Poster Abstract

1. Connecting Cardiff’s researchers: delivering and learning from a
social media workshop for research students
Sarah Nicholas, Cardiff University, NicholasS2@cardiff.ac.uk
Susan Smith, Cardiff University, smithsh2@cardiff.ac.uk
A workshop entitled The Connected Researcher: networking and collaborating with
social media was delivered in February 2011 as part of Cardiff University’s Research
Students’ Skills Development Programme, coordinated by the University’s Graduate
Centre.
The proposed poster will present:
• the context of the social media workshop, which will highlight the relevance of
social media to nearly all stages of the research cycle (CIBER, 2010)
• the trainers’ task-based approach, emphasising the practice of sharing,
communicating and networking, and the trainers’ efforts to encourage researchers to
reflect on the relevance of social media to their research
• workshop content and the rationale in presenting case studies
• feedback from workshop attendees
• how the trainers extended the workshop for February 2012 and acknowledged the
need for pre-sessional exercises in light of their experience in delivering the first
workshop, student feedback, the recently published Social media: a guide for
researchers (Cann, Dimitriou and Hooley 2011) and the growing status of social
media in academia
The poster will serve to highlight Cardiff University’s grass root efforts to support
digital literacies for researchers in advance of their JISC-funded Digidol - Developing
Digital Literacy project.
References
Cann, A., Dimitriou, K. and Hooley, T. (2011) Social media: a guide for researchers.
London: Research Information Network. http://www.rin.ac.uk/social-media-guide
(Retrieved 12 April 2011).
CIBER (2010) Social media and research workflow. London: CIBER, University
College London. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/social-media-
report.pdf (Retrieved 12 April 2011).