Virtual Research Environments: New Opportunities, New Challenges

1
Virtual Research EnvironmentsNew Opportunities,
New Challenges

• Dr. Patrick Carmichael
• Centre for Applied Research in Educational
  Technologies, Cambridge

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CARET and Virtual Research

• CARETs role is to support teaching, learning and
  research across the University of Cambridge
  through the development, use and evaluation of
  appropriate technologies
• Part of the Sakai Consortium, CARET operates,
  support and develops CamTools - the Cambridge
  Virtual Collaboration Environment a single
  environment for teaching and learning, and
  research
• Provide Sakai-based VRE for the ESRC Teaching and
  Learning Research Programme and British
  Educational Research Association
• So weve had an opportunity to compare
  institutional and disciplinary models of
  support for virtual collaboration and research
• Also have several major ESRC projects users as
  well as providers!

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The Many Meanings of Research

• Big science (which has tended to dominate ideas
  about online research collaboration) is not the
  only model we have to support
• Also (for example)
• Specialised and very widely distributed user
  communities
• Secondary analysis of historical texts
• Longitudinal multi-method studies
• Participatory research and engagement, including
  student research

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The Teaching and Learning Research Programme

• An ESRC research programme running 1999-2009
  over 70 projects ranging from fellowships to
  1million multi-institutional collaborations
• Most substantial infrastructure yet for a social
  science programme
• Sakai Virtual Research Environment
• DSpace Digital Repository (1500 items)
• with automatic ESRC submission )
• Online publication of programme publications
• Programme website, website support for projects
• News service, events alerting, electronic
  conference support

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A Look at the VRE for Educational Research
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Distinctive Patterns of Virtual Rsearch

• Project A a focus on management of research
  processes
• Geographically distributed university teams
• VRE supporting collaboration around data and
  analyses
• Both qualitative and quantitative data collected
  and iteration between these an important aspect
  of project design
• Data needed to be secure but available to all
  members of the (small) team. Need to alert
  members of the research team when new files have
  been added. And a need to carefully monitor
  access to the data for confidentiality of the
  participants
• Highly organised

• Project B a focus on engagement and management
• Single university, wide range of stakeholders
• Originally conceived as a central storage site
  and means of communication
• Highly hacked and task specific, the VRE
  becoming the answer to a range of requirements
  and problems quick online meetings
  collaborative writing/thinking tasks literature
  review short term storage put it in the VRE!
  analysis of research data
• Very untidy!
• A more creative (and challenging) interpretation
  of what a VRE is, can do and might do

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New Opportunities and New Challenges

• Opportunities to engage with research
  participants in new ways - participant diaries,
  wikis, anonymous/pseudonymous participation
• Opportunities to collect and analyse data in new
  ways - electronic interactions, data mining,
  collaborative analysis, visualisation tools
• BUT!!
• A need to rethink ethical frameworks and
  informed consent
• Anonymity needs to be rethought - cleaning
  data no longer enough
• Moral Ownership of work leading to different
  authorship patterns
• New approaches may need to establish their claims
  to quality
• This will probably require interdisciplinary
  dialogue and working

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Some Future Directions Academic Networking?

• Sakai 3 development areas
• iGoogle type widgets for customisation
• Academic profile for differentiated audiences
• Personal archiving and publication management
• Person to person networking
• Access to resources, alerts, events
• Group and space formation

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New Forms of Research and Tensions

• There may be tensions between
• New forms of research collaboration, engagement
  and dissemination
• The REF (however it may work)
• Back to Education Research - some newer
  developments
• Commentaries and research digests reflecting
  current policy issues
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
• DVD, Video and online engagement
• Interdisciplinary working and publication
• Drivers of, or barriers to, virtual research
  activities?

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Some Contact Details and Information

• Generally
• CARET http//www.caret.cam.ac.uk
• Sakai http//www.sakaiproject.org
• About the work with educational researchers
• TLRP http//www.tlrp.org/ and http//groups.tlrp.
  org
• Special Edition of Technology Pedagogy and
  Education 16(3)
• Various issues of Research Intelligence from
  http//www.bera.ac.uk
• And to contact me email wpc22_at_cam.ac.uk