Permanent Corridor Conversations

The Open University has recently released a report on the use of scholarly networking and web 2.0 tools by its faculty: "It’s like a permanent corridor conversation’: an exploration of technology-enabled scholarly networking at The Open University" (April 2009)

Another serendipitous find from the web of flow - don't ask me how now either - tracking back I think it must have been flagged by a recent Research Information Network update and found on the Bamboo project Wiki which notes:

"While the Open University is in some ways a special case due to its implementation of distance learning as the primary means of presenting courses, many of the practices documented in the report can be found elsewhere, or could be useful even in the context of a traditional institution."

The report was prepared by Linda Wilks under the direction of Prof. John Wolffe, based on a series of interviews conducted with faculty and

topics covered include:

• What is Scholarly Networking?
• Tools used by the Open University for faculty-student and faculty-colleague networking
• The prevalence and many roles of Facebook, including communication between colleagues, disseminating announcements, collecting feedback from students, and providing a community hub for students who cannot meet in person
• The emergence of Twitter as a supplement to the face-to-face coffee culture among faculty colleagues and as a means of disseminating university information and advertising publicly-available programs
• The use of YouTube and iTunesU as a way of disseminating educational content to the public
• Blogs as a way of promoting courses, books, and receiving feedback from colleagues through comments
• Tools specifically developed by the Open University, including repositories and a Ning-based researchers' network
• Problematic issues related to web 2.0 and Scholarly Networking, including privacy, IP concerns, security, content control, usability, and user take-up of new tool

References

Open University (2009). It’s like a permanent corridor conversation’: an exploration of technology-enabled scholarly networking at The Open University. [online] Available at: https://wiki.projectbamboo.org/download/attachments/8716522/OU_scholarly_networking_report.pdf?version=1. [Accessed 22nd May 2009]