The first week of Networked Scholars is almost over. It’s been a busy and interesting week with an “Ask Me Almost Anything” discussion thread with Michael Barbour, who answered all questions thrown at him by course participants, and a Google Hangouts on Air session with Laura Czerniewicz (below).
I just sent this note to all participants, and as others might find it helpful, I’m sharing it here too:
Hello everyone!
I hope you are having a great weekend. It’s a cloudy and rainy morning here in Victoria, BC, and I’m finding myself at a local coffee shop listening to The Doors and thinking about our course.
Our first week is nearly over, and I wanted to share with you some of the interesting ideas and things happening in our course:
- Jenny Mackness wrote a wonderful reflection for the first week of the course. You can read it here: http://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2014/10/26/academic-blogging/
- Some participants are planning a real-time chat via Google Hangouts today. I love it! Feel free to use the discussion thread created to find study buddies or to reach out via #scholar14 if you are looking for a friend to chat with about the course or about a particular reading/week.
- The Research Excellence Framework is a system put in place to assess the research output of UK’s Higher education institutions. Laura Pasquini shared the following article which suggests five recommendations for using alternative metrics in in assessing research quality: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/10/23/alternative-metrics-future-uk-research-excellence-framework-thelwall/
- The Networked Researcher is a summary of Cristina Costa’s PhD thesis: http://www.slideshare.net/cristinacost/the-networked-researcher
The materials for week 2 are available, and as we are entering a week looking at challenges and tensions in networked scholarship, remember that you don’t need to do all the activities listed. We have a live session scheduled again, a few of readings, and some activities that I am hoping will spark lively debates.
Yours,
George