Presentation at EASST 2014 - Leaders and followers: communities of practice in digitally-engaged research

1. Dr Ann Grand, Institute of Educational Technology
Dr Anne Adams, Institute of Educational Technology
Dr Richard Holliman, Faculty of Science
Leaders and followers:
communities of practice in digitally-engaged
research

2. Engaged research
• Survey of Open University researchers
– 2013 Vitae Careers in Research (CROS) and the Principal Investigators and
Research Leaders (PIRLS) online surveys (www.vitae.ac.uk)
– CROS (n=57); PIRLS (n=114)
• How would you define ‘public engagement with research’?
• Describe an activity involving PER
• What publics have connections with your research?

3. Public engagement with research
• How would you define
‘public engagement with
research’?
• Describe an activity involving
PER
• What publics have
connections with your
research?
Dissemination
51%
Functional
Useful
11%
Collaboration
17%
Dialogue
13%
6%
Negative
2%
Personal
“I enjoy giving public lectures”
Utilitarian
“I’m paid to do it”
Philosophical
“as in Habermas’s conception of the
public sphere”

4. Public engagement with research
• Define ‘public engagement
with research’
• Describe an activity
involving PER
• What publics have
connections with your
research?
Presenting
29%
Partnerships
20%
None
11%
Not possible
Not possible
Writing
4%
2%
Schools
10%
Schools
10%
Activities
10%
Digital
4%
2%
Unclassifiable
10%
Presenting
29%
Partnerships
20%
None
11%
Activities
10%
Digital
4%
Writing
4%
Unclassifiable
10%

5. Digital engagement
• Researcher interviews
– Questions focussing on:
 Public(s)
 Processes
 Participation
 Performance
 Purposes
 Politics

6. Levels of engagement
• “That means for each of the different … engagement levels … you have to
cater for the people that are very active, they want tools that support them in
producing stuff, getting out their blogs, editing. The people that casually do
something, they … probably have more questions than answers, they want to
raise awareness about the things they do, and so on. I think that, in general,
applies to any sort of research community; that once you go out of the core of
people that are really specialised on exactly this, and open up to the public, the
ways you communicate have to change as well.”
Interviewee 14

7. The fully-wired
“a number of us have personal blogs,
that we blog about our work and use our
social networks … a combination of
Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, to tell the
wider community about the work that
we’re doing … [X] uses his blog as his
research journal but also as a way to
disseminate what he’s found out and get
people interested. Similarly, I have a blog
that tries to capture both my research
and teaching interests and combine
them…” Interviewee 6

8. The experimenter
“I have a Twitter account but I’m not an
avid Twitter user. I’ve tried to use it more
and I’ve got slightly better but I wouldn’t
say it’s made any impression on the
outside world, really. I have a Facebook
account, but that’s just for keeping in
touch with my research students; it
doesn’t make any impact externally.
A colleague and I made some videos with
a little hand-held camera of the work we
did in [country] and they’re on YouTube,
where they’ve got not very many hits.
So we’ve done that, the sorts of things
we’ve been asked to do by the university
but to my knowledge, we haven’t gone
viral!”
Interviewee 13

9. The dabbler
“We have our individual profiles on the
Internet and our research centre has a
webpage but … … what I find difficult is
to keep them up to date myself. I learn
how to change the webpage or
something like that and a year later I
have forgotten, so it becomes ‘I’ll do it
another time’. For example wikis and
things like that, we are not so digitally
savvy, in our group.”
Interviewee 2

10. The unconvinced
“My priority is to get on with the research,
deliver publications, further knowledge,
rather than spend all the time packaging
up a small amount of work for general
consumption.”
Interviewee 4
“People have a Twitter account,
Facebook accounts, blogs – these are
not properly monitored; there is hardly
any quality control.”
Interviewee 15

11. Muddling through
[Name] and I muddled our way
through; it wasn’t actually that
difficult. I’m a bit of a novice at
social media, I’ve always kept my
head down out of fear of the
workload that it could generate, but
it is part of my remit in this job, I’ve
got to engage with it so I’m very
glad that [Name] is much more au
fait with that side of things than I
am. He can help me out!
(Researcher 3)
highly-wired
dabbler
experimenter
I’m new!
unconvinced

12. A muddling community?
Co-PI: We need
a digital
engagement plan
PI: We need to
engage with
everyone – let’s try
Co-PI: Scientific
publications are the
important thing
Co-PI: How about
x tweets, y blogs
per partner?
RA: Social media
shouldn’t have
rules; it’s about
freedom to express
RA: Well, I just
won’t use social
media
Project Manager: Other projects
are doing it – we should just do it!
Co-PI: I’ve just tweeted a photo of
us talking in this room!
RA: So have I 
Original graphic by Dr Anne Adams

13. Engaging Research blog
http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/per/

14. Engaged research
• Definition of ‘engaged research’
• Project seed funding
• Engaged Research Awards
• Changes to promotion criteria

15. Engaging Research blog
http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/per/?p=4654
Ann Grand
ann.grand@open.ac.uk
Institute of Educational Technology
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
www.open.ac.uk