Tag: #HESM

#AcDigID, #EdDigID

Social and Digital Presence in Higher Ed (#EdDigID)

Laura Pasquini

Social media and digital technologies are not neutral. These platforms come with cultural, social, and political context — often engineered to encourage interaction, engagement, and some form of addiction. [Listen to more on this rant in @BreakDrink episode no. 7: The Tech Curmudgeons.] Nora Young (2012) details more about her perspective of disembodiment and digital culture in her book, The Virtual Self. There are ways that technology is shaping us socially and this, in turn, has impacted the way we work — even in higher education. That being said technologies are not “infinitely malleable” as we have witnessed “the character of digital technology to decontextualize and recontextualize, to remix and reassemble” (Young, 2012, p. 81). As I read perspectives on social technologies to interviewing higher ed professionals, I am reminded that fluidity between the online and offline self is both interpreted and approached differently by each individual. Digital culture is changing. Although it is not entirely “embodied” by as we “live” and work online, there are emotional, intellectual, and personal impacts for our offline lives.

Next week (May 15-21, 2017), I am facilitating an OLC online workshop (also offered September 25-October 1, 2017) to dig into issues and affordances of our networked selves. What does your online identity look like today? In higher ed, it is becoming increasingly vital to share your work and practice online. Besides developing a digital presence, higher education staff, administrators, and scholars are utilizing social media to support their work, add to their professional development, engage with peers, and share what they are doing to the public. Open and digital channels help colleagues solicit for advice, seek out support/collaboration, offer free professional development, share information and resources, and learn in networked communities with common interests. Although there are benefits to “working out loud” and online, there are also challenges and issues as we repurpose social, digital spaces.  This workshop was designed to discuss, explore, and consider how YOU want to BE online — if you do. At the end of this workshop, I hope participants will be able to:

  • Evaluate social media and digital platforms for professional development and connected learning in the field;
  • Establish effective strategies for developing/creating/improving your  digital identity for open, networked practice; and
  • Outline the benefits and challenges of open and digital practice, especially when considering what it means for higher education staff and faculty are active on social media and in networked spaces.

If you are not able to sign up for this #EdDigID workshop next week, fear not! There are a few other ways you can get involved, contribute, and participate virtually:

  • TWITTER:
    • TWEET: Share resources around digital identity, networked experiences, and how you learn online and on social media using the workshop hashtag: #EdDigID
    • HASHTAGS & TWEEPS: What hashtags do you track on or who do you follow on Twitter? What hashtags are YOU interested for colleagues in higher ed? #EdDigID
    • LISTED: I have been curating Twitter lists for quite some time that includes peers in higher ed, academia, academic advising, librarians, and MORE! Do I need to add you to one of my Twitter lists? Please advise (on Twitter or in the comments below). Thanks!
    • PARTICIPATE in the#EdDigID TWITTER CHAT: Join us for the live, synchronous Twitter chat on Friday, May 19th from 1-2 pm CDT on the Twitters. We’ll be hanging out in this TweetChat Room and I will moderate this chat here: http://tweetchat.com/room/EdDigID
  • LINKEDIN: 
    • CALL FOR CONTRIBUTION: Are you using LinkedIn for your professional, networked development? How are you learning on this platform? Let me know. It’s something I want to chat about in our synchronous meeting online next Wednesday (5/17) from 12-1 pm CST — you can even JOIN THE CONVERSATION if you are interested/available.
  • PODCASTS:
    • From my personal interest in podcast listening (and producing of podcasts), I have been curating an amazing number of podcasts for/by higher ed professionals and academics. I will be sharing this out via another project and blog post soon — but for now, what should be on my podcast feed AND what podcasts should the #EdDigID participants listen to?

Reference:

Young, N. (2012). The virtual self: How our digital lives are altering the world around us. Toronto, Canada: McClelland & Stewart, Ltd.

Higher Education, Social Media, SocioTech

Sociotechnical Stewardship: Guiding Social Media Policy and Practice in Higher Ed

Laura Pasquini

In a previous blog post, I shared how I am visualizing scholarship via the Research Shorts YouTube Channel (Please SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/researchshorts). If you have not viewed any of these papers, here’s a list of journal articles, that are now videos on this channel, compiled by George. As an open, digital scholar, I thought that producing videos of my own work might be a solid idea to share scholarship. So here I go…

Remember that “really big paper” known as a dissertation? It was on the topic of social media guidance and such? If not — check out the website on the topic here: https://socialmediaguidance.wordpress.com/ Well, I learned one is never really Ph-inishe-D with this research until the research is published in a peer-reviewed journal [More on this #AcWri process and experience in a future blog post… I promise!].

I am proud to say this research has been officially published! This blog post shares a quick video overview of the paper, link to the journal article/pre-print paper, and the database of over 250 social media policies from 10 countries analyzed within this study. Thanks to all who contributed to this research and to others who will continue to use this open data set and research to further work in this area. This sociotechnical stewardship framework is organized from the key themes found from text-mining the 24, 243 policy passages reviewed within this corpus. Here are a few things we need to consider when organizing and guiding sociotechnical systems in our organizations:I am continuing to understand how we best guide and support sociotechnical systems for higher education professionals as I interview participants for a current research project[Hint, hint: CONTRIBUTE to our current study that is “in progress” now: https://bit.ly/networkedself

I hope other scholars and practitioners further this research and apply these practices to effectively support campus stakeholders. Want to learn more about this study, here is a quick video summary (4:59 minutes):

Social media technologies transform how we share, communicate, and interact with one another. On our college and university campuses, new media applications and platforms are transforming how students, staff, faculty, and alumni engage with one another. As these social, emerging technologies impact teaching, learning, research, and work functions on campus, we need to understand how social media use and behaviors are being supported. To help higher education administrators and organizational leaders effectively guide social, emerging technologies, we prove a summary of 250 institutional policy documents and we offer a sociotechnical framework to help support strategic, long-term technology planning for organizations and their stakeholders.

Download this research paper:

The article is published in the Journal of Computing in Higher Education here or find the pre-print version of the original paper on my ResearchGate profile.

Download a csv file of the higher education social media policy database:

Pasquini, L. A. (2016). Social media policy document database. Figshare. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.4003401. Retrieved from https://figshare.com/articles/Social_media_policy_document_database/4003401

Reference:

Pasquini, L. A., & Evangelopoulos, N. (2017). Sociotechnical stewardship in higher education: A field study of social media policy documents. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 29(2), 218-239. doi: 10.1007/s12528-016-9130-0 Published Online November 21, 2016.