Science of the Invisible

Go away and stop bothering us

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

TwitVid

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:18:00 +0000

Share on Friendfeed

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Final Report - Personal Learning Environments and Personal Development Planning

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Final Report - Personal Learning Environments and Personal Development Planning

Final Report 1. Title of project Personal Learning Environments and Personal Development Planning 2. Project director/s Alan Cann1, Jon Scott1, Jo Badge1, Richard Mobbs2, Steve Rooney3 3. Department(s)/Unit(s) 1 School of Biological Sciences, 2IT Services, 3Student Support and Development Service 4. Keywords Personal learning environments, virtual learning environments, personal development planning, ePortfolios 5. Abstract The aim of this project was to develop an institutional exemplar of a personal and shared virtual space for students' learning, research and networking using Web 2.0 technologies independent of any institutional services. This will provide users with the skills to maintain such environments as the major component of their personal development planning (PDP) and as part of a lifelong learning agenda. The space was built around a range of freely available Web 2.0 tools and services, complemented by the Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and other student support information repositories. 6. Pedagogic Background to the Project University of Leicester students are transients within our system, usually staying for three or four years full-time study, possibly longer if they are studying part-time or move on to post-graduate training. What they learn is relevant to their lifelong learning skills and future career progression and, as such, students will benefit from having continued access to a virtual study network based on their undergraduate and career experience. Resources for their formal learning not only originate from their university teachers but also from informal virtual sources of various kinds (e.g., comments by members of the public on a fieldwork photo uploaded onto a photosharing site such as Flickr, information from the student union, etc). Integrating formal and informal sources into a symbiotic whole to benefit the students is a worthwhile objective in its own right. At present, the School of Biological Sciences implements PDP as a paper-based exercise, supported by the personal tutor system, which students are encouraged but not compelled to take part in. This exercise terminates when, or frequently before, students graduate, so there is no guaranteed benefit in terms of lifelong learning. To complement this application, we submitted an application for funding to the HEA Subject Centre for Biosciences to introduce all first year Biological Sciences students to the concept of a PLE at the very start of their university career. Their progress and engagement was monitored and encouraged by regular summative assessment of individual e-portfolios. In the pilot project, we will use the personal tutor system to assess what proportion of second and third year students continue to maintain their eportfolio to document the development of their PLE as part of the School PDP programme without the lever of formal assessment. This information will be used in subsequent years to decide strategies to roll out the programme to all students throughout their degrees. This NTI project complemented an external grant award which was made and sought to use the experience within the School of Biological Sciences could be used as a model to roll out similar approaches across the whole University.

Library Graffiti

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:38:00 +0000

Flickr slideshow

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

For easier reading, click the full screen icon, top right:

FREE by Chris Anderson

Who are the Trojans?

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Following on from my previous two posts, I'm still thinking about strategies in which social media can be used to advance open science.

An idea that we talked about some time ago (in a teaching rather than a research context) was to identify and invest in (groom) a few Trojans. Ideally, we could identify one per department, work hard at supporting them, then wait for peer-peer transmission of the sharing is good meme?

So the question is - who are the Trojans? My feeling is that they are probably not the younger academics - highly risk averse and too focused on outputs to experiment. So we need to find ways of putting out tasty bait and waiting for bites...

The Enzyme Club

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

There was some discussion on Twitter yesterday about molecular biology reagents and kits, etc. I started to tweet this, then realized it was more of a blog post than a tweet.

"In my day" i.e. when I started my PhD back in 197<cough>, the first few weeks were spent joining the Enzyme Club. This encompassed all the biomedical researchers at the University of Leicester. Each new student would prepare a batch enzyme for recombinant DNA work. In my case, I made Hsu I (an isoschizomer of Hae III but allegedly easier to prepare). Since it was years ago, I can't remember how many litres of the organism I grew up, but I remember very clearly doing the first assay on two litres of crude extract, and figuring out I was holding £40 million pounds worth of enzyme at the then current market prices. The first affinity column cut it down to £15 million, and a quick gel filtration to couple of millions pounds worth - still pretty good for two weeks work, especially when you remember that two million pounds was enough to buy you a house back in the 1970s!

Why did the Enzyme Club exist? Because these reagents were scarce in the 1970s, and rationed both by price and availability. Only a few years before, the only way to get hold of any of these enzymes was to make your own. This type of open science made sense. Why did the Enzyme Club cease to exist? Gradually, it became clear that the batch of enzyme I made wasn't very good. It had a persistent exonuclease activity which meant it was fine for restriction analysis but rubbish for cloning, and it went off very quickly in storage, so that after three months there wasn't much activity left. And although I've always been a rubbish protein chemist, that was a pretty common experience. Gradually, the companies dropped their prices and improved both the quality and availability of commercial enzymes. The day came when the Enzyme Club didn't make sense any more, and it quietly died. It's probably still moldering in the back of a coldroom over in the MSB.

So boys and girls, this is a story of the economics of open science, which made sense in response to scarce resources. When the availability of enzymes was limiting, this open approach made sense. When time became limiting, we all retreated back into our laboratories and got on with whatever we needed to do to get a PhD. The moral of this story is that open science pops up it's head when times are hard and resources are scarce, but retreats quickly as the balance changes.

So what are you going to do about it?

fuss

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:49:00 +0000

You may have heard there was a fuss over a paper entitled Perspectives of UK Vice-Chancellors on Leading Universities in a Knowledge-Based Economy which appeared briefly on the web site of the journal Higher Education Quarterly, then vanished. It contains quotes from ten different university vice-chancellors. Some of the comments caused quite a stir when they were quoted anonymously in an article of the Times Higher Education.

I think that universities need to be real about the world in which they inhabit and they need to be real in thinking how they are a business. They are in business with higher education at their heart. They are into marketing themselves, competitiveness and global market challenges (R. Burgess, University of Leicester).

Vice chancellors have to help colleagues to understand the nature of the competitive educational market, to shift thinking in how the institution needs to be managed, to raise aspirations about what the institution can achieve and to formulate a strategic vision that people are willing to implement (R. Burgess, University of Leicester).

Changing perceptions in the university involves getting people to start thinking about major issues by looking at the data on the institution (R. Burgess, University of Leicester).

Whatever the others may have said, it seems to me that Bob's on the money here. Hard times are coming. Hats off to him.

End of term report

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

At the beginning of the year I set myself a resolution:

Add value

At the risk of appearing smug, I'd give myself a pretty good report so far. So in the spirit of Gifted and Talented, I'm going to set myself an additional challenge:

Go after the twossers

Since the failure of Small Worlds, I've been pondering the way forward in promoting social media for scientific researchers. One possibility is to concede that "social media isn't for everyone" and simply talk to the receptive part of the audience. The problem with this approach is that as these technologies continue to gain traction, it will simply create a digital underclass, so the problem has to be tackled head on.

Although Martin Weller's post Arguments for social media engagement was not directly about the scientific research community, his list of responses to the objectors is highly relevant:

The argument of recognition
The argument of simplicity
The argument of benefit
The argument of imperative

It's an interesting list, but for most of the hardcore lab researchers I talk to, it's still going to be a very hard sell. Recognition? Impact factors. Simplicity? Not enough hours in the day. Benefit? Always managed without it, danger of revealing "secret" data. Imperative? I can make this argument with regard to teaching - how can you ask students to keep a reflective portfolio if you don't - but it's harder with researchers.

This is the task I've set myself in the run-up to Science Online London.

The scientific paper in the Age of Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:18:00 +0000

FriendFeed introduces file sharing

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:41:00 +0000

PLEs at HEA

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Jo talked about our work on Personal Learning Environments at the HEA Annual conference in Manchester on 30 June 2009.

Encouraging lifelong learning habits in a web 2.0 enabled PLE

View more documents from Jo Badge.

You may have seen something similar before ;-)

#JISCQR

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

video

I told you so

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:17:00 +0000

Remember this?

Not so funny now, is it? ;-)

Why Feedback Doesn't Work

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:02:00 +0000

Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science

Summary: Emotions rather than logic lead to better decisions. Each of us sees the world differently, with a wide range of views about everything, and hence direct actions do not create the desired results. All the data in the world won't change someone's mind.

A free lunch

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

One of the interesting things that happened to me yesterday was a fascinating conversation over lunch with Tipexxed and university colleagues about social media and community building.

Another was reading Malcolm Gladwell's review of Chris Anderson's new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

The third was realizing that both of these were really about moving from a "scarcity" mind-set to an "abundance" mind-set. They're also about the postdigital concept - an attitude that is more concerned with being human than with being digital.

We meet (usually online first, offline later). We talk. We build personal networks around the things that matter to us but are only loosely connected to where we work, what we eat, the technologies we use. We do these things first because the resources needed to do them are no longer scarce, then we think about how to fund them and make them sustainable later.

hyperlocal

Surely you're video podcastling, Mr Everyman!

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:32:00 +0000

On Saturday, I mused about the problems with online video. Coincidentally, this morning I was pointed at this video podcast:

For all it's lack of technical proficiency, this video has something. It communicates because the presenters are engaging. But for how long will these guys be prepared to make the effort to meet in a parked car, record a thoughtful video and then post it online? Isn't the overhead of doing this too high to be sustainable?

Last year I had a Public Understanding of Science grant from the Society for General Microbiology under the terms of which I had to make a monthly video podcast for MicroBiologyBytes. I achieved this, but by the end of the year, the effort was weighing down on me and breathed I sigh of relief when it was over. It reminded me of the toll The Show seemed to take on zefrank by the end of a year. I'd like to make more video podcasts, but I'm not saying when.

And yet I remain bullish about online video. Maybe it's my Star Trek adolescence, but I still believe that when the right tool comes along with a Twitter-like click, online video conversation will be the future:

Pearls

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:00:00 +0000

"Scientific research, like anything else, is subject to “irrational exuberance.” Fashion, fads, and hypes arrive, have their moment, and disappear from view. In the face of this inevitable ebb and flow of focus and attention, how are we to teach students the “lessons that last” or “the facts of a field” while keeping current? Likewise, how can we teach such lessons in the face of the sheer volume of research that is being published in hundreds of journals? Ostensibly, textbooks serve such a purpose, but such volumes are costly to produce and purchase and require near-constant revision. The standard “mini-review” piece tends to focus on making research recently published more accessible, but these can be too narrow or superficial to live much beyond the moment. The vision of Pearls is different. Our goal is to produce a substantial collection of short (1,500 words maximum) educational and highly useful articles that address topics of relevance and importance within the field of pathogens research. We aim to have each Pearl cover a given topic in a way that makes its significance clear and compelling to a general readership while offering accessible and accurate insight at a graduate student–level."

Interesting idea which will fail. The audience decides which are the pearls, not the editors. Not that there's anything wrong with a collection of accessible articles with a Creative Commons licence, but the grandiosity of choosing an arrogant title such as Pearls spells out why the central premise is flawed.

Death of Seesmic

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:00:00 +0000

I used to be very keen on Seesmic, and wrote about it here quite a lot. Over the last few months however, I haven't used it at all. Yesterday at #uanda I talked to several people about why that was, but didn't really come to any straightforward conclusions. Some felt that the service just didn't feel right any more, and that 12seconds.tv fits into the Twitter zeitgeist better.

I think the reason I stopped using Seesmic is that the video overhead is just too high for conversation in the face of the Twitter monster, but it didn't come as any surprise to hear that the company has put its video service on hold. Loic Le Meur claims that no video site is growing except for YouTube. Is video inherently flawed, or is this consolidation in operation?

SMART: Student Microblogging And Recording Timelines

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Next week Jo is at the HEA Conference, talking about exciting things like academic integrity, but she's also going to take part in a TechDis session and describe the HEAT3 project we ran last year:

Student Microblogging And Recording Timelines

Familiar faces

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:29:00 +0000

It's good to see some familiar faces on the list of National Teaching Fellows 2009:

Jude Carroll, Oxford Brookes University
Dr Anthony Cook, University of Ulster
Annie Grant, University of East Anglia

Congratulations to them and to all the other winners.

Uses and Abuses

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

I'm looking forward to taking part in the Uses and Abuses event tomorrow, a one day seminar at the University of Leicester (programme). I'll be in the room, but you can participate remotely via the Twitter hashtag: #uanda.

I was thinking about how I would describe myself to the other participants (if asked) and came up with this:

I'm Alan Cann from the Department of Biology. I'm interested in social objects in education and socially-constructed knowledge, but very much at the applied end of the social media spectrum.

Whaddya think?

Keeping an eye on Arnie Pie

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:49:00 +0000

Gotta love CiteULike #438

noreply@blogger.com (AJC) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Latest feature to be added to CiteULike - autopost via ISBN:

(but don't forget you can also autopost from Amazon pages using the bookmarklet)