data • Flickr, YouTube, data repositories • Information and/or publicity • Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn groups • Creating or maintaining presence • Twitter • Collaborative writing • Google Docs • Web conferencing • Skype, FlashMeeting, Elluminate N.B. Health warning attached to Microsoft Academic Search!http://academic.research.microsoft.com/

18. Other useful sites • Bamboo DiRT: http://dirt.projectbamboo.orgA registry of digital research tools for scholarly use • Google Citations: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en • Klout: http://klout.com“The Klout Score is a number between 1-100 that represents your online influence. The more influential you are, the higher your Klout Score.” • ImpactStory: http://impactstory.org“Your impact profile on the web” – metrics calculated from Google citations, Slideshare views, datasets, code etc.

19. Take-home message • Ignore social networking sites at your peril!(especially professionally – although some disciplines seem to use them less than others) • Many advantages to engaging with them, when used right • Publicising yourself • Publicising your work • Recruit participants or collaborators, share project outcomes, find an external examiner, find a job • Consider what to share, and when/how to share it • Think about your digital identity • Investigate collaboration and dissemination tools to help with your online networking activities

20. http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1337

21. Thanks for coming! Liz FitzGerald: elizabeth.fitzgerald@open.ac.uk http://elara99.wordpress.com http://open.academia.edu/LizFitzGerald http://www.slideshare.net/ejfitzgerald https://twitter.com/elara99 http://klout.com/elara99