Strange Aeons
sesquipedalia verba
Simon Wells is an academic researching Argumentation Theory, Automated Reasoning, Intelligent Agents (IA) and MultiAgent Systems (MAS) all approached through a ludic lens.
He is particularly interested in how these tools can be usefully applied to critical literacy, security, gamification, and complex systems.
TwitterThe Rise of Academic Blogging
We have recently been discussing the ARG:dundee website and how to improve it. This is because the site currently runs as a news@Dundee type of site and has the feel more of an advertising spiel and thus we are not making as much use of the opportunity to discuss issues, put forward our ideas, open ourselves to collaboration, and share interesting but directly Dundee related argumentation theory news.
One idea that we have settled on is to start posting more about argumentation theory in general and about other related things that we, as individual members of ARG:dundee, find interesting. Basically members of ARG:dundee will each have a byline or channel within the site, the argumentation feed, as it were, to which we post. This will not show up on the home page of the site, which is still going to be Dundee-centric, but will probably appear under a sub-part of the URL, for example, arg.dundee.ac.uk/blog. It turns out that we are already doing something similar internally within the group, on what was originally a private blog called LARG (Local ARG) and which has recently been redeployed, again privately, as a wiki.
The move from blog to wiki was merely because a blog doesn't necessarily easily support the aim of building a body of knowledge in the same way as a wiki does. We found that we would post things and subsequently create a new post at a later date even if the previous post was directly related. Use of tags and categories didn't help because we weren't engaging with all of the material and assembling it into a whole. Rather we were creating a timeline of interesting stuff that we had found or thought about, but were not taking a step back to fit it all into a cohesive whole. Therefore the internal wiki will remain so that we can work through early ideas before sharing them with the world, but a public blog is a better home for some of the stuff that we were posting and discussing internally, such as the lists of online argumentation tools that we were building. There is no reason not to share that kind of stuff with everyone and in so doing learn what others think on the subject.
The reason I post about this is because it is similar to what I am already doing here, posting about things that I am interested in, although my personal site is not restricted to argumentation theory and directly relevant issues as the ARG:dundee site is. So I shall have to work out how to spread posts between the various sites. In the meantime, we are not the first to start thinking along these lines, not by a long way. In the semantic web arena, my friend Harry Chen has been posting to the ebiquity weblog for years. Recently there has also been lots of interest in blogging from scientists joining the open science and open notebook movementa, and academics who are discovering the joys of academic blogging. Very recently there has been some noise about how parents institutions should handle this, a recent paper discusses some issues related to academic blogging and the integration of blogging with academia. The feedback and discussion on the personal blogs of two of the authors, Tara C. Smith and Nick Anthis has been very interesting and provided much food for thought. The main theme though that I have noticed is the need to ensure that the institution maintains a hands off approach towards the academic blogs. There is an assertion on one of the blogs that too much institutional oversight would ruin the essential blogginess of academic blogs. At the same time however it would be useful, and just plain nice, if the value of outreach from working academics and scientists to each other and to the public in general could be recognised and appreciated by the institutions concerned because this is exactly what academic blogging achieves, it provides a communication channel between academics, scientists and the public which is outside the regular peer-reviewed journal channel that is the norm, and which, given the generally low public understanding and appreciation of science and academia in general, is very important. This is not to say that academic blogging is in any way similar to peer-reviewed journal publications because they are not, they are different tools that are used to do different things, although a tool for peer-reviewed academic blogging might be interesting but that is a whole different post I fear.
Research Project Marketplace
I quite often experience two situations. The first is of students who want to find out more about the research that is done in the school, but who cannot identify a way in. The second is that I quite often have small development projects related to research or teaching that I would love to get done but just don't have the time to do myself. One way to deal with both situations would be to make that list of small projects available to the students who could then work on them of their own accord. This might lead to the student identifying an honours project choice earlier than usual, or might provide them with the opportunity to make more progress with their honours project by achieving an actual piece of research. Thus whilst ostensibly being extra-curricular activities, from a pedagogic perspective, there might be the opportunity for the student to gain some form of academic credit from their participation.
The benefits of such an approach are that researchers within the school can get small jobs done for them and could identify potential students to fill summer-job roles. Meanwhile the students have an opportunity to see what research is about whilst creating some software that they can put in their portfolio as a demonstration of their skills when they are looking for jobs at graduation.
There is also a case to be made that such a scheme would prove to be an enabling factor for improving the inclusiveness and social cohesion within the school, giving students who might otherwise be on the periphery an opportunity to get involved.
I would propose that a simple internal web site be used, possibly with a blog architecture, that academics can post project ideas to. Students could then respond to those ideas within the comments and get more information. I envisage a lightweight management model in which the student works mostly independently to solve the problem, unless the academic wishes otherwise, and multiple students could work either collaboratively or independently upon the projects. Some form of source control a la Sourceforge would be useful and release of all code and documentation under the GPL with ownership shared between student and researcher. This means that the student can continue to work on the software after they leave, if they wish, and the researcher can do likewise, forking the project if necessary. By also releasing the code publicly under the GPL then the school also gets to contribute new software to the public good so that the results of, possibly publicly funded, research doesn't get locked away from potential beneficiaries. This is especially important when you consider the amount of research conducted here that is aimed at supporting the elderly, sick, or disabled in their use of computers.
The Thesis Hat
Open Science & Open Notebooks
