Digital Directions

Beyond Text in Legal Education

This has received quite a bit of attention lately, both Paul Maharg and Julian Webb have commented on the activities of the AHRC funded project at Edinburgh University that took place this past weekend.

Here are some links to the blog posts and the project in general:

Page for the two-day conference
hEaD space - Beyond Text – Day 1
Zeugma - Beyond Text Conference, 21-22 June, day one
Zeugma - Beyond Text Conference, 21-22 June, day two

Digital Britain and Web 2.0 for research/teaching

I wasn't planning on mentioning the Digital Britain report released earlier this week - it's rather lengthy, uninteresting from the legal education perspective, and many other commentators have covered the interesting aspects of creative technologies, IPR and other rights management (see TechnoLlama, panGloss, Charles Arthur, Chris Marsden, and TorrentFreak), and covered them well.

However, the National Centre for e-Social Science are "investigating the extent to which Web 2.0 tools represent useful means of communicating, sharing and disseminating research ideas and outputs for researchers across different disciplines, with a view to exploring implications for the future of scholarly communications".  And I thought this kind of fitted with the idea that new technologies are pervasive within the education system and that we might expect newer (and especially younger) researchers to be embracing such web 2.0 tools, more so as time goes on.

"The study is aimed at:

(i) Informing researchers, institutions and funders on the effectiveness of these new resources as means of communicating, sharing and disseminating research ideas and outputs
(ii) Advising research institutions and funders about the possible implications of the use of these resources for the recognition and reward of research outputs
(iii) Providing librarians, information professionals and publishers with a view about how they might develop their roles in the scholarly communications process in order to complement the evolution of new means of sharing information in research communities.

To what extent are Web 2.0 tools are being adopted as a scholarly tool in different institutions and departments across the UK, in different subject fields and disciplines, and at different stages of the scholarly communications process?

• -Which tools are being used, for what scholarly purposes and to what degree?
• -What are the demographic characteristics of researchers who use these tools?
• -What factors influence researchers to adopt and use Web 2.0 tools?
• -Are there specific skills and training needs relevant to the adoption of Web 2.0 resources by researchers?
• -Is there evidence that Web 2.0 tools are changing researchers' behaviour in significant ways?
• -How do perceptions about quality, scholarly merit or permanence of content affect researchers' use of Web 2.0?
• -Is there evidence of impact on perceptions and practices of how research can be peer reviewed?
• -What are the ethical and legal implications of disseminating information via Web 2.0, with regard to ownership of information, etc?
  
• -What is the relationship between Web 2.0 resources and established search and discovery services?"

Prompted by the chance to win a new i-pod touch, I completed their survey!

Whilst the Digital Britain report concentrates mainly on the HEI provisions for supporting the development of a digital nation (i.e. graduates in ICT areas - see Chapter 6: Research, Education and Skills for Digital Britain), little is mentioned about the general use of web 2.0 tools within HEI - although there is some mention of embedding skills at primary and secondary level education.

I look forward to seeing some of the data generated from the NCeSS survey, particularly as some of the earlier questions asked about subject areas (and the relevant RAE 2008 subject codes) which might give some interesting comparisons not only for the research and teaching community, but regarding usage within disciplines (such as law) as well.