Workshop to launch module One of the the STEMDigital programme, introducing researchers at Cambridge University to building an online profile

1. Welcome to STEMDigital!
Module One: your online identity
Dr Helen Webster
Researcher Development

2. Resources:
• These slides and handouts are online
▫ On the programme blog
http://stemdigital.wordpress.com/
▫ On Slideshare
http://www.slideshare.net/drhelenwebster/
▫ On Scribd
http://www.scribd.com/helen_webster_10

3. The aims
• My aims….
▫ are not to convert you to social media or to
particular tools!
▫ to reach an informed understanding of social
media in the context of professional academic
practice:
 Potential benefits and risks
 Issues raised and impacts on academia
▫ to develop an effective social media strategy at
whatever level you feel is right for you.
• Your aims….?

4. Social Media in Academia
Enhancing or changing practice?
• Networking, Googling and professional profiles
• Funding: Collaboration, consortia and large projects
• Publishing Models: Open Access Publishing, self-
promotion by authors
• Quality Assessment Models: Altmetrics
• Pedagogy: digital classroom, „pedagogy of
abundance‟
• Conference ‘attendance’ – livetweeting,
livestreaming, liveblogging, podcasting
• Impact: narrowcasting online and digital resources

5. An approach…
•Digital
•Networked
•Open
(Martin Weller, The Digital Scholar)

6. Three – phases? activities? levels?
•Broadcasting
•Networking
•Sharing and creating

7. What is STEMDigital?

8. STEMDigital Module One:
Building your online identity
Creating your Online Identity.
• Issues: Setting up account profiles, usernames, „handles‟,
avatars, passwords, personal data. Anonymity, psyeudonyms
and real life identities.
Creating your Online Profile
• Issues: Pros and cons of online (in)visibility, searching for,
finding and identifying you, linking your various personal and
professional online identities or keeping them separate,
Search Engine Optimisation.
Bibliometrics and Alt-metrics
• Issues: the academic web, measuring impact, managing your
academic publishing and citation profile and using that of
other scholars
Creating your own web space
• Issues: Choosing a platform, setting up a personalised
webspace, purpose, focus and audience, metadata

9. What is STEMDigital?
A blended learning programme consisting
of:
• A face-to-face workshop
• Online activities
http://stemdigital.wordpress.com/

11. How it works:
• We discuss the general issues and principles in
the workshop, and develop our personal
strategy
• Over the next 4 weeks, we explore specific
digital tools and share experiences, reflections,
tips and questions, online
▫ I post a blog entry with a tool, instructions and a
task
▫ You each explore this individually
▫ We collectively discuss it online using the tools
themselves

12. Module One:
Building your Online Identity

13. Your professional identity
• Why do you want to be online? What are
your main aims?

14. Online Visibility: your comfort level
Very
UNcomfortable
Very
Comfortable

15. What social media do you use?
• Write down all the social media platforms you
can think of.
• Mark:
▫ Those you use (and for what purpose/context)
▫ Those you have used in the past but given up
▫ Those you‟ve heard of but never tried

16. Your Digital Footprint
1. Write your name and subject area on a post-it
note. Pass it to someone else…
2. Google the name on the post-it note. Can you
identify the person, and what do you find?

17. If you don’t, someone else will …
• Previous employers
and universities - all out
of date and out of
context
• „Friends‟ may share
personal material
outside your own
preferred circles….
• Other people with the
same name and a
better online presence
may make it harder to
find you, or confuse
people

18. Who’s looking?
• List all of the types of audience who you are
aiming your online profile at
• …and any secondary audiences who might find it
• Mindmap these – what overlaps are there?

19. Who’s looking?
• Potential collaborators
• Potential readers
• Peers (i.e. other early career researchers)
• Journal editors and publishers
• Conference organisers
• Journalist
• Potential employer or PI
• Members of the public
• Contacts in other professional sectors
• Your students

20. What do you want them to find?
• What information and impression do you want
them to find about you?
• Conversely, what might they want from you?

21. What might you offer them?
Research
Professional
activities
Impact and
public
engagement
Teaching
Admin
and service

22. How do people find you?
Some part
of your
online
profile
Googles your name
Googles your
subject area
Follows a link
Follows you /
someone you know

23. Postdocs and Online identity
• You currently belong to an institution, a
discipline and a profession. All these may
change, and your webspace, information and
contact details associated with them (incl email).
• Any open web platform you use may be
removed or changed.
• How will you ensure longer-term online
stability?

24. Where to build your online identity?
The Academic
Web
The Open
Web
Password/open
Proprietary/Free Social/professional
Single (real) identity
/ multiple identity

25. Tools and platforms
• Your Department or
Faculty webpage
• Your University‟s Virtual
Research Environment
(Camtools) and digital
repository (DSpace)
• Your own website
(Wordpress, Google
Sites)
• Gravatar
• Flavours.me, About.me
• Creating profiles:
▫ LinkedIn
▫ Facebook
▫ Academia.edu
▫ Researchgate
▫ Methodspace
▫ Colwiz
▫ Google+ profile
▫ Google Scholar profile
▫ ResearcherID
▫ ORCID

26. Unfortunate identities

27. Non-identities

28. Dr Jonathan Barnard,
Cambridge University
Prof. Denys Turner, Medieval
Studies
Confused identities:

29. Inconsistent identities
Drhelenwebster (Helen
Webster, H M Webster?)
scholastic_rat/ rattus
scholasticus

30. colleagues
readersstudents
Overlapping identities?

31. Presenting yourself online: your
‘handle’
Write down all the potential usernames you can
think of which are…
• Based on your real name (some sites only allow
this)
• A memorable, professional pseudonym
• Choose your preferred one (or the one you
currently use most) from each list
• Use Namechk to find out which is free across
most platforms: http://namechk.com/
• Which will you use in future* / for STEMDigital?

32. Presenting yourself online: your
‘avatar’
• Is there anything in your Google search (in the
images tab) you‟d be happy to use?
• What abstract image might you use to represent
yourself professionally? And how will people
recognise you in Real Life?

33. Presenting yourself online: your
‘strapline’ and metadata
What if they’re not looking for you, but for
someone like you?
• 3 mins – tell the person next to you as much as you
can about yourself – your research area, specific
research topic, professional history. Can they find
you on Google using just these keywords, but NOT
your name?
• (Note successful keywords and use them in your
profiles)
• What‟s your „strapline‟? Sum up yourself in 140
characters (and use this on all your platforms)

35. Controlling your visibility
• Think about your metadata and keyword search terms
• link to „authority‟ sites and have them link to you (public
bodies ie .ac.uk)
• Interlink your social media accounts
• Complete profiles as much as possible
• Think „pull‟ as well as „push‟ –what can you offer?
• Collate your identity – consistent username, avatar and
strapline
• Use Gravatar, Flavours.me, About.me, Google Profile, Google
Scholar profile, ORCID, ResearcherID to pull parts of your
identity together

36. Controlling your INvisibility
• Google yourself regularly (set up Google alerts) and check for information
put online by others
• Check other social media search engines (Technorati, Socialmention)
• You may need to create content to „bury‟ unwanted content about you
• Check privacy and permission settings carefully
• Use pseudonyms and abstract profile pictures
• Different platforms and accounts for different purposes
• Have a policy on „friending‟, „following‟ etc and add a clear statement of your
intentions
• Avoid logins and synching with Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn etc
• Don‟t let your computer „remember‟ your login

37. Protecting your online identity
• If you were a hacker…
▫ What information might be useful to you in getting
into people‟s online accounts?
▫ Where might you find this information?
▫ What ways might you persuade people to give
you this information?

38. Protecting your online identity
What makes a password secure?
▫ Memorable – so you don‟t have to write it down or
reuse it across all your accounts
▫ Complex – so it can‟t be easily hacked
 Not based on dictionary words – include different cases,
symbols, numbers, and make it long
 Not based on personal information otherwise available
online (which includes security questions!)
 Ideally, completely random
▫ Unique
 Not the same as your other online accounts – especially
sensitive ones like banking, shopping and main email

39. Memorable, complex and unique–
problem?!
• Write it down?!
• Take the first letter of each word of a memorable
phrase
• Substituting numbers and symbols for letters, mixing
cases will help
• Use a random password generator
• Check strength using
▫ howsecureismypassword.net
▫ Passwordmeter
• Use a „password wallet‟
▫ Lastpass
▫ 1password

40. Your Strategy?

41. What you need to do now…
1) Visit the programme blog:
http://stemdigital.wordpress.com/
2) Subscribe to updates by email
3) Follow instructions in the next post to set up
your Wordpress account
4) Register your username on the STEMDigital
blog “how to join”
5) Join in!