Negotiating a web science curriculum

As a single track conference Web Science does things right :-) good too, that the organisers are videoing all the tracks from http://videolectures.net
A healthy array of folk have blogged about the conference, giving you the chance to compare views and experiences - a practice at the core of this ultimately interdisciplinary community.


Blogs:
Dave de Roure in Nature
Nature e science blog

Web Science 2011

Delighted that our paper has been nominated for the best paper award at Web Science 2011
Negotiating a Web Science Curriculum through shared educational artefacts
White et al http://journal.webscience.org/439/

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Winninger Straße,Koblenz,Germany

Getting Ready for ACM Web Science 2011 - the curriculum workshop

We are really excited about our paper at the ACM web science conference #websci11 this year, and what better prelude than a  Web Science Curriculum Workshop
Our paper is titled Negotiating the Web Science Curriculum through shared Educational Artefacts, you can download a copy either from the conference programme web site, or from the ECS soton ePrints repository
We are scheduled to present during the Web Science Tools and Technologies Session on Thursday morning
These are working notes, which I hope will be of interest to other attendees
Twitter hashcodes

• main conference #websci11
• curriculum workshop #websci11cw
• Alt Metrics #altmetrics

Workshop
structure - who, what

• who is doing web science
• what could we (people who teach web science) use from the community

At the workshop there are representative of three web science masters being taught
Aristotle University Thesaloniki, Greece,

• taught masters - strong mathematics and economics perspective

Koln

• Professional masters majority of the materials are online, synchronous online two or three evenigns per week, a number of weekend residentials,

five module perspectives, comes from an interdisciplinary background.
http://www.verwaltung.fh-koeln.de/aktuelles/2011/06/verw_msg_04049.html
RPI

• ITWS Web Science undergraduate degree programme 110 across three years
• IT and Web Science (ITWS) - masters (35) and PhD - a new specialisation

Southampton

• One year taught Masters - for most this is a preliminary to a PhD studies

Other places which have activities  which may not be full programme include (please comment if you want to be added)
Amsterdam, Linz
other places which propose to start soon (please comment if you want to be added)
TU Eindhoven - Bachelors Degree
Related disciplines
Digital Humanitites ( point from Faith)
........
What we need from the community
Definitions of web science
Topical Relevance:

• topics for web science

What do students want to learn from a web science curriculum?
professional relevance
Where do students go next?
How do we teach web science?
specific examples, methods, approaches, pedagogy
Report on your Web Science Activity
want to contribute to our survey of web science teaching? go to https://www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/2290
37+ attendees
Actions which arose ( with my comments/notes  in <>brackets)

Action List

1. list of course/programmes/curriculum (wiki) Jim H
2. mailing list (announcements) - exists- use it (join)
3. co-ordinating calls, monthly meetings Craig
4. lecturer/expert list (talks, ideas etc) <this is one naturally for either Craig, or for WSCR profiles)
5. project ideas hcd
6. literature hcd
7. exemplary examples hcd
8. textbooks (online/discussion)
9. resources site hcd, stefane
10. match making service <after the event - enhancement >
11. datasets steffen S
12. commentary/discussion resources Su W
13. index (and connections of ideas to above)
14. review process (max)
15. list of people/areas <WSCR profiles>

Web History Repository - something for the web science Observatory?

Came across this Web Site for a 'Web History Repository' the other day, it seems its the sort of info which might make itself part of the Web Science Trust's vision of a global Web Science Observatory, and is also relevant to the paper I will be presenting at the web science conference next week.

Collating data on web usage (which is what this repository is about, rather than being a repository of the Web History) provides information which researchers can analyse and which students and learn to use.

On that basis I am just noting a link, it should properly be called a web browsing history, which is a rather different matter - another case of lost in translation, although the data which it will collect should be useful and the argument for collecting it is valid.

Companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook constantly improve their products, based on the data that they collect from their users. Open-source software developers and researchers normally have no access to this data, which puts them into a disadvantage.

We aim to create a public repository of web usage data for the profit of these communities - and eventually you will benefit from better browsers, add-ons and other tools.

Who started the Web History Repository Project?
We are two researchers from the L3S Research Center in Hannover, Germany. The L3S focuses on fundamental and application-oriented research in all areas of Web Science.

So why not mosey along to the 'Web History Repository and take a look? Eelco Herder and his PhD student Ricardo Kawase are the creators of this site. I guess we can look forward to some publications

 

Thinking about rich learning environments - almost revisited

I am working up our paper Rich Learning Environments revisited
and wanted to use this as a placemarker for a few diagrams and some thoughts.
My previous post on the cognitive digital apprenticeship is also relevant and tracking back through of my posts on PLEs can help understand how the ideas have been developing.
so this was one way in which I was trying to explain a rich learning environment


and this is another

The Digital Cognitive Apprenticeship - afforded by a rich learning environment

The idea of talking about a digital cognitive apprenticeship arose around the time Hugh Davis and I made a presentation to the HEA Enhancement Academy team leaders meeting* in May 2011. Although the concept has much deeper routes linking back to the concept of university education providing a 'cognitive apprenticeship' time when I  was working with Microcosm across the university to provide 'a campus wide structure for multimedia learning'.

Fast forward almost 20 years and the world is a lot more interconnected and a big focus for us is in terms of personal learning environments, where the title of our presentation was 'The personalisation of a learning environment: student-led connections online and offline'. The link will take you to the slides in ECS ePrints at Southampton.

The presentation in many ways was a chance to reflect upon and discuss our understanding of personal learning environments and the UK digital literacies agenda. We were particularly fortunate in having an audience drawn from colleagues who are actively involved in steering their institutions through change.

A lot of work has been going on to craft our own rich learning environment here at Southampton since I posted an account of what I mean by Rich Learning Environments late in 2009

Along the way, the University of Southampton has been among the front line of folk who have been surfing the open data wave - its a wave which is well on its way to becoming a veritable tsunami launched by Tim Berners-Lee's call for 'Raw Data Now' at his TED talk in 2009

We have been working with colleagues on creating a specification for our learning environment, and have reported on that project via a publication in the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments (forthcoming) but a pre-print is available online from ePrints.

Our ultimate objective is to craft an environment which cultivates and supports situated and authentic learning with a community of scholars in a digital world.

We are seeking to harness the affordance of Web 2.0 and use linked and open data to integrate internal and external resources and services in a seamless manner.

We put a special value on enabling our academics to work with their students accessing authentic resources so that learning in their respective disciplines and fields of study can be situated.

We hold true to the idea that our university is nurturing a continually renewing community of scholars and again believe that we can craft the tools of social and (light) semantic web technologies to provide a platform which is agile to respond to changing and emerging techniques and technologies, a system which is fit for purpose in the 21st century.

We believe that our approach to situated and authentic learning addresses the agendas which are grouped under the headings of digital literacies, but we prefer to refer to the skills knowledge and understanding of a digital world. Hence our reference to the digital cognitive apprenticeship.

It is the role of universities to nurture the thought leaders and decision makers of tomorrow. Out students come to use with a mix of sophisticated and naiive understandings of the way in which they can use technology for their learning. If that was not the case, they would not be ready for a university education - we are no longer in an era when we believe knowledge is the prime objective (if that were ever true). Alvin Toffler was remarkably prescient when he observed that

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn",

our apprentices will, we hope, progress to master all of the essential skills, knowledge and understanding so they can step forward with confidence into whatever future they choose to pursue.

references

Casquero, Oskar, Portillo, Javier; Ovelar, Ramón; Benito, Manuel and Romo, Jesús. iPLE Network: an integrated eLearning 2.0 architecture from a university's perspective. (2010) Interactive Learning Environments, Volume 18, Issue 3 September 2010, pages 293 – 308

Fournier, Helena & Kop, Rita. (2010) Researching the design and development of a Personal Learning Environment, Proceedings of the 2010 PLE Conference, CitiLab: Barcelona http://pleconference.citilab.eu

O'Reilly, T. (2005). What Is Web 2.0 – Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software  http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html

O'Reilly, T. (2007). What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, Communications & Strategies, 1(1),17-37 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1008839

Santos, C. and L. Pedro (2009). Sapo Campus: A Social Media Platform for Higher Education. m-ICTE 2009: Research, Reflections and Innovations in Integrating ICT in Education, Lisbon, Portugal, FORMATEX: Badajoz, Spain.

White S. (2009) Rich Learning Environments, University of Southampton http://shirleyknot.blogspot.com/2009/12/rich-learning-environments.html

White, Su & Davis, Hugh C. (2011). Making it rich and personal: crafting an institutional personal learning environment, International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, In Press. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/22030/

White, Su & Davis, Hugh C. (2011) Rich and personal revisited: translating ambitions for an institutional personal learning environment into a reality. In: The Second International PLE Conference: PLE_SOU, July 11-13th 2011, Southampton, UK. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/22140/

Southampton’s SLE Project http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/research/projects/749

*You can find a blog post which talks about the event at The Auricle

 

Web Science Meetup - Consolidating networks of excellence

More than 20 folk managed to get to Montpellier for the second Web Science meetup which managed to run the gauntlet of Friday the 13th :-)
There was a reassuringly wide range of disciplines represented - and accordingly a fairly broad range of topics were up for discussion.  The group was convened by Clement Jonquet and Francois Scharffe using meetup and has arisen from the collaborations which we are establishing between the University of Southampton and LIRMM in Montpellier France. The meeting provided an opportunity to identify some of the common research agendas active in the Web Science community in Montpellier and its networks in France and Europe.
These notes are designed to help find out more about the presentations - expect further posts on future developments. There are also notes on the meetup page from Clement and on Clare Hooper's blog.
Slides from the presentation are, where possible going on the WebScience Meetup Wiki at LIRMM
After an welcome from Clement Jonquet, Stefano Cerri and Hugh Davis, and introductions round the table, the proceedings got underway.
People and interests - this is notes with links on each of the presentations where possible
Claudia Rodda (American University of Paris) talked about Human attention in digital environments which is the title of the book which she has recently edited and published.
Clare Hooper (TU Eindhoven) - talking about mixed methods and triangulation. Issues that some disciplines have pre-formed ideas about what research methodology is 'sound' and what is not.  These arguments are key given the interdisciplinary nature of the web, and smacks of academic tribes and territories to my mind. Clare pointed to the recent CACM blog on the topic of Are we doing stats badly, and I was reminded of the paper by Halford et al in the 2010 web conference A Manifesto for Web Science?
Francois Scharffe (LIRMM) - talking about the data lift project (http://datalift.org/en/index.html)DataLift Project which is being funded by the French National Research Agency which is developing tools to enrich raw data through conversion, interlinking and publication into semantically accessible formats. Their previous presentation at SemWebPro in Paris 2011is also interesting
keynote from Wendy Hall (University of Southampton) @DameWendyDBE - who will also be giving a keynote at adaptive hypertext in Eindhoven.
Wendy placed particular emphasis on the extent to which the vision and dogged persistence of Tim Berners-Lee and his commitment to open and free standards.
Her account gave an excellent consolidated overview of the various research agendas which have emerged within web science
Excellent news is that there will be a web science track at the next web conference WWW2012 to be held in Lyon 16th to the 20th April 2012. It looks like the track will be run on the Friday, Wendy will be chairing the track and the montpellier meetup group will also be convening another meeting (also in Lyon) at the same time now scheduled for April 20th :-)
Her presentation concluded with a call /ambition for a world wide web science observatory: gathering evidence, sharing: data, tools, methods, and techniques. Questions which such an observatory might collectively address include:

• is the web changing faster than our ablity to observe it?
• how to measure or intrument the web?
• how to identify behaviours and patterns?
• how to analyse the changing structure of the web?
• how can we measure the web, and to archive the data - so that it can be analysed today, tomorrow and forever?

This prompted me to recall the visualisation google search globe -  is just one instance of a small piece of evidence - visualisation of the source of languages used for google searches which might be a part of such an observatory.
A very interesting session on Philosophy and the web was given by Alexandre Monnin, @aamonnz, @PhiloWeb http://web-and-philosophy.org slideshare philoweb
This contribution produced some lively discussion (pretty good considering it was after lunch) the discussion of web architecture took us firmly into the space of understandings of what the web is.
Alexandre is PhD student from Paris, where Harry Halpin currently has a two year fellowship to write about Philosophy and the Web - rich ground indeed. Alexandre gave an impressive persormance for someone who has not yet even got his doctorate, I expect we will hear more from him in the future.
Vincent Douzal from LIRMM was next up discussing webscience and traceability a natural hazards scenario
Interesting presentation which raised issues which are very much in the space of persistence of data and raised references to Ted Nelson for the second time in the day - probably a reflection on the fact that there were a good set of Hypertext folk in the room.
Sankar Punnaivanam and Alain Krief from Namur - talks about EnCOrE (Encyclopédie de Chimie Organique Electronique) - which reminded me of the presentation of automatic semantic enrichment by David Shotton from Oxford which I heard at an ALPSP event in 2010 titled Ready for Web 3.0 where I was presenting on how linked data can benefit higher education.
I was chairing the final session which brought together some of the work and perspectives on the web science curriculum. It was a tough job to squeeze in all the remaining speakers, since the programme had been a little indulgent in its timing over the afternoon.
Les Carr presented a stimulating perspective on the state and future direction of Web Science, which he explained as deriving to some extent from what he had learned from teaching the web science master's at Southampton. The roots of this presentation can be traced back to a very stimulating paper Could the Web be A Temporary Glitch which was part of the Web Science 2010 conference proceedings.
Among the quotable quotes which came from Les...
"the web is a performance - ICT = Informing and Communicating Technology"
(it must be good it was retweeted by Tony Hurst @psychmedia; how is that for hubs and authorities in action ;-)
Les also quoted his twitter definition of web science
webscience: The study of the technologies & policies that supports the co-construction of a linked online environment by a networked society
There was plenty of food for thought in this presentation - as ever with Les, not to mention gallons of energy which were a welcome addition towards the end of a long day.
Madalina Croitoru presenting some details of the Web Science curriculum project which will be topic of a paper to be presented at the 2011 ACM Web Science Conference in Koblenz this year.
Claudia Rodda raised questions about how to implement interdisciplinary in a curriculum.
Paul de Bra presenting about the bachelor degree in Eindhoven University of Technology which begins in Autumn 2011
The final slot from Hugh Davis was rather squeezed but did allow sufficient time to point to the work done by folk at the web science trust on the SKOS web science curriculum. His slides for the slot also include information on the way we are teaching our Web Science masters  in Southampton
Note, these last few are all very relevant to the debate on Web Science Subject Categorisation. http://webscience.org/2010/wssc.html
Follow up activities:
Web Science 2011 Koblenz
next Web Science meetup
workshop proposals for WWW2012
Tweet visualisations:

Refs

Croitoru, M., S. Bazan, S. Cerri, H. C. Davis, C. Jonquet, G. Prini, F. Scharffe, S. Staab, M. Vafopoulos and S. White (2011). Wscd: Negotiating the Web Science Curriculum Development through Shared Educational Artefacts. ACM WebSci '11. Koblenz, Germany. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/22141/

Carr, L., C. Pope and S. Halford (2010). Could the Web Be a Temporary Glitch?. WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line, Raleigh, NC: US., Web Science Trust. http://journal.webscience.org/304/

Halford, S., C. Pope and L. Carr (2010). A Manifesto for Web Science? . WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line, Raleigh, NC: US., Web Science Trust. http://journal.webscience.org/297/

Hooper, C. (2011). Towards Designing Effective Systems by Understanding User Experiences. ECS, University of Southampton. PhD.

Shotton, D., K. Portwin, G. Klyne and A. Miles (2009). "Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancement of a Research Article. ." PLoS Computational Biology 5(4): e1000361. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000361