Digital Directions

The value of social media

This month's Big Question from Tony Carrer's Learning Circuits Blog is an interesting one, not just for learning professionals who are trying to enage colleagues, but also for academics who are trying to engage their students!

"How do I communicate the value of social media as a learning tool to my organization?"

"My coworkers are Baby Boomers and Traditionals. When I mention blogs or any social networking they "poo-poo" me and say our workers should not use those tools because it will make them inefficient and not do their jobs. When I have presented the idea of how we can use discussion threads on our environment to discuss topics and make comments outside the classroom, many of my co-workers said it can't be done. They either haven't opened their mind to the idea or really care. In essence, if it is not classroom, they are really not interested in it.

My question is how do I get my coworkers to even consider the capabilities of these tools when it really does not interest them."

In relation to higher education, and legal education in particular, I think that the uptake of social media by the profession can also be used as a driver to encouage staff to (re)consider using such tools in the classroom setting.

It may well be that the profession is also experiencing this 'Big Question' and that senior partners are poo-pooing tools that may be considered as an inefficient use of time, but recently the use of social media by both large and small firms has really taken off.

Writing for the Binary Law blog, Nick Holmes picks up on other commentators in thrall of the BigLaw firms, in particular whether the legal press pays a disproportionate amount of attention to large law firms - with their panoply of marketing directors, PR advisors, website and social media mavens.  His response to Jordan Furlong, a Canadian blogger at slaw.ca, was:

"I do think you’re not seeing the wood for the trees here. Social media do already provide the means for solos and smaller firms to leave a bigger footprint and “amplify their voice and multiply their narratives within the profession as a whole”. As you well know, they are doing it through public blogging and the public SNEs; and the pooling and focussing is done via public group activity on group blogs and special interest groups on the SNEs.

That does not provide a complete solution and third party collaboration and aggregation channels are evolving, but I don’t really see that they need “their own media channel” – will it not be an agglomeration of media channels?

The first step for solos and small firms is to engage with social media and they have only themselves to blame if they don’t.

You suggest that their footprints need to be left “in the places where journalists search for ideas and leads”. Turn that around: how about journalists need to engage better with social media and source their stories from a wider range of media channels? Surely it’s a very lazy hack who relies on the mainstream legal media for their ideas; surely they need to be reading blogs, following Twitter et al? Now I know you do this, so the next question to ask (of an employed journalist) is – It’s all very well for me to source some of my ideas and stories from solos and small firms, but will that sell the rag/will it attract the advertising bucks, will it please my paymaster? I suspect the answer to those questions is No."

In a previous post, Holmes also points to a critique of Susskind's book, The End of Lawyers? reviewed by Gillian Bull, which further contributes to the notion of BigLaw:

“Susskind’s book in the main deals with life on Planet Mammon: life on Planet Rumpole (or even Planet Pooter) doesn’t figure much.” Thus, in her view, the book is not relevant to most lawyers and the public at large. Not only that, but City lawyers either won’t need to read it if they’re already on the game, or won’t want to read it if they’re not; and their ICT managers will “need more than the collection of anecdotes and predictions that this book comprises. To make their case for spending money they need lots of hard data, of which there are none here.”

But then, this book does focus on the large law firms and perhaps another book, or another author, could /should look further at small firms and the sole practitioner.

So, returning to the 'Big Question', then yes, both large and small firms are using social media and there may well be an expectation that future employees (our students) should be able to engage, contribute to, or even lead with this type of engagement.

The HEA in general, UKCLE in relation to legal education and individual HEIs all encouarge staff to undertake pilot projects and the sharing of examples which is probably our sector's solution to this Big Question, and has been for some time.  However, this does rely on the innovative lecturer to adopt or adapt the case studies for specific purposes on his or her course.

I was particularly drawn to an existing response to the Big Question that included the following presentation - a PR jobs-worth trying to ban the telephone in favour of social media!

New technology - the threat to our information

View more presentations from normanlamont.

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.

Time for some Google (and others) Bashing?

Heidi Schuster from the Max Planck Institute spoke about the use of Google in academic institutions (but also equally applicable to any corporate employer or government agency).Outsourcing of often undertaken by both the employer and the employee if software or services are not available in-house, so to speak.  However, this means that data is then transferred and stored on external servers – sometimes for free, but the real price that’s paid can be seen in Google’s terms of service that grant extensive rights for Google to ‘use’ this data.  Heidi pointed out that this is not unique to Google, but the services offered by Google are increasingly taken-up by academics and their institutions.  Many universities outsource their student email (although not usually staff email) if only to save on server space and bandwidth.  The presentation also looked at the issue of Google Inc having their headquarters in the US – i.e. outwith the EU and beyond the jurisdiction of the data protection legislation applicable to member states.  The EU’s Safe Harbour List offers some solace for Google users, but may not for users of other services.

The presentation made me think about my own use of Google – with echoes of the keynote speaker’s comments on the convergence of several great (or not quite so great, but certainly useful) functions and services.

Gmail – an alternative email address (but I’d stop short of having my university mail forwarded there).

Google Docs – collaborating with co-applicants and authors; and as (yet another!) obsessive-compulsive back-up, which probably isn’t such a good idea, but goes alongside the USB, CD, email a copy (to gmail? duh!) versions of anything I think I might accidentally delete or lose somehow.

Blogger – used for teaching and as a dissemination portal for some projects.

Google Analytics – let’s me know who’s reading this (and my other) blogs.

Google Talk – not used this for teaching (yet), but might be useful.

Google Groups – I tend to use the VLE rather than this for teaching, but it can offer some benefits.

Google Calendar – again, I don’t use it for teaching, but it’s great for collaboration with other institutions and for research projects.

Google Scholar – quite useful when I don’t really know what I’m looking for, and for when I’ve forgotten my Athens credentials!

Desktop search – this data doesn’t leave your machine, but it will if you wish to link multiple machines and perform only one search when all the indexing goes off to a Google server.

YouTube  – somewhere to stash various clips and other stuff so I can access them from anywhere (usually for a last minute conference presentation alteration).

Picassa – Similar to Flickr in the sense of somewhere to stash photos for last minute conference presentation alterations!

A cautionary tale, but nevertheless reminded me of how much I use one service provider.  My only defence is that I was using other service providers until Google bought them, that some services are specialised and I don’t have alternative choices, and finally the lazy option of the convenience – I don’t need to register elsewhere for a similar service.

Video killed the law lecturer?

After a short delay, here is the review of the afternoon session at the SWAP event earlier this week!

Phil Wane reviewed some of the technologies available to create video resources – and we’re not talking the Spielberg-type artistic or polished films, but rather short rough-and-ready clips that are designed to trigger students into either thinking about the topic or doing some further research.

Typically, Phil speaks for about 2-3 minutes on his mini ‘talking heads’ and covers anything from breaking news to updates on the module - even a short sell on ‘why you should attend the next lecture’ or a module options presentation! 

We looked at YouTube as a medium for quick and easy uploads, easy access, the possibility to make clips private to particular groups, how to remove the comment/rate features etc.  We also considered how good (or actually how mediocre) the recording equipment need be – frankly, most mobile phones have some built-in cam that could be used to record a quick session… so this is something that even the students could be asked to take up and submit short clips covering the news or a policy review.

Beyond the ‘talking heads’ we also considered other formats that could be created by using Audacity, Camtasia, Second Life videos and the CommonCraft Show, of which I’m a big fan and still planning to come up with my own version!  The subject centre’s Project Help Sheet Making Educational Movies – Without a Camcorder! was included in the pack as a useful introduction to the freebie Microsoft Movie Maker (usually comes ready installed on any PC) and also provides a guide to organizing and planning a movie clip from materials to narration and production.

I think the intention was to produce something ourselves in the session, but for various reasons we never got that far – but I will include my first attempt at a module movie that I hurriedly put together this past September for your amusement below!

LILAC gets WIKI with it!

The forthcoming LILAC 09 conference is getting very social and sophisticated with a wiki for use by both presenters and attendees!  Their wiki site already has details of the papers which can be commented upon in advance and each speaker will have their own wiki page to develop and manage.

For the wiki novice (or complete beginner), there is a handy User Guide to get you started; and if you're a Presenter - here's how you can add tags, new pages and customise your profile.

Of course, blogs and wikis aren't new for conferences - recently Tony Carrer posted on his blog about Conference Wikis, and has some good examples on his blog if you're interested to see how well they can work.

The ALT-C 2006 had a conference wiki that didn't really take off, although one particular ALT-C 2008 workshop organised a wiki for a Digital Divide Slam - for those (including me) who don't know what a 'slam' is:

A slam is a brief performance piece/ creative work that captures people's experience of the digital divide. The vivid expression of your ideas and the impact of your performance is more important than sophisticated use of technology. We need to have the performance captured digitally because we can't all be in the same place.
Your slam can include text or audio narrative or poems, drawings or cartoons, song, dance, mime. We are delighted to accept anything that you can capture in digital media and publish or link to from this Wiki, and that someone can view within a reasonable time, typically 1-3 minutes.

Some conferences, such as Hertfordshire's Blended Learning Conference 2008 have used a Ning social networking site for both pre and post discussions of events.  The Learning Technologies 2008 Ning Site is open for all to acess, and seems to be a good example of how Ning can be used.  A quick search indicates that there could be approx 1,400 conference sites in existence on Ning.  The ALT-C 2008 conference used CrowdVine, which is a similar idea that can be viewed here and even some YouTube clips were generated of the Gala Dinner.

The Cetis 2008 conference also had a wiki, but seemed to use Twitter more effectively on the day as shown by their Twitter Account and their Tweme (twemes are twitter messages from anyone who adds a particular tag to their twitterings).  Likewise, ReLIVE08 twittered with delicious and flickr built-in.

What McMaster did for medical training, can York do for legal education?

McMaster University in Canada is often cited as the pioneer and world-class leader for problem-based learning (PBL) which was developed in the medical school in the 1960s.  Using the ‘case approach’ to drive learning (rather than consolidate previous learning - whether practical or purely theoretical) is more accurately, if not awkwardly, termed “small group, self-directed, self-assessed PBL”.

 

The UKCLE has some resources on PBL for the law curriculum, many of which will be used in discrete parts of the LLB across the country, but York appears to be taking the McMaster approach to the entire curriculum and re-designing the student experience:

During much of the course, you will be based in student law firms where the primary learning will take place. You will decide what the firm will be called, how it will operate and how work will be divided within the firm.

Your firm will deal mainly with simulated real-life problems brought to you by virtual clients, which will be the primary device through which you will learn the law. These will be supplemented by large-group plenary sessions, which will provide overviews of specific topics or discuss selected issues in greater depth.

Each firm will be guided through its learning by‘facilitators’ who will be there to help you through the process, to illuminate particular points and to give you regular feedback on your progress. In many situations you will have to interact with other firms, sometimes working alongside them, sometimes working in opposition. You will form strong relationships with your firm, adapt to working with people with different strengths and weaknesses and thereby learn to work in a team, tackling problems in a realistic way.

I write this blog post on the train home from York as, along with Chris Ashford from Sunderland, I’ve just presented at a departmental seminar for the fledgling York Law School.  Chris and I discussed some of the e-learning tools that can be combined with problem-based learning: mainly discussion boards and blogs.  The issue of reflective learning brought Twitter and Facebook into the discussion as some of their PBL groups (acting as law firms) have voluntarily set up Facebook sites and some even invite their tutors to what is essentially their own private space.  Of course, the concern over whether students will use blogs (or other resources) for true reflection is ‘will they be honest’ when they know staff can also view; and conversely, do we know that they are being reflective if it’s done in private?!  I’m yet to be convinced by Twitter (quote from friend: Twitter is an abomination and almost entirely without merit - suited to insecure techo-geeks who lack confidence and social skills), although I can see a benefit to a PBL group who may wish to know ‘what I’m doing at the moment’ – not reflective learning, but a useful communication tool!

Unsuitable Jurors v Unsuitable Students!

Frances Gibb in the Times Online reports that the 'internet generation' is not used to listening for long periods and therefore could be unsuitable as jurors, according to the Lord Chief Justice.

Lord Judge said that many young people are “technically proficient” and obtain “much information from the internet”.  That meant that they were “not listening, they are reading,” he said in a lecture to the University of Hertfordshire.  “One potential problem is whether, learning as they do in this way, they will be accustomed, as we were, to listening for prolonged periods.”

Does this relate to students too?!  I'd be more than happy if my students would make their own enquiries and read around the subject matter addressed in lectures and seminars - but clearly this would be undesirable for jurors to be googling away on their blackberries in the privacy of the jury room or anywhere else for that matter!

Earlier this year, Dennis Coxe had an interesting blog post entitled "Let me tell you about...Excuse me, what were you saying?" about the general public's attention span - and if you're still reading this post, well done, and keep going!

According to Killian & Company, we're all starting to lose interest, and perhaps our students can be added, along with jurors, to the low-attentive YouTube audience at the bottom of this graph.  Perhaps the Courts are still in the Dickensian era (despite recent attempts to modernise court dress), and rather than spin out a prosecution case over three days, we should have a blog post from the CPS where the defence can comment and reply!

But on a serious note, I was in court a couple of weeks ago and a joint memorandum was submitted to the jury in relation to the evidence of a fire arms expert.  I would have liked to hear the evidence (as I was sat in the public gallery), but I wondered if the jury would take more interest in the written submission than they would if it was done orally?  Likewise, I wonder if my students would prefer a reading list, podcast and the occasional session for Q&A?!?

25 Nov - Follow-up: it seems that a juror at Burnley Crown Court has been discussing details of a trial on FaceBook - see The Guardian and The telegraph for details - it seems she posted a poll to ask friends how she should vote as she couldn't decide either way!

Facebook for academics!

Last month, I received an email from the ARMA@JISCMAIL.AC.UK mailing list, via our research administrator regarding the www.academia.edu project - devised by Richard Price at All Souls College, Oxford.

"- It displays academics around the world in a 'tree' format, according to what university/department they are affiliated with.

"- It enables researchers to keep track of the latest developments in their field - the latest people and papers.

"My hope for the site is that it will list every academic in the world --Faculty members, Post-Docs, and Graduate Students.

"It's gaining some traction - Richard Dawkins is on there (http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardDawkins ), and some other professors are such as Stephen Hawking ( http://cambridge.academia.edu/StephenHawking ) and Noam Chomsky (http://mit.academia.edu/NoamChomsky )."

After filling out a few fields, there is the option to link your publications and other research outputs - interstingly, this gives the article a really high Google Ranking - great for getting noticed online!!

On Tues 14 Oct, someone searched Google using the terms "Jury Directions"  (Academia.edu has a handy page of all keywords used).  The second hit is my academia.edu page with an article I wrote last year for the Common Law World Review... the publisher website (Vathek) doesn't appear on any of the five pages of Google hits that I looked through before I got bored - so, this seems like a useful feature indeed!

The Terms and Privacy Policy don't offer any assistance for disputes between members - and any disputes between a member and academia.edu will be subject to the laws of Oregon (must be where the servers are located).  Given that anyone can alter the name of an institution (I altered Glasgow Caledonian to read Glasgow Caledonian University - but I could have written anything that would then appear on the profile of all members from GCU) and rename departments, then there is room for plenty of both un-intentional mistakes and deliberate errors that will affect many personal member pages quite significantly.

Members may also add research interests and add other members as contacts - this then makes the tree more interactive and allows users to browse for new stuff, both purposefully and serendipitously.  The number of research interests is constantly growing - law has 33 sub-research interests - but again, you can add your own and it might get messy - Torts Law exists as a sub-research interest, but someone has also added Torts under Civil Law as a third level interest.  Forensics exists as a top level research interest, but also twice more under other topics, Criminology appears a few times under various top level interests.  I suppose this might allow members to decide whether they see themselves as social, legal or psychological criminologists.

There are currently 81 law departments listed worldwide - some UK ones are Oxford, Strathclyde, Manchester, Glasgow Caledonian, Nottingham Trent, Teesside, KCL, Durham, Middlesex, Birkbeck, Bangor, Sheffield and Westminster (ordered as found online).  There are currently 147 people listed within the top-level law interest - but only 6 within Legal Education - so let's see if this blog post gets any more interest on this social networking site for academia!!

2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report

Following on from my previous post (the TimesOnline report claiming that UK lawyers were perhaps behind the times compared to their cousins across the pond in the big old USA) - the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report was brought to my attention via the BIALL blog, which suggests that they may not be as 'law 2.0' as we're lead to believe!

Is free research catching up with the big two?

from The BIALL Blog by noreply@blogger.com (James Mullan)

The 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report has just been published by the American Bar Association, this report discusses in detail the use of technology within the legal profession and would be an interesting read for anyone involved in this area, unfortunately the report isn't available for free, but there is an interesting summary available on the ABA Journal website entitled "Web 2.0 Still a No-go"

This discusses how Lawyers are slow to adopt cutting edge technology like RSS Feeds, however things are beginning to change with Social Networking sites like Facebook beginning to catch on and of most interest to anyone working within an Information Unit the number of lawyers using free online legal research services.

According to the article in 2003 72% of Lawyers used free online legal research tools and 82% used subscription based services. Now those figures have been reversed with 89% using free online legal research tools and 87% using subscription based services. Another interesting statistic included in the report is that since 2003 there has been a 17% increase in the number of laywers conducting legal research online.

Both Nick Holmes and Charon QC noted the lack of real rearch that went into the TimesOnline, spurring the creation of a Snowflakes page of UK legal blogs by Charon QC that is quite extensive... I've not counted but I reckon there's well over 60 listed there.  Delia Venables also lists a number of legal blogs for the UK and beyond.

Back to the topic of using web2.0 tools, I've been keeping an eye on Tony Karrer's e-learning blog as he discusses work done with the eLearningGuild on the use of such tools by Corporations, Education and Government (all US based).  He notes that Education is ahead of Corporations in their adoption of e-learning tools, and Government showed some surprising trends.

The tools reported as used in education (US only) are shown in the image here.

The 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report has just been published by the American Bar Association, this report discusses in detail the use of technology within the legal profession and would be an interesting read for anyone involved in this area, unfortunately the report isn't available for free, but there is an interesting summary available on the ABA Journal website entitled "Web 2.0 Still a No-go"

This discusses how Lawyers are slow to adopt cutting edge technology like RSS Feeds, however things are beginning to change with Social Networking sites like Facebook beginning to catch on and of most interest to anyone working within an Information Unit the number of lawyers using free online legal research services.

According to the article in 2003 72% of Lawyers used free online legal research tools and 82% used subscription based services. Now those figures have been reversed with 89% using free online legal research tools and 87% using subscription based services. Another interesting statistic included in the report is that since 2003 there has been a 17% increase in the number of laywers conducting legal research online.

Both Nick Holmes and Charon QC noted the lack of real rearch that went into the TimesOnline, spurring the creation of a Snowflakes page of UK legal blogs by Charon QC that is quite extensive... I've not counted but I reckon there's well over 60 listed there.  Delia Venables also lists a number of legal blogs for the UK and beyond.

Back to the topic of using web2.0 tools, I've been keeping an eye on Tony Karrer's e-learning blog as he discusses work done with the eLearningGuild on the use of such tools by Corporations, Education and Government (all US based).  He notes that Education is ahead of Corporations in their adoption of e-learning tools, and Government showed some surprising trends.

The tools reported as used in education (US only) are shown in the image here.

Receding to the law library

Dear reader,

Over the last week, I had serious reasons to reconsider going to Glasgow. For over the last years  I fostered a small teaching position at my faculty in which I experimented with a student-centered wiki-environment. This experiment was governed by the idea that international collaboration of students could best be organised in an open social software environment. But since the first of January my only tie to the faculty of law in Groningen is a position as information specialist at the law library. As a last farewell I'll share my view on requirements for the law library 2.0.

Let me first state that I think the core issue is the role a law library should take in issues of internationalisation of legal education. In her article Legal Information Management in a Global and Digital Age: Revolution and Tradition, Claire Germain mentions an international orientation as a key perspective on new roles for law libraries in a time in which the social and organisational effects of digitisation become apparent. She also wants law libraries to support Open Access. That means that a law faculty has to take the big hurdle to consider that for some tasks not the own collection of books or the licensed digitised collection, but the quality of freely available legal information on the web should be the point of reference.