George Veletsianos, PhD

#MyTwitterStory Blog Carnival

On November 16, 2011

Michael Grant declared Wednesday November 16, 2011 as “My Twitter Story” day and invited others (everyone, I suppose) to share their stories. Here’s mine:

I started using Twitter in early late 2008, right after I mover to Manchester, UK. Around that time, Terry Anderson introduced me to Alec Couros and seeing what Alec was doing with Twitter encouraged me to try it out. My participation has varied over time, but I’ve come to tweet for both personal and professional purposes. I am comfortable with colleagues and students knowing that in addition to writing, teaching, and educational technology, I enjoy photography, travel, adventure, Internet culture, and food. Importantly though, through Twitter I’ve come to understand participatory media and cultures and gain an appreciation of the power and limitations of online social networking for learning, teaching, and scholarship. Through Twitter, I have been able to connect students to colleagues, become a better photographer, share my work, and learn from colleagues, who, though I’ve never met face-to-face, I consider to be dear friends. I am probably sounding like a techno-enthusiast, but if you peel away the technology, the number of followers, the character limits, and the twitter clients, you will see that behind the connections lies a desire to connect and share, a desire for openness, in order to improve education. It’s not that Twitter came about and created these feelings. Twitter merely provided the outlet for these feelings to materialize.

Stories and narratives are powerful. They help us in make sense of the world and provide a lens through which to understand experiences. This is my #twitterstory. What’s yours?

Visualizing a 45-minute writing session

By George Veletsianos

On November 14, 2011

In sharing

While writing a paper, I used IOGraph to visualize my mouse movements. The darker circles represent areas where my mouse was resting and the lines represent mouse movements from point A to point B. During this session, I was mostly writing, and my mouse was stationary. I wonder what educational uses such a visualization has. For example, I use Scrivener as my writing platform because it minimizes distractions and allows me to focus on writing (rather than editing). If I were to use a tool that wasn’t distraction-free (e.g., MS Word), I imagine I would be seeing a lot more activity around the editing toolbars. Thus, using the visualization as a way to reflect on the writing process might be an interesting exercise.

Networked Participatory Scholarship or Open/Digital Scholarship?

By George Veletsianos

On November 6, 2011

In my research, NPS, open, scholarship, sharing

In my blog post explaining scholars’ participation and practices on Twitter, I alluded to Networked Participatory Scholarship (yet another acronym!). I have mentioned this on and off over the last year and a half, but I am now happy to announce that Royce Kimmons (who recently became a doctoral candidate – woot!) and I published a paper explaining pressures that exist for educators’ and researchers’ to participate in digital scholarship and online social networks. Our work complements recent research in the field by suggesting that the rise of digital scholarship is not simply due to technological advances. Digital scholarship also relates to social and cultural pressures (e.g., scholars’ questioning scholarly artifacts, such as peer-review, and experimenting with new forms of teaching, such as open courses and MOOCs). For this reason, we prefer to think about digital scholarship in terms of practices, as “scholars’ participation in online social networks to share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and otherwise develop their scholarship.”

Here’s the abstract:

We examine the relationship between scholarly practice and participatory technologies and explore how such technologies invite and reflect the emergence of a new form of scholarship that we call Networked Participatory Scholarship: scholars’ participation in online social networks to share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and otherwise develop their scholarship. We discuss emergent techno-cultural pressures that may influence higher education scholars to reconsider some of the foundational principles upon which scholarship has been established due to the limitations of a pre-digital world, and delineate how scholarship itself is changing with the emergence of certain tools, social behaviors, and cultural expectations associated with participatory technologies.

We conclude by noting that, “Whether they recognize it or not, scholars are part of a complex techno-cultural system that is ever changing in response to both internal and external stimuli, including technological innovations and dominant cultural values. Though such an understanding may lead to a certain level of trepidation regarding the shape of scholarship’s uncertain future, we should take an active role in influencing the future of scholarship and establishing ourselves as productive participants in an increasingly networked and participatory world.”

A copy of the paper is also available:
Veletsianos, G. & Kimmons, R. (2012). Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent Techno-Cultural Pressures Toward Open and Digital Scholarship in Online Networks. Computers & Education, 58(2), 766-774.: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.10.001

Image courtesy of: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/onecm/5862945226/. Licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0

What do scholars do on Twitter?

By George Veletsianos

On October 24, 2011

In my research, NPS, online learning, open, papers, scholarship

I have just had an article published with the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, entitled Higher education scholars’ participation and practices on Twitter. The paper focuses on a qualitative analysis of 45 scholars’ (anonymized and edited) tweets to acquire a deep meaning of practice, and is part of my research into Networked Participatory Scholarship. Those of you interested in how faculty members use social media, the relationship between social media and identity, digital scholarship, scholarly use of online networks, and the rise of the digital scholar, may find this worthwhile.

Citation and link to pdf: Veletsianos, G. (2012). Higher Education Scholars’ Participation and Practices on Twitter. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(4), 336-349.

If you have been participating on Twitter for a while, some of the findings won’t be surprising, but the paper can serve as a starting point for deeper conversations on the why and how social media is used by scholars, academics, and faculty members. Nonetheless, interesting implications to point out include the following:

“Even though social networking technologies in general were developed for purposes unrelated to education, they have been co-opted and repurposed by scholars, in part, to satisfy educational and scholarly pursuits.”

“Is Twitter fostering more social opportunities and community-oriented approaches to education and scholarly participation? Or, do the individuals who espouse these kinds of beliefs happen to make use of Twitter for scholarly pursuits?”

“Are scholars altruistically sharing information for the benefit of the community in which they belong? Or, is information sharing a self-serving activity? Are scholars sharing information in order to assist the profession grow intellectually, or are they attempting to develop a ‘brand’ around themselves?”

“Twitter is often dismissed as a platform of meaningless soliloquies and dull updates…Rather than representing meaningless chatter, [Twitter] updates may introduce opportunities to explore shared interests, experiences, goals, mindsets, and life dispositions/aspirations.”

The themes relating to participation and practices highlighted in the paper are the following: Scholars participating on Twitter (1) shared information, resources, and media relating to their professional practice; (2) shared information about their classroom and their students; (3) requested assistance from and offered suggestions to others; (4) engaged in social commentary; (5) engaged in digital identity and impression management; (6) sought to network and make connections with others; and (7) highlighted their participation in online networks other than Twitter.

Enjoy, and if you have any input, I would love to hear it!

Emerging Technologies book downloads: One year later

By George Veletsianos

On October 10, 2011

In sharing

In July of 2010, I published Emerging Technologies in Distance Education with Athabasca University Press. The book was published in print and e-book format. In the spirit of openness I am sharing the book’s download statistics, as culled from the AU Press site below. If you can’t see the spreadsheet below, you can access it here.

A number of chapters have been included in course syllabi which helped increase their readership. Last time I checked, the book or chapters of it had been used in the following courses:

EDTECH 597: Social Network Learning from Boise State University (Fall, 2010)
EDU 7271: Information and Communication: Social and Conventional Networks from Northeastern University (Spring 2011)
EDU 6407: Essentials of Multimedia for Distance Learning from Northeastern University (Spring 2011)
PLENK 2010: Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge. A collaborative Open Course offered from Athabasca University and the University of Prince Edward Island (Fall, 2010)
OLIT 538: E-learning Course Design from the University of New Mexico (Fall, 2010)
EDUC60602: Teaching and Learning with Emerging Technologies from the University of Manchester, UK (Spring 2011)

[Side note: If you are using the book or chapters of it in courses that are not listed above, I’d love to hear about it!]

Chapter 6 (pdf) by Alec Couros was included in the PLENK 2010: Personal Learning Environments Networks, and with the large number of participants has shot to the number 1 most-read chapter in the book. Congrats, Alec!

Chapter 1 was the chapter that I wrote, and sought to define emerging technologies and pedagogies (pdf). This was the second most downloaded chapter in the book.

Thank you for downloading the book (or parts of it) and I hope it has helped you in your educational endeavors!

Assessing digital scholarship (#change11)

By George Veletsianos

On September 28, 2011

In NPS, open, scholarship

It’s digital scholarship week at #change11 and I am in the midst of following the activity on Twitter and a number of blogs. At the same time I am preparing my annual activity report that details the work that I’ve been doing over the past year. In this report, one will find evidence on research, teaching, and service. Evaluation norms for these include: citations, average teaching scores compared to departmental/university averages, journal impact factors, evidence of impact on education and the profession, etc.

One of the issues that often comes up, and one that Martin raises in chapter 11 of his book as well, is the lack of established frameworks to evaluate digital scholarship, digital artifacts, and academics’ digital participation. That’s not to say that all digital participation should be evaluated or that all digital participation is even worthy of evaluation. The lack of frameworks, in addition to indicating that academia may not value digital artifacts, also signifies the difficulty of assessing the impact of scholarship. This is not a new problem, as academia has struggled with figuring out methods with which to evaluate innovations. A similar issue is facing Design-Based Researchers. Collins, Joseph, and Bielaczyc (2004, pp. 40) for instance, note that Design-Based Research generates mountains of data that independent researchers can use in answering their own questions about teaching and learning. But “this would require the community to honor such reanalysis of data with the same status as original research and it would require research journals and tenure committees to take such work seriously.” While other fields have found value in the analysis of secondary data (e.g., bioinformatics), education has yet to make advances in this domain.

Food for thought: Institutions are complex entities that serve numerous stakeholder. How do we create frameworks that value the important work that is being done on digital spaces, while also valuing the cultural norms and values of the institution?

Collins, A., Joseph, D., & Bielaczyc, K. (2004). Design Research: Theoretical and Methodological Issues. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 15-42. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls1301_2

Computer and Internet Applications in Education AERA SIG: Call for officer nominations

By George Veletsianos

On September 26, 2011

In sharing

The CIAE-SIG (Computer and Internet Applications in Education Special Interest Group) is seeking nominations for three executive committee positions for 2012: Chair, Program Chair, and Treasurer-Secretary. Please consider nominating individuals for these positions or volunteering yourself!

The Chair of the SIG plans and runs the business meeting, as well as attends to the other paperwork required by AERA (a few forms a year).

The Program Chair manages the submissions and reviewers in AERA’s online system, and follows AERA’s procedure for putting together a program of sessions for the annual meeting. Typically the SIG is allocated space on the annual meeting program for 1 business meeting session and 4 paper/symposium sessions, plus roundtables and posters.

The Treasurer-Secretary is responsible for monitoring and controlling the SIG’s financial account and coordinating this fiscal activity with AERA headquarters.

The new officers start immediately following the 2012 annual meeting. The term of positions are for one year at a time, and no person may serve in any office for more than two consecutive terms. Each year AERA has several leadership seminar sessions at the annual meeting to aid new officers in understanding important topics ranging from Annual Meeting planning, financial management, governance, operations, and web-based tools.

Being a SIG officer is great for your CV and can allow you to take a leadership position in enhancing the types of sessions offered by the SIG.

For all nominations, please submit the following to Dr. George Veletsianos (veletsianos|at|gmail.com) for inclusion in the AERA ballot:

The full name of the candidate;
The institutional affiliation of the candidate;
A biographical statement for the candidate, which can be up to 250 words.

Thank you!
George Veletsianos
Charles Miller
Cassie Scharber