1. The Researcher Online:
Making and Sharing
Content Online
Dr Helen Webster
Digital Humanities Network
University of Cambridge
2. Before we start...
I’d like to model the digital behaviour I’m
advocating!
•Feel free to livetweet #RONetwork
•Slides are online: Slideshare
http://www.slideshare.net/drhelenwebster/
•We’re recording the talk to create a digital
artefact. We’ll be focussing on the presentation
rather than discussions.
3. Getting Started
This isn’t a software training session, but
there is...
•... a website listing tools mentioned
today and instructions
http://researcheronline.wordpress.com/
•... a hands-on follow-up session on 20th
February to help you get started
4. Aims
Not to teach tools, but...
•an awareness of the ways in which social and digital media
platforms can enhance and be embedded in your work as a
researcher
•an understanding of the issues raised by social and digital media
tools, potential pitfalls, good practice and future impacts on the
profession
•an awareness of and ability to evaluate the various types of digital
tool and make informed decisions about your own engagement
with them in your practice
5. How much of what you
do is shared?
• List the outputs of your work which are
ever seen by others
• Who is that audience and how much
impact does your sharing have?
• What are the barriers to wider impact of
your work?
7. Traditional vs Digital
models
Traditional
•Resource intensive
•Filtered
•Short-tail
•Participation limited
•Closed
Digital
8. What do you produce in
the course of your work?
9. What to share?
• What digital ‘offcuts’ do you habitually create
in the course of your work?
• What aspects of your work might you
capture easily in digital format?
• What aspects of your work might be easily
adapted as digital artefacts?
• What might you create specifically as a digital
artefact?
10. Why share?
• Your own professional aims
• The Impact Agenda
• The Open Access agenda
• ‘Cognitive Surplus’ (Shirky)
11. Potential audiences
• Colleagues and peers
• Students
• Educators
• Outreach
• Public engagement
• Knowledge exchange
• Enterprise
12. The basics
You need to...
1.record a digital file (a device)
2.edit the digital file (software or an app)
3.upload it to the web (a server or a
cloud-based platform)
13. Recording
• Your computer, smartphone or tablet
• A plug-in device: webcam or microphone
• Specialist kit - a digital camera, video
camera, audio recorder
14. Editing
• Proprietary software already be on your
computer
• Purchased proprietary software (you may
have access to university licensed software)
• Free, open source software
• ‘Fremium’ software
15. Hosting
• Your own web space
• Your university’s web space
(including a VLE)
• Cloud-based platforms
16. Sharing digital offcuts
• Documents: Scribd
• Slides: Slideshare
• Images: Flickr
• Various formats as PDFs: Academia.edu
• Bibliographies: Mendeley
• Research data and outputs:
DSpace@Cambridge
17. Does sharing work?
How much do you need to adapt materials
before they will make sense to a primary (often
specific, face-to-face) audience and a secondary
online (often unpredictable) audience?
20. Audio
Creating and editing:
• Audacity
• (Mac users) Garageband
Hosting:
• Soundcloud
• Audioboo (also includes recording)
• Youtube (with an image or slideshow)
• iTunes (combined with RSS as a podcast)
21. Video
Creating:
• any device that records and creates video
files
Editing
• Windows MovieMaker, iMovie
Hosting (and some recording and editing):
• Youtube
• Vimeo
22. Slide- or Screencast
Creating and editing:
• Jing
• Recording feature on Powerpoint
Hosting:
• Slideshare
• Youtube
• Screencast.com
23. Copyright and Copyleft
• Copyright: all rights
reserved
• Creative Commons: some
rights reserved
• Ethics
24. Principles
• Where you can, share (and share rights)
• Design for a small scale targeted group, but
open to scalability and serendipity
• Lo-fi is good enough, and may be better
• Change your practice - frictionless
‘collateral damage’, not just projects
• Make sure you are permitted to share
material!
25. Distribution and
publicity strategy
• How will your audience find your outputs?
• How will you package your outputs and
alert people?
• How will you manage the frequency and
lifespan of your outputs?
• How will you assess and manage response
to your outputs?
26. Serendipity
How will people find your outputs?
• Searchability and metadata
• Social network amplification
(How) will they subscribe to future
outputs?
27. Subscribability
• Keep profiles updated on various channels
• Set up a Wordpress.com blog and link to or
embed media in it
• Copy the html code from the hosting
platform
• Paste into the html editor of your
wordpress blog post
29. Taking it further
• DSpace@Cambridge
• Cambridge University Streaming Media Service
• Cambridge University iTunesU
• Rising Stars Programme
• Cambridge Outreach team / Admissions
• Cambridge Public Engagement team
Aims for this session - links to RO1 - building an identity and profile as a more static activity, putting information out there. Not broadcasting, one to many, but participatory, many to many.
Note any objections, stress hashtag
This course isn’t about teaching you the tools, but about exploring the possibilities offered by the digital, networked and open space of the internet and how they might enhance the kinds of things you might want to do online. I don’t necessarily want to be evangelical about tools or even being online - I want you to come to an informed decision about the level of engagement which you feel is comfortable and appropriate. I can’t give you answers, hence there will be discussion in this session.
Are we just doing traditional things digitally, and if so what impact does this have, or are we able to do new sorts of things? We may be missing out on functionality or potential, or dismiss a tool as we’re not thinking about it digitally but replicating traditional modes. Networked may be push and pull The three facets of thinking digitally may be positive or negative - use it as a framework in which to consider each tool or platform. Thinking digitally is about behaviour change
Weller and Shirky on production and distribution
formal outputs (and who are they shared with) and informal outputs
initial buzz - what are people’s reasons for coming today? discussion about broader reasons to share - the open access
State one area of your work which each of these would be interested in if you were to share it digitally/ primary and secondary audiences
file types devices - built-in or plug-and-play (cheap!) servers and the cloud some of these are bundled in one the more official and polished you go, the greater the barriers and compromises
your computer - your screen and keyboard will be the recording device for some files! you’ll need to export the file to one which is compatible with what you’re using to edit and host the file
pros and cons of each esp
pros and cons of university vs commercial cloud-based platforms for ECRS
Hosting artefacts which are already digital this is about behaviour change as much as one-offs images might be things other than photos....
NB - you might actually want to offer a taster which can’t be used alone, if you want to do consultancy work
Copyright - protects you from other people using your output - but equally stops you from using the output of others. But what if you want to use others’ output or to allow others to use yours? Openness of thinking digitally - digital artefacts can be repurposed.
trolling, losing rights, losing access, time costs (not frictionless)
