Advancing Science Through Conversations

Yesterday I gave a short presentation to some Library colleagues on the use of blogs and other technologies to liaise with users remotely. As part of that presentation, for the audience's general knowledge, I highlighed a couple of examples to show how researchers are using blogs and I included a link to Research Blogging.

This morning I link to Research Blogging to find 'From Anonymity to Subjectivity in the Blogosphere: Post Game Analysis by BZ' posted by Greg Laden on Greg Laden's Blog but aggregated through the Research Blogging site.

This links brilliantly to my 'role of conversation in education' research interests on several counts:

A) the developing conversation appearing on the blog via post/comments/review and round up/further comments......
B) behavioural aspects including the credibility/expertise/authority issues tied up with online conversations and integral to virtual communities
C) the Advancement of science through conversation

It also provides me with some useful information to add into the online module " The Role of Conversation in Education" I have just developed as an assignment for my latest MSc Elearning Module: 'Course Design for Effective Learning'. All referenced appropriately of course!

I felt enthused enough to comment on Gregs posting furthering the conversation there and have also picked up some very useful references to follow up further - see below.

I would add one further reference to this, again only recently found, 'The Open Laboratory: the Best Science Writing on Bloggs 2008' edited by Jennifer Rohn and recently reviewed by New Scientist. For more information on this read this blog post.

References:

Batts, S., Anthis, N., & Smith, T. (2008) Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy. PLoS Biology, 6(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060240

Doheny-Farnia, Stephen. (1996). The Wired Neighborhood. Connecticut: Yale University.

Turkle, Sherry. (1995). Life on the Screen. New York: Touchstone.

Rohn, Jennifer (Ed). (2009). The Open Laboratory: the Best Science Writing on Bloggs 2008. Lulu.com.

Zvan, Stephanie (2008). How to Hijack a Thread. Available: http://almostdiamonds.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-to-hijack-thread.html. Accessed 30th April, 2009.

Zvan, Stephanie (2009). Looking Like a N00b. Available: http://almostdiamonds.blogspot.com/2009/01/looking-like-n00b.html. Accessed 30th April, 2009.