New forms of doctorate

May 19, 2009 at 3:09 pm · Filed under design, digital humanities, humanities computing, pedagogy

I attended an ESRC funded seminar today and organised by the Landsdown Centre for Electronic Arts on new forms of doctorates. This was the third seminar in the series. As someone who undertook a practice based PhD some years back (that admittedly was not altogether a totally a rewarding institutional experience), I found the seminar both stimulating and cathartic. David Durling, a Professor of Art and Design at Middlesex University, discussed the history of the PhD within the Design field emphasising the difference between ‘practice’ and ‘research’. He also discussed the difference between a ‘Doctorate’ and a ‘PhD’ which the former being more professional and vocational whilst the later is research-based. He stressed in his talk is that not all disciplines have identical cognate skills and some require the development of research skills in areas such as visual communication and performance.

The research qualification that is the PhD must provide reliable evidence that is discoverable and re-usable by others. And a PhD must provide an original argument within the rigours of a peer-assessed field and this argument must stand up against competing evidence. If it does this; the form shouldn’t be the major concern as the major concern should be whether the form presented is adequate enough evidence to communicate the tacit knowledge of the researcher and the research endeavour undertaken (and the required cognate skills). Many forms aren’t up to this task.

And I do worry a little that debates about new forms of PhDs may be so complex and un-containable that they are in danger of being hijacked by anti-academic and simplistic discourses such a technological determinism. Not all technical ‘progress’ is in the interest of research and education.

The second speaker, Professor Stephen Boyd Davis, Director of the Landsdown Centre for Electronic Arts, talk was titled ‘Defending the Thesis: why the written thesis is better idea than ever’. He argued that a PhD makes explicit the implicit and makes overt the tacit. I liked his term ‘cognitive performance’; something that is developed though the rigours of arguing a position via a linear, argumentative and evidence-based narrative over a long period of time.

I do worry that new communication devices at times privilege the short term and the practical and research should never shy away from grand and significant questions that may not have a quick and practical fix. I particularly liked how he presented his own thesis to the audience revealing his use of image and text. As he implied; how we understand the ‘traditional’ written thesis has changed considerably, at least in terms of access to it and the content within it. Many theses are now available online that can be searched and parsed by search tools and text-mining tools thus making the text more readily available and perhaps contestable.

Many of these debates are incredibly important to the Digital Humanities as practice is so central to the field. Within the Digital Humanities I prefer the concept of an ‘ETD’ or Electronic Theses and Dissertation as it retains the ‘traditional’ framework of the written thesis but also allows computational digital objects to be embedded within it. It could also be used as a framework to publish critical editions of classical texts whist embedding the critical and argumentative apparatus within it. An ETD could also be published in two versions; one digital and one paper. This is as long as the digital component adheres to digital preservations conventions and standards and the University has the ability to store it (in many Universities the later is not the case).

More information can be found on the seminar series blog: http://newdoctorates.blogspot.com/

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100+ Places to Find Funding For Your Research

July 24, 2008 at 12:32 pm · Filed under digital humanities, pedagogy

Whether you’re researching the habits of marine life, ancient texts or just a new way to market products, you’ll likely need some funding to get your studies underway. The Internet is a great place to start looking for sources of funding, and we’ve put together a list here of a hundred or so places where you can get some assistance for your next big research project (link)

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How stupid can university rankings get?

May 25, 2008 at 7:17 pm · Filed under pedagogy, pod casts

This is an indication on just how relative, simplistic, and self-serving the so-called university ‘global’ rating system has become. A university in Melbourne , unable, it seems, to compete on the rather insane ranking system created by newspapers like the London Times, has decided to create its own ranking system. And who comes on top of this ranking system do you think? The city of Melbourne and a university that doesn’t even have a humanities school. Subjective or what? Apples and Pears or what? (link)

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Peer review and evaluation of digital resources for the Arts and Humanities

February 27, 2007 at 12:26 am · Filed under art, digital humanities, humanities computing, journals, pedagogy

Here is a report done in the UK to help advance peer review processes for digital work in the arts and humanities. Peer review is a problematic issue, especially in Australia, in that many academics who don’t invest any intellectual energy into advancing digital work for humanistic purposes are (ironically) rewarded more than those academics that do advance it (ie. only peer-reviewed journal articles and books are quantifiable as ‘research’ whilst digital scholarship is marginalised). Another related problem is that many academics ‘critically’ understand popular and commercial software at the expense of a more scholarly appreciation of academic software. Let’s hope that these emerging peer-review processes can foster more well-rounded research. Peer processes not only need to recognise digital-scholarly-output, but they also need to make sure that academics are not unduly rewarded (through promotion, tenure, and other rewards) for not investing in digital technology.

The mechanisms for the evaluation and peer review of the traditional print outputs of scholarly research in the arts and humanities are well established, but no equivalent exists for assessing the value of digital resources and of the scholarly work which leads to their creation. This project proposes to establish a framework for evaluating the quality, sustainability and impact over time of digital resources for the arts and humanities, using History, in its broadest sense, as a case study (link).

Also, check out the criteria for promotion and tenure guidelines developed by the University of Maine, in the US:

Recognition and achievement in the field of new media must be measured by standards as high as but different from those in established artistic or scientific disciplines. As the reports from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Modern Language Association, and the University of Maine recommend, promotion and tenure guidelines must be revised to encourage the creative and innovative use of technology if universities are to remain competitive in the 21st century (link).

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Preparing Students for User-Led Content Production

November 27, 2006 at 9:25 pm · Filed under blogs, education, pedagogy, social media, web2.0

Here is a recorded talk given by the prolific Axel Bruns of QUT at the ATOM Conference 2006 (link). Like most somewhat commercially-orientated researchers, this researcher works in a very crowded field and his most potent contribution seems to be in teaching rather that definable original research. I.e. too much process orientation, and not enough context and content, and I can’t really see anything original and significant apart from Bruns changing the words to describe what is already pretty much well-known in main stream thought. And I am indifferent to his research networks; but this happens in research, even in small countries. Pockets of like-minded people appear that are hostile to alternative views, but luckily in crowded fields, they aren’t that difficult to go around (a small speed hump rather than a mountain). His recent book on blogs perhaps reveals what happens in crowded fields; researchers retreat into islands of like-minded people that lack fresh insight and the ability to explore significant other contributions beyond comfortable and predictable networks of ‘like minded’ people. I wonder if this is common in the academy and how it effects research output? Now there is a research proposal for you; a Randall Collins type enquiry into academic networks in crowded fields in Australia.

Technorati : axel bruns, blogs, research, web2.0
Del.icio.us : axel bruns, blogs, research, web2.0

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Morning Coffee with Craig: Do you have time to think?

November 25, 2006 at 11:47 pm · Filed under pedagogy, political communication, video, video diary, web2.0

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What is Participatory Culture and Web2.0 ?

November 20, 2006 at 3:53 pm · Filed under pedagogy, web2.0

Thanks to Henry Jenkins and Howard Rheingold (link to a USC Annenberg Centre’s blog)

We have also identified a set of core social skills and cultural competencies that young people should acquire if they are to be full, active, creative, and ethical participants in this emerging (online) participatory culture:

Play — the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving

Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
Read the rest of this entry »

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Student use of Wikipedia

November 16, 2006 at 12:59 pm · Filed under blogs, pedagogy, web2.0

This thread on the use of Wikipedia in the academy appeared earlier this year on the discussion list Humanist. Here is the link.

This message is a request for comment (the humanities version of a
RFC). 2006 appears to be the year that undergraduate students discovered
Wikipedia in a big way. My colleagues and I have been seeing an increasing
number of papers that use Wikipedia inappropriately as the sole or primary
reference. For example, I just read a paper about the relation between
Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism in which every reference
was to the Wikipedia articles on those topics with no awareness that there
was any need to read a primary work or even a critical work. After writing
comments to a number of students on this topic, I set to work on a general
policy statement addressed to the student that might be shared among my
local community of scholars (see draft below). I thought such a statement
might be of general use. I welcome any suggestions from, or discussion by,
the Humanist community as well as pointers to any similar statements that
may exist. (Still to do is a one-paragraph version of such a statement
suitable for inclusion in a course syllabus.)

–Alan Liu, UC Santa Barbara

TO THE STUDENT: APPROPRIATE USE OF WIKIPEDIA

In recent years, Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) has become one of
the most important and useful resources on the Internet. Created by an open
community of authors (anyone can contribute, edit, or correct articles), it
has become a powerful resource for researchers to consult alongside other
established library and online resources. As in the case of all tools,
however, its value is a function of appropriateness. In the case of
college-level essays or research papers, students should keep in mind the
following two limitations, one applying to all encyclopedias, and the other
specifically to Wikipedia:

Read the rest of this entry »

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The University of Melbourne Podcasts

November 3, 2006 at 1:18 pm · Filed under education, pedagogy, web2.0

Like everyone else it seems, universities have started to produce their own ‘community engagement’ media channels. Check out this contribution from The University of Melbourne. I would be interested to hear what you think.

‘Melbourne University Up Close’ Episode 3: Nuclear Power

In the third episode of the Melbourne University Up Close podcast show,
Jacky Angus will discuss the merits and risks of nuclear power with
Associate Professor Martin Sevior of the Department of Physics. Tune in
to this episode at: http://upclose.unimelb.edu.au

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New media and cultural form: narrative versus database

October 26, 2006 at 1:17 pm · Filed under hypertext, pedagogy

New media and cultural form: narrative versus database

Ilana Snyder

Monash University

To appear in 2004 in: A. Adams & S. Brindley (eds), Teaching English with ICT. London: Open University Press & McGraw Hill.

Why narrative and database

Stories define how we think, how we play, even how we dream: they represent a basic way of organising human experience. We understand our lives through stories. Barbara Hardy has argued famously that narrative is ‘a primary act of mind transferred to art from life’ (Hardy 1977: 12). The act of the storyteller, the author, the novelist, says Hardy, arises from what we do all the time, in remembering, dreaming, planning.

Read the rest of this entry »

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What to do with a million books: Innovations in Scholarly Communication

October 14, 2006 at 11:26 pm · Filed under books, events, pedagogy

(The 'scholarly communication' in this email isn't that 'scholarly' ie. I think that Michael Hart the founder of Project Gutenburg is talking about hard-on tablets rather than e-books ie. 'bigger, faster, more'. Still, ebooks may eventually become more than just 'the delivery boy' of scholarship as Willard McCarthy of that wonderful email discussion list Humanist might say). Read the rest of this entry »

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Community Engagement and ICT

October 12, 2006 at 4:00 pm · Filed under education, governance, pedagogy

For those interested in ICTs and Community Engagement, I have transcribed a list of useful sites from that wonderful publication “Towards Whole of Community Engagement: A Practical Toolkit” by Heather J Aslin and Valarie A Brown. Although none of these links particularly concern ICTs, the methodologies and approaches used in them could be appled to innovation with ICTs in a community setting (including political innovation or ‘innovation’ in the formation of social or cultural capital).
Read the rest of this entry »

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How to write an academic essay

September 19, 2006 at 1:10 pm · Filed under pedagogy

Here is an excellent guide by Professor David Gauntlett of the Institute for Communication Studies in the UK on how to write an academic essay (link). Thanks for making it publicly available!

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H2O Playlist (more social software)

June 14, 2006 at 11:52 am · Filed under blogs, pedagogy, social media, technology, web2.0

More wonderful tools from the world of Web2.0. And this time from the Harvard Law School. Who every said that establishment schools are 'technophobic'? Perhaps only in Australia. Here is a great article on H20 about Web2.0 (you will have to figure out how is works by yourself).

UDL and Web 2.0: Confronting the Drunk Librarian

Creator:  Jeremy Price   (Updated 28 Nov 2005)

Description:  

A presentation and discussion exploring the following questions:

* What is Web 2.0, and what are some examples?
* What are folksonomies and what's so special about tagging?
* What kinds of disabilities are reinforced, and what new disabilities emerge with the adoption of the Web 2.0 philosophy?
* What is the role of UDL and what is the niche for CAST in Web 2.0?

Also, there are some fantasic articles on Web2.0 in 'the most influential playlists ' section'. 

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The Social Networking Goldrush

June 11, 2006 at 4:45 pm · Filed under pedagogy, social media, technology, web2.0

I discovered a very interesting opensourse 'social software' service called elgg.net today that on the surface, appears to be much better than that ugly old beast 'myspace' (elgg.net has a focus upon learning). This article by one the the writers on the elgg.net system, Ben Ward, tells it all.

Whose Space?

 

In April 2005, the New York State Attorney General alleged that Intermix Media, an Internet marketing firm, was the source for illegally installed spyware that quietly launched ads on millions of computers across the country. They had created a website that allowed users to change their mouse cursor to one of their choosing (something that you can do anyway with a very minimal amount of tweaking) – and the catch was a pop up advertising engine that users inadvertently downloaded at the same time. Intermix Media eventually settled for nearly $8 million without admitting guilt.

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