ADVANCED LEARNING FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH Isabel Fernandes Silva, Jane Rodrigues Duarte Centre for Linguistic, Comparative and TEL Studies, Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (PORTUGAL)
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Abstract Web 2.0 tools have acquired an increasingly relevant role in today's society, both at a professional and a personal level. Although people are not yet consciously aware of it, resorting to online tools has not only become a habit but a necessity. Despite the tendency for educators to start using ICT in the classroom, there is still a lot of scepticism and reluctance towards applying and using these tools on a regular basis. This paper is a case-study based on a ten-hour workshop organized by two educators and researchers at a university in Portugal. The two lecturers have successfully applied electronic tools to their scientific research and work as online course facilitators. Confronted with the resistance and lack of motivation from their peers, they decided to create this workshop and apply it at another Portuguese Higher Education Institution. Participants will be introduced to academic social networking for finding other researchers/literature, social bookmarking, for saving/sharing interesting links and webpages, wikis for writing the paper/collaborating with others, tools such as Voicethread© or Prezi© for conference presentation as well as tools for creating audio files, for saving and sharing files in the cloud and for scheduling meetings, for example. All the tools and links will be placed in a wiki especially created for the course, thus providing the hands-on experience of creating and using wikis and allowing participants to find complementary information on the materials and tools presented. Finally, a survey will be made to assess the impact of the workshop within a specific academic reality. The overall objective of this study is not to assess how successfully learners will be in applying these tools in the future rather, how motivated they are to doing so. Keywords: ICT, research tools, wiki, learner motivation, collaboration.
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INTRODUCTION
In today's academic world, as in other areas, the presence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has gained a prominent role but not everyone has accepted and embraced all the potential it has to offer. ICT is of pivotal importance in meeting the information and communication needs of users: students have access to online papers, data bases, journals, indexing and abstract services, etc. At the same time, teachers resort to ICT services and products for delivering course contents and teaching. However, there is still an area of the academic realm which has been reluctant and only now, is very shyly opening its ways towards ICT: research. In fact, though it is impossible for researchers to ignore the Internet and what it allows for in terms of research and promotion of their work, many still resist using the computer for much more than writing texts, searching information, and exchanging emails. Aware of this lack of motivation and the need to keep up with what ICT can provide, the two authors of this paper proposed a workshop on this subject to a private Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Portugal, which will take place in the beginning of the second semester of the academic year 2011/2012. The workshop is organized for a dual audience - graduate students and lecturers – and the our contention is that to understand the full potential of 2.0 web tools, it is essential to experience them. As such, instead of providing our target audience with a presentation of the main tools and their features, our objective is to have them “learn by doing”. In other words, each tool will present itself and in order to consolidate what they learn in class, the researchers will necessarily have to apply and use this online tools
Proceedings of INTED2012 Conference. 5th-7th March 2012, Valencia, Spain.
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ISBN: 978-84-615-5563-5
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ICT AND ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Research is a very important part of academic life and nowadays this is often carried out within projects which include partners from different institutions and nationalities. In regards to scientific collaboration, Rip (1990) defines three levels, namely, researching (cooperating at a specific place), scientizing (includes co-authorship of papers, collaboration in conferences, among others) and politicking (when Higher Education Institutions cooperate with NGOs or when researchers collaborate for policy-making). ICT can influence collaboration due to the communication processes involved (Vasileiadou, 2010). Several studies have already been conducted on the relationships between ICTs and face-to-face and print-based communication (Quan-Haase & Wellman, 2005). In fact, Nentwich (2003:482) declares that ICTs can substitute traditional communication media (substitution), they can become the most important (superposition), they can enhance traditional media (amendment), increase the use of conventional media (expansion) or can be used rather rarely (insignificant effect). Our study, however, does not focus on the consequences or effects that the use of ICT may have on research collaboration but rather describe a workshop which has been organized and will take place in the second semester of 2011-2012 at a HEI in Portugal, a workshop which we deem will meet the needs of both academics and university students in terms of their research activities.
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TOOLS AND METHODOLOGIES USED
It is our contention that to understand the full potential of 2.0 web tools it is essential to experience them. As such, instead of providing our target audience with a presentation of the main tools and their features, our objective was to have them learn by doing. In other words, each tool will present itself and in order to consolidate what they learn in class, the researchers will necessarily have to apply and use this online tools. Ours is a learner-centered approach, we have designed the workshop so as to raise the participants motivation to use the tools we will introduce them to. We will draw on their use of other tools and on their understanding of the importance of what will shown in the sessions. Besides this, when creating the workshop and in our decision to have a wiki, we have taken into account that our participants are all adults and, therefore, want practical, hands-on training, want to control their leaning experience and prefer do learn at their own pace. The first step taken was to create a wiki http://ferramentas-investigacao.wikispaces.com/ where all the material, resources and tools would be placed, a means of organizing the course wiki. In fact, the workshop began with a brief introduction and practical exercise on how to use the wiki. The exercise will include learning how to create a new page, upload documents, images and videos and link different pages. The workshop has been organized for the group - graduate students and lecturers - and led the participants to know and experiment with the tools as if on a typical research activity. Thus, the first tools were those of social networking and bookmarking - the basis for knowing peers dedicated to similar research area(s) and research of papers and/or other resources; after this, they are introduced to several collaboration and presentation tools as well as other interesting and important additional tools. All workshop participants will be asked to bring support material, including their CV, research papers, class materials (if they are lecturers) or any other documents used for/in research (files should also include PDF, spreadsheets, and presentations).
3.1
Social bookmarking and social networking tools
When initiating a research project, one of the first steps is to find scientific articles on the theme you are going to study and that search is mainly conducted on the Internet. Online resources include not only texts but many websites and our wish as researchers is to both collect and organize all the information gathered. This may be easily achieved using tools such as Diigo© and Livebinders©. Diigo©, the acronym of "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff", is a website that allows you to bookmark and tag a webpage, to highlight and add sticky notes to that page, and either keep the page and the annotations private, shared with a group within Diigo© or forward the link to someone else. Moreover, in Diigo© you can also have access to a repository of content which other Diigo© users have already filtered and annotated, making your research easier and faster. Livebinders© is another bookmarking tool which allows you to bind several webpages together and showcase the website content in the way it was originally written and presented. In fact, you can bind
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and organize (using tabs and subtabs) not only web pages but also PDF, documents, images or videos. After introducing Diigo©, participants will be asked to join in, search the web for pages which may be interesting for them in terms of research and bookmark them; they will also be asked to create a private group on Diigo© and bookmark a page and share it with that private group as well as send it to one of their colleagues; finally, participants will read one of the pages they bookmarked and highlight parts of a page and write sticky notes they will later come back to. Considering that most of the participants are lecturers at the HEI where the workshop is being held, they will be required to join in Livebinders© and, based on a task they ask their students to complete, they will select documents, PDF, web pages which they find relevant for the referred task. Participants who are students will be asked to select materials they think important to complete a project. Networking and collaboration are crucial in today's world, including in research. Networking and collaboration are crucial in today's digital world, including research. Despite the converging opinions towards the empirical research value of web 2.0 technologies or perspectives that sites such as these do not serve academic purposes (Charnigo & Barnet-Ellis, 2007), the growing dissemination of social networks in all aspects and fields of life is undeniable. Students, as we know, are all highly immersed in web 2.0 technologies with blogs, chats, video sharing, twitter, social networks etc. Educators are creating, collaborating and sharing contents online, while researchers are looking up important information on online journals, digital libraries, databases, indexes, etc. However, researchers can no longer be given the luxury of hiding behind the comfort of their libraries and books. Instead, it is necessary to actively contribute and participate in the virtual online community from a more “social” perspective. The social networks addressed in this workshop will include www.academia.edu a social network for academics which allows them to share research papers as well as track the research of other academics and www.ResearchGate.net, a social network and collaboration tool for researchers, which allows them to share their publications and participate in forums, groups and discussions and even have a blog within the network. Besides making it possible for academics to establish networks of interest and provide a source of research material, these networks potentially enable a faster and easier search for the latest scientific work. Facebook© on the other hand, by far one of the most popular and used network is famous for its userfriendly interface and the ability and ease for uploading materials, using bulletin boards, instant messaging, videos, among many other applications. Finally, reference will be made to LinkedIn©, a professional network which people to connect to other professionals and exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities, but these are not specifically for academics. Although it might seem redundant or out of place to refer to these social networks which are so commonly widespread, our intention is to address real and potential issues for the use of these tools, drawing from our personal experience as both educators and researchers. Ideally, this presentation will foster an open debate for best-practices of these tools within the academic world.
3.2
Collaboration tools
Nowadays it is common practice for researchers to be part of project networks that are not confined to the same geographical space, i.e., in the European Union alone, there are many projects between different countries being carried out. In order to facilitate communication and avoid emails being unnecessary sent back and forth, there are a series of collaboration tools which may be used by researchers to gap the difference and create a common workspace for projects to be developed. Although we expect most participants to already know about and use Google docs, we will nevertheless have an activity prepared for any participant who is less familiar with the online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation editor. Google docs allows multiple users to open, share and edit documents, including both new and already existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It is also possible for users to access those documents from any computer. As mentioned previously, participants will be using the wiki from the beginning of the workshop, a website in which users can add, modify, or delete content. Besides the main class wiki, participants will be requested to create their own wiki and invite members to join. The main objective is that of recreating a research project and as such, participants will create several pages related to one project
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(a page for support materials, a page for the abstract and one for the paper, as well as a title page) and will collaborate with peers in the project they created. Another important issue that researchers must face is that, when sharing resources, sometimes documents are too heavy which compels users to resort to other places which allow for a greater storage capacity. Dropbox© allows users to store files and folders in the cloud, i.e., they can be accessed from any device with Internet access and the data are stored on servers at a remote location. Additionally, it is possible to share a file by placing it in a public folder, generating a unique URL which can be sent by mail and allows receiver to download it. Common to all these applications is the fact that they run inside users’ web browsers, which makes them very user-friendly and convenient because it is unnecessary to download, install or update software.
3.3
Presentation tools
When reference is made to presentations, most people think of MSPowerpoint. Although this software application has been gradually improved with new features that include the possibility of integrating video and audio, Adobe Flash and other applications which add customised effects and enhance interactivity, other software are slowly becoming competitive alternatives. Among various possibilities, we selected Prezi©, Voicethread© and Glogster© because of the different features and possibilities they present to their users. Prezi© is a cloud-based tool which allows the user to include linear and non-linear information in the same presentation. In other words, it presents a different visual approach from the traditional slideshow provided by MSPowerpoint. Users not only upload text, image and video but they can zoom in and out of the presentation objects, and provide slides of different shapes and colours, presenting information from different angles. Voicethread© can also hold text, image and video. One of its unique features is that it allows "virtual conversations" to take place, in other words, when one participant places images, text or audio online it is possible for other participants to comment on those files and contribute with other data. Besides this, at the cost of a small fee, presentations can be watched offline. Despite the fact that Glogster© belongs to the family of "social networks", we have categorized as a presentation tools because its main function is that of creating free interactive posters (called glogs). To make presentations available to the general public, SlideShare© may be used, it is an online slide hosting service.
3.4
Other tools
Collaborating with others usually implies meetings, for which tools such as Google Calendar (an online calendar that allows you to keep track of your events and share them with others), Doodle© (a tools that helps you schedule meetings) and Famundo© (a tool that allows you to manage address books and calendars, among others), may provide practical help with.
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OUTCOMES
The objective of this workshop is essentially that of providing a hands-on approach to using ICT in the academic realm, more specifically for academic research. Researchers, like any other professionals, are busy people and the time spent on learning and upgrading their knowledge may seem overwhelming when they could be using that time for furthering their studies. By presenting simple tools and immediately demonstrating their applicability, our intention is to make this tools more appealing to researchers so that they realise that the time spent in learning how to use them will have a return on the benefits they provide in future projects. In order to assess participant motivation and interest in tools, at the end of the workshop we will conduct a survey in order to understand 1) which tools they were already familiar with, 2) which they thought was most useful 3) and those that they will most likely use in the future. Overall, our intention is to offer a workshop that shows how to transform media into a collaborative space. As a result, we hope this will enhance and foster collaboration in the academic realm of research.
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