Technology use across a campus

Analyzing the use of web 2.0 tools by researchers across a regional UK University Dr Nick Pearce Centre for e-Science Lancaster University

Outline
Disciplinary differences and ICT
Summary of results
Tentative conclusions

Technology change in academia
Revolutionary promises since early ‘80s
Compare:
“ 1. Integrated methods for creating, accessing, (…) and manipulating information.
2. More efficient processes and tools for … research.
3. Enhanced group interactions with more sharing of work and more joint exploration of ideas” (SDF 1983, cited in Shields 1995)
With contemporary definitions of e-science

E-science Vs web 2.0
E-science
developed for researchers
Adoption at institutional or project level.
Limited adoption
Barriers to entry (funding, technology, expertise)
E.g. Access Grid
Web 2.0
Developed for general use, adopted by researchers
Individual adoption
Wider adoption
Low barriers to entry
E.g. MSN

Disciplinary differences and ICT
Becher and Trowler (2001)
Disciplinary culture affected by epistemology
Hard/ soft applied/pure
Fry (2004,2006,2007)
“… fields that have a highly politicized and tightly controlled research culture will develop a coherent field-based strategy for the uptake and use of ICTs, whereas domains that are pluralistic and have a loosely organized research culture will appropriate ICTs in an ad-hoc localized manner.” (Fry 2004)

Xu and Meyer’s (2007) study
Secondary analysis of data from the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty
Data from 1999
Restricted idea of technology use
Large sample size (4,293)
Complex conclusions

Lancaster University
Fairly new (est. 1967)
Mid sized
16k UG students
Of which 3k PG students
2.5k staff (just less than 900 academic)
Research led
Organised into 3 faculties

Response Rate 22.5 194 861 Total 26.2 37 141 MS 20.8 52 250 FASS 22.3 105 470 FST Response Rate Responses Research Staff Faculty

Methods for discovering relevant academic references (%) 3 12 57 28 57 59 81 78 91 MS 11 31 66 42 53 72 94 88 95 FASS 5 26 53 26 42 63 77 77 88 FST RSS Wikipedia Google scholar e-mail list Journal notifications Web search Database Colleagues Reading Faculty

Managing references (%) 38 14 33 50 MS 24 12 51 53 FASS 40 20 34 50 FST Paper methods Custom db Cut and paste Specialist Software Faculty

Use of ICT tools (%) [1] There was a separate series of questions about Access Grid, hence the difference in numbers of responses. The results have been included here for simplicity. 21 13 24 35 MS 9 6 25 23 FASS 10 9 25 30 FST Access Grid (n=155) [1] Desktop video conference Conference calls Instant Messaging Faculty

Project use of ICT 8 11 38 MS 12 12 44 FASS 2 15 38 FST Blog Wiki Website Faculty

Blog readership and authorship (%) (n=192) 3 8 MS 8 31 FASS 2 18 FST Write Read Faculty

Tentative Conclusions
Considerable variety across faculties
Wide variety of tools used to help research
More often web 2 than e-science?
Hopefully a fuller analysis of the results will help determine the factors which affect uptake of new technologies
More information (and a report) is available at redress.lancs.ac.uk/survey

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Technology use across a campus

by Nick Pearce

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