Digital Literacies considered - Digital Discourses and Subject Specialisms

work in progress
Some reflections on the Digital Literacy Workshop at ALT-C 2010 - has tag #altc2010

Considering the prospect of convincing my academic colleagues to find space for Digital Literacy in the curriculum would most likely be taking on the task single-handed of pushing water uphill. If on top of that I was asked to devise an institutional strategy which helped put Digital Literacy at its core.


......
WIP - notes

use - visualise

http://twitterfall.com #altc2010
http://visibletweets.com

Tuesday
Donald Clarke's refs/ observations - uses the teaching of physics as a proxy for methods in lectures generally

The media equation - Byron Reeves & Clifford Nass http://www.amazon.co.uk/Media-Equation-Television-Information-Publication/dp/1575860538

Ferris Bueller's Day Out - video clip

(? of course how do you measure the discourse which is happening in people's head)

socrates plato and aristotle - ref to the philosopher's song - link to video

Newton - anecdote, lectured to empty classes
Feinnman - brilliant lecturerer - read the biography - read the preface to lectures in physics
Mazur - "Data is not the plural of anecdote" - (?narrative and hypnosis)

Revisiting technology, organisational change and how we research it

One area that I am particularly interested in is the impact of technology on organisational change. I have been spending a little time recently researching into this area, and there are number of publications which I think are worth revisiting, particularly in the context of research methods generally and those concerned with Web Science in particular.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social Interactions in the Web,  in CACM, Hendler et al 2008

For now this post is mostly a note to self, but will repay some further thought and development. If you have comments or pointers to other work, that would be excellent.

A few years ago, when wanting to present some of my findings to a conference, my paper was rebuffed by (what I thought to be a low grade and shallow) reviewer, whose comments on the work was sparse, but which began 'I don't much care for this sort of research'.

As someone who takes an interdisciplinary approach my research typically uses a mixed methods approach. I am aware that in the area of technology enhanced learning, we are often at an intersection between researchers from the social sciences (often education, psychology, anthropology) and those from the more logical positivist traditions of the hard applied sciences such as computer science. The challenge is always to find ways of overcoming epistemological differences between disciplines and engaging in useful and constructive dialogue across any perceived divides.

its interesting to note that this issue is at the core of a large part of what we are tacking in Web Science - which was described in one of the earliest papers (Berners-Lee et al, 2006) as being concerned with  the Engineering, Technology and Analytics of the web as well as being "The science of decentralised information systems". It is however also pointed out that that Web Science is fundamentally a study of socially embedded technology (and thus my implication inherently inter-disciplinary). Subsequent publications (for example Hendler et al 2008) identify the role of 'social machines" and talk about the inter-relationship between the Engineering and Technology and the Social Dimensions

In that context, these publications which come from the field of management science and information science, which, in themselves represent fields of study which have probably already experienced Biglan's hard applied/soft applied intersection.

There are a number of approaches which have arisen following on from Gidden's work on structuation which are of interest. Orlikowski has been influential in discussion of research methods appropriate for this area.

References:

Berners-Lee, T., Hall, W., Hendler, J. A., O’Hara, K., Shadbolt, N. and Weitzner, D. J. (2006) A Framework for Web Science. Foundations and Trends in Web Science, 1 (1). pp. 1-130. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13347/

Hendler, J., Shadbolt, N., Hall, W., Berners-Lee, T. and Weitzner, D. (2008) Web Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Web. Communications of the ACM, 51 (7). pp. 60-69.

DeSanctis, G., & Scott Poole, M. (1994). Capturing the Complexity in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory. Organization Science, 5(2), 121-147. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2635011

Giddens, A. (1986). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration

Also available in the Hartley Library Southampton

Orlikowski, W. (2000). Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations. Organization Science, 11(4), 404-428 http://www.springerlink.com/content/r21881t5637408h5/

Orlikowski, W.J. and Baroudi, J.J. (1991) Studying Information Technology in Organizations: Research Approaches and Assumptions. Information Systems Research, 2 (1), 1-28 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.103.107&rep=rep1&type=pdf


Orlikowski, W. J. and Barley, S. R. (2001). Technology And Institutions: What Can Research On Information Technology And Research On Organizations Learn From Each Other? MIS Quarterly, 25(2), 145-165. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3250927