E-Research for Education

Events: How Learning Design and eResearch could transform Educational Technology

2008-08-19T03:36:11Z

Seminar: How Learning Design and eResearch could transform Educational Technology?

Prof. James Dalziel of the Macquarie E-learning Centre of Excellence will be visiting CoCo to present the seminar "How Learning Design and eResearch could transform Educational Technology". The event will be held on 20 August from 11-12pm in Rm 230 of the Education Bldg (A35) at the University of Sydney.

For more info see CoCo News Section

Events:Australasian Symposium on Grid Computing and e-Research

2008-08-18T10:29:22Z

Australasian Symposium on Grid Computing and e-Research 2009, Wellington, NZ
(AusGrid 2009) to be held in conjunction with Australasian Computer Science Week

Wellington, New Zealand, Jan 20 - Jan 23, 2009

URL: http://www.fit.qut.edu.au/ausgrid09

PS. Not much about education but about e-research and collaboration using the Grid and access grids.

Events: Digital Humanities: Past, Present, Future:

2008-08-11T08:27:40Z

Digital Humanities: Past, Present, Future: A one-day symposium presented by the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney

10am-4pm, Tuesday 2 September 2008, The Gallery, Female Orphan School (building EZ), Parramatta campus, UWS

]]> Program:

Professor Willard McCarty, Kings College, London, 'Stepping off the edge of the world or into it: The Dictionary of Words in the Wild as research?'
Dr Paul Arthur, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, 'Historical GIS: Showcasing Western Australia's Past, Present and Future'
Professor Ien Ang and Dr Nayantara Pothen, Centre for Cultural Research, 'diverCities: Challenges of doing a digital humanities project'
Associate Professor Andrew Murphie, School of English, Media and Performing Arts, University of New South Wales, 'Open? Access? Publishing?: a new world for humanities publishing is a new world for the humanities'
Leonie Hellmers, Intersect, 'Intersect: The Institute for Transdisciplinary eResearch Services and Technology, an overview'
Discussion: The Possible Futures of Digital Humanities.

Tea/coffee available from 9.30am, morning tea, lunch and refreshments provided. No cost for registration, but capacity is strictly limited so please RSVP to the convenor, Dr Elaine Lally, e.lally@uws.edu.au.

Parramatta Campus Map and Directions: http://www.uws.edu.au/about/locations/maps/parramattamap

Events: eResearch Australasia 2008

2008-08-11T08:13:23Z

eResearch Australasia, 28 Sep - 3 Oct 2008 , Melbourne, Australia.
Website www.eresearch.edu.au

]]> A full programme of workshops on 2-3 Oct, including AAF, ANDS, ARCS, NCI, SEE Grid, Geoinformatics, GPU Stream Computing, eResearch in the Arts, Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Web 2.0, and SimpleSAMLphp.

Featured speakers include:

Senator the Hon Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
Graham Cameron, Associate Director of the European Bioinformatics Institute, European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Sayeed Choudhury, Hodson Director of the Digital Knowlege Center, Johns Hopkins University
Michael Fulford, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading
Tony Hey, Corporate Vice President of External Research, Microsoft Research
Kerstin Lehnert, Director of the Geoinformatics for Geochemistry Program at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Bevan Slattery, Managing Director, PIPE Networks
John Wilbanks, Vice President of Science, Creative Commons

Subject: [Digital Innovation] 01.01.Events in August

2008-08-06T13:30:09Z

Sent: Thursday, 31 July 2008 4:59 PM
Subject: [Digital Innovation] 01.01.Events in August

1 August: DIU Launch and seminar Why a historian needs the DIU: some informal case-studies
Iain McCalman, Professorial Fellow, Department of History, University of Sydney
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/digitalinnovation/seminars.html

]]> 6 August: Guest lecture Media arts and digital technology: some practical studies
Mamoru Endo, Associate Professor, School of Computer and Cognitive Sciences, Chukyo University, Japan
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/digitalinnovation/guestlect_endo.html

15 August: Seminar Rebuilding Shakespeare’s theatre (and how to show your workings)
Tim Fitzpatrick, Associate Professor, Department of Performance Studies, University of Sydney
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/digitalinnovation/seminars.html

19 August: Guest lecture by archaeologists from Gotland University, Sweden
Associate Professor Helene Martinsson-Wallin and Lecturer Gustaf Svedjemo
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/digitalinnovation/guestlect_arch.html

29 August 2008: Seminar A carnival of words: The “Dictionary of Words in the Wild” and public textuality
Willard McCarty, Professor of Humanities Computing, King's College London
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/digitalinnovation/seminars.html

http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/digitalinnovation/index.html

Subject: Formation of Intersect - the new peak eResearch body for NSW

2008-08-06T13:26:32Z

Sent: Friday, 1 August 2008 5:02 PM
Subject: Formation of Intersect - the new peak eResearch body for NSW

Dear members of the eResearch community,

GOOD NEWS
I am delighted to inform you of the establishment of Intersect, the new peak eResearch organisation for NSW.
The Intersect proposal was approved by six NSW universities and funding has been provided through the universities and the NSW government. Intersect was formally established as a not-for-profit company on 25thJune. A Board of Directors has been appointed with Professor Mark Wainwright as Chairman, and Dr Michael Briers as interim CEO.

]]> Our initial goal of establishing a viable Intersect by mid-2008 has been achieved. Current members of Intersect are the University of Sydney, the University of NSW, Macquarie University, the University of Newcastle, University of Technology Sydney, and Southern Cross University. SIRCA, Securities Industry Research Centre of Asia-Pacific is also a Foundation Member. Intersect encourages the remaining NSW universities to join during the first year.

I'd like to thank all those who assisted in developing this ground-breaking proposal, especially the researchers who developed outlines of potential innovation projects, sometimes on very tight deadlines. A more detailed survey of potential innovation projects will be undertaken, and a process put in place for project selection and scheduling.

WEBSITE
An interim website can be found at http://www.intersect.org.au/ with a brief introduction to Intersect, our contact details, and any public documents and announcements. Now that Intersect is established this interim site will gradually be expanded into a more long-term web presence. We also have a contact email address which can be distributed: enquiries@intersect.org.au.

SUBSCRIBE
If you would like to subscribe for periodic updates on Intersect's progress and growth, please contact enquiries@intersect.org.au.

Please feel free to distribute this email, the URL and contact email address to any interested parties:
http://www.intersect.org.au
enquiries@intersect.org.au

Regards

Dr Michael Briers
Interim CEO
Intersect
www.intersect.org.au
+61 2 92369106

Digital education & digital research: What's going on and why bother

2008-07-09T00:42:45Z

v. 30-06-2008, unpublished draft

The new Labour Government’s educational initiatives with the promises “to turn every secondary school in Australia into a digital school” and “boost the research and development capacity” have triggered a range of new discussions about the implications of new political agendas on educational research. Research-related discussions at the ACER and education.au symposia “A digital education revolution” and the Educational Research Futures task group’s discussions initiated by the AARE and ARDEN are just few such examples to mention.

There has been a lot of action on another digital end of research policy and practice, called “e-research”. Among many others, the key developments over the last two years include the release of the Australian E-Research Strategy , the Strategic Roadmap and Investment Plan and the recent announcement of the Roadmap’s Review . These developments, however, have been almost unnoticed by the educational research community and education, as a discipline, essentially has been left out from the national e-research strategies and budgets. Why bother?
E-research has already shaped research agendas of many “soft” sciences. E-humanities and e-social social sciences have become important buzzwords in many research funding games and, in some countries, even got dedicated lines in the national research budgets.

E-research in educational research is a different story...

]]> Not much e-research has been done yet. Is e-research relevant for education? The answer is “Yes”, however. Without looking far for examples, lets take an the recent ACDE’s (Australian Council of Deans of Education) attempt carry out a scoping study for a national data repository for teacher education . Such repository (and likely an integrated research infrastructure for research in teacher education) asks for nothing else, but an e-research solution. The digital education revolution adds dozens of far more complicated research questions that hardly could be answered without e-research. So, what is e-research, what’s going on and what are the potential implications of e-research for research in education?

What is e-research?

What is called “e-research” in Australia typically means the same as “e-science” in the UK, “cyberinfrastructure” in the US and “the grid” in Singapore and the EU. To put it simple, “e-research” is a new research practices enabled by the use of advanced information and communication technologies. These new research practices are essentially made possible by the combination of three key technological advancements: high-performance computing; high-speed computer networks and large integrated data repositories. E-research is primarily perceived as enhancing existing theoretical research traditions (ranging from controlled experiments to critical ethnography) rather than a new conceptually coherent research approach. New research opportunities typically arise from the possibilities to integrate large distributed data sets (such as create longitudinal data repositories for policy research and evidence-based planning), employ new data analysis techniques that require computational power (such as modelling, visualisation or data mining) and engage with new collaborative research practices (such as remote video analysis in a virtual e-research environment). In a nutshell, the main merits of e-research primarily include opportunities to integrate data, technical resources and human capacities and then work together on more global “big picture” problems that can’t be solved without collaboration.

E-research developments in Australia

Lots have been happening over the recent years in Australia; and those who are new to e-research probably will be stunned by dozens of reports, consultation papers and projects on the governmental e-research portals. The most significant developments are related to several key documents.

The first is the Australian e-Research Strategy and Implementation Framework. This document outlines a national r-research vision and strategic directions for the next five years. Among key focus areas relevant for educational research are the development of infrastructure that supports large scale integrated research, e-research skills and capacity building in various disciplines, and cultural change that enables collaborative e-research. Besides, this document provides a good introduction into e-research and might worth reading just for this reason.

The second document is the Strategic Roadmap followed by the Investment Plan that outlines national e-research investment priorities, and the recently announced Roadmap’s review . The latter development deserves special attention. The review report acknowledges “the emergence of sophisticated software tools have revolutionised research in the humanities and in the qualitative social sciences where they are available but, in Australia, few examples are available” (21). Thanks to the alertness of colleagues from other “soft” sciences, humanities, arts and social sciences have been identified as one of five e-research priority areas. One of noticeable focuses of this discussion paper is the need to connect existing data resources and establish a system for collecting longitudinal data and tracking major social and behavioural trends. While the needs of educational research are far beyond the simple integration of existing datasets, as the first step, such data infrastructure is essential.

One of upcoming significant developments in e-social sciences is the establishment of the NSW Institute for Transdisciplinary E-Research Services and Technology (INTERSECT) . The NSW institute intendeds to provide a national focus on e-research in the humanities, arts and social sciences, thus probably could provide an initial ground and support for collaborative educational e-research projects.

How could educational research benefit from e-research?

The use cases of e-research in education are still scarce even internationally. However, cases from other research fields offer powerful examples and ideas of how e-research could enhance scholarly inquiry and communication in education. The opportunities, among others, include new more transparent and “user friendly” research dissemination; integrated “big picture” research that informs social decision-making; and collaborative research in fully digitalised e-research environments. Examples of new scientific publishing include: Plos Computational Biology journal that directly links papers with the data in an open Worldwide Protein Data Bank and enhances traditional peer-review with ongoing open online discussions after the publishing; SciVee scientific publishing project that complements academic papers with short podcasts adapted for non-scientific audiences; and Skyserver project that provides free access to a huge integrated astronomy database and, using interrogation and visualisation tools, makes datasets open for public viewing and new scientific research. PolicyGrid project, which employs semantic grid technologies for rural policy research and development, is a good example of how e-research can support decision-making. Finally, a nice example of how e-research can support all steps of collaborative inquiry is CombeChem project that aims to digitalize and support all research cycle from the laboratory research design to scientific publishing and feed results back into designs of new experiments. Many other inspiring e-research examples can be found on the National Centre’s for e-Social Sciences (the UK) website and online proceedings of the International e-Social Science Conferences.

Lina Markauskaite,
v. 30-06-2008, unpublished draft

References and notes

1. See education.au website: http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/Jahia/pid/631.
2. See A. Lee “Educational Research Futures: a task group of AARE-ARDEN (Australian Research Directors in Education Network)” in AARE Newsletter, March 2008, No. 61.
3. An Australian e-Research Strategy and Implementation Framework. Final Report of the e-Research Coordinating Committee, Australian Government, April 2006. Available at: http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/publications_resources/profiles/e_research_strat_imp_framework.htm.
4. National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Strategic Roadmap. NCRIS Advisory Committee, February 2006. Available at: http://www.ncris.dest.gov.au/development_ffolder/roadmap_investment.htm.
5. Review of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy’s Roadmap 2008, NCRIS Committee, 18 April 2008, Available at: http://www.ncris.dest.gov.au/development_ffolder/roadmap_review_2008.htm.
6. Data Repository for Teacher Education Scoping Study. Issues Paper. ACDE, May 2008. Available at: http://www.acde.edu.au/datarepository.html.
7. See education.au website: http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/Jahia/pid/631.
8. See A. Lee “Educational Research Futures: a task group of AARE-ARDEN (Australian Research Directors in Education Network)” in AARE Newsletter, March 2008, No. 61.
9. An Australian e-Research Strategy and Implementation Framework. Final Report of the e-Research Coordinating Committee, Australian Government, April 2006. Available at: http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/publications_resources/profiles/e_research_strat_imp_framework.htm.
10. National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Strategic Roadmap. NCRIS Advisory Committee, February 2006. Available at: http://www.ncris.dest.gov.au/development_ffolder/roadmap_investment.htm.
11. Review of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy’s Roadmap 2008, NCRIS Committee, 18 April 2008, Available at: http://www.ncris.dest.gov.au/development_ffolder/roadmap_review_2008.htm.
12. Data Repository for Teacher Education Scoping Study. Issues Paper. ACDE, May 2008. Available at: http://www.acde.edu.au/datarepository.html.
13. The main gateways to the national e-research developments are DIISR NCRIS and DEEWR E-Research portals: http://www.ncris.dest.gov.au/ and http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/policies_issues_reviews/key_issues/e_research_consult/.
13. See 3.
14. See 4.
15. See 5.
15. INTERSECT website should be launched in July.
16. Plos Computational Biology journal website: http://compbiol.plosjournals.org/.
17. Worldwide Protein Data Bank website: http://www.wwpdb.org/.
18. SciVee scientific publishing project website: http://www.scivee.tv/.
19. Skyserver project website: http://cas.sdss.org/.
20. PolicyGrid project website: http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/research/policygrid/.
21. CombeChem project website: http://www.combechem.org/.
22. The National Centre for e-Social Sciences, the UK, website: http://www.ncess.ac.uk/.
23. e-Social Science Conference 2004-2008 proceedings website: http://www.ncess.ac.uk/events/conference/2004/.

NOTE & APOLOGY: Many other ideas and sources haven't been properly referenced and acknowledged...

Social shapes of e-research

2007-11-09T21:05:18Z

Social and cultural aspects of e-research, grid and/or cyberinfrastructure become increasingly an attractive research topic for social scientists and cultural anthropologists. It is not surprising why. Interesting and important research themes can be found almost on the surface of e-research phenomenon. As an example, at least two research questions are represented in the following titles of the papers presented at e-research conferences this year:

M. Daw, R. Procter, Y. Lin, T. Hewitt, W. Jie, A. Voss, K. Baird, A. Turner, M. Birkin K. Miller, W. Dutton, M. Jirotka, R. Schroeder, G. de la Flor, P. Edwards, R. Allan, X. Yang, R. Crouchley (2007) Developing an e-Infrastructure for Social Science. Paper presented at the Third international conference on e-social science, Ann Arbor, MI, US. URL

Question 1: Is there a limit for productive collaboration?

J. Dalziel, C. Nguyen, R. Warouw (2007) Macquarie University: ASK-OSS, DRAMA and RAMS: eResearch support from MELCOE. Paper presented at the E-Research Australasia 2007. Brisbane. URL

Question 2: Is there a limit for effective(?) technical communication?

]]>

1. The difference in numbers of co-authors of presentations in e-research and educational conferences is astonishing. Is this difference a reflection of collaborative nature of e-research or a reflection of governmental funding policies? Is there a limit for productive collaborative work? From my longitudinal observations, the numbers of co-authors in e-social science conferences have been growing almost exponentially over the last four years. Does this mean that Moore’s law apply not only to computer power but also to collaboration in e-research? Social scientists probably could check Metcalfe’s law’s validity in such collaborations. A different aspect of this phenomenon is academic authorship. It is not new that writing and authorship are not necessarily two related aspects in scientific disciplines, while this is a big transformation in social sciences and humanities.

2. The number of new acronyms in e-research has been growing exponentially too. Information system designers have been always creating and using them generously. But before it was possible to read (and understand) research papers and policy documents (at least titles) without looking to a glossary. Is this still an effective way for communicating complex technical ideas? How to remember all this ever growing and ephemeral ontology of e-research definitions?

Finale: Technology vs. sociology

The cultural, social, political and organisational are all tightly interwoven with technological and in many different configurations. An interesting reading about how such techological configurations shaped by and shaping the sociology of e-research might evolve is the following paper:

Edwards, P. N., Jackson, S. J., Bowker, G. C., & Knobel, C. P. (2007). Understanding infrastructures: Dynamics, tensions, and design. Report of a workshop on “History & theory of infrastructure: Lessons for new scientific cyberinfrastructures". National Science Foundation. URL

“When you are designing a cyberinfrastructure, there are several things going on simultaneously. You are trying to deploy the latest computing infrastructure to:

Permit distributed collaborative work;
Engineer changes in the organization of scientific work (e.g. altering reward structures for database work, or encouraging early sharing of results);
Enable interdisciplinarity in a way which will get scientists from disparate communities working together.

This work is principally social and organizational. Yet in general designers are not trained to recognize these dimensions of their work practice – hence the horrific image of throwing new products over the wall to their designated community. <…> Cyberinfrastructure will not be built from the center with a single design philosophy. Instead, it will be built from the ground up, and in modular units. <…> It’s simply unrealistic to talk about designing cyberinfrastructure. Rather, each project produces a set of modules which ideally interoperate to create a larger whole” (p. 33)

Technology drives sociology. Sociology drives technology. The dialectical nature of change, life and science.

Digital charity: Donating computer power to safe lives and world

2007-10-28T21:39:10Z

Last week some e-science websites published the following exciting news:

“Prestigious Prix Europa award has been won by the BBC Climate Change Experiment, in which the BBC and the Oxford-run ClimatePrediction.net project worked together and encouraged over 250,000 people to donate computer time to the world's largest climate modelling experiment…” (Climateprediction.net news 22-Oct-2007)

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These powerful e-research ideas throw profound moral challenges to human culture and values. Could donation of computer power be equally valuable as donation of blood? Should education respond to this by educating digital volunteers and digital donors?

Links

PRIX EUROPA 2007 Internet Winner. URL
Lifesaver Project pages URL
Climate Prediction experiment URL

Semantic grid for social policy and research

2007-10-23T11:41:46Z

"To design one is nothing,
To build one is easy,
To fly one is everything."
(Otto Lilienthal)

The UK PolicyGrid tries to design and implement a middleware infrastructure that supports policy-related research activities based on social science research. The project called “Semantic Grid Tools for Rural Policy Development & Appraisal” (nb. it’s not difficult to imagine similar policy grid for educational policy decision-making and research). The design of the middleware is based on the provenance architecture. It requires to provide a 'thick' description of the contextual information that allows to interpret data and resources adequately (e.g., Who, What, Where, Why, When, Which and How the resource was created). The concept of the Semantic Grid is central to the design of this project.

Challenging idea?]]>

From the first sight, the Semantic Grid is an adequate architecture for fuzzy and rich qualitative and quantitative data, research and decision-making network. However, it looks that the Semantic Web alone might be not the best solution. One paper on the progress of this project, presented at the e-Social Science 2007 Conference, concludes:

“One of the most significant challenges we face is non-technical. While disciplines such as Chemistry have a very long tradition of using lab books, meticulously recording every step they perform, the same practice is not so well embedded in social science. This means that it will be a challenge to persuade social scientists to record their data and methods of working in the detail they require for reuse. It is also difficult to obtain concrete requirements because the social scientists themselves do not know precisely what it is they want to record or even query using the provenance metadata. This means that the design of the architecture has to be flexible enough to develop as our work progresses.” (Chorley et al., 2007)

Semantic Grid + Web 2.0?

It looks that ICT community becomes more sceptical about the Semantic Web and starts to speak about the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 technologies in parallel (e.g., URL). Could the combination of those two technologies be a better solution for social e-research and policy infrastructure?

Potentially, 'Yes'. The Semantic Web goes well with government’s possibilities to create "top-down" more logical and well structured social data network and to get out of it robust data-based evidence. Meantime, Web 2.0 nicely goes with the egalitarian culture of research community and allows to build network "bottom-up". Altogether, this combination well matches epistemic diversity of social research approaches, techniques, data types and contexts.

But, to design one is nothing… to fly one is a real challenge.

Links and references

Chorley, A., Edwards, P., Preece, A., & Farrington, J. (2007). Tools for tracing evidence in social science. Paper presented at the Third International Conference on e-Social Science, Ann Arbor, MI, US, October 7-9, 2007. URL
PolicyGrid URL
Semantic Grid Community Portal URL
Web 2.0 and Grids Workshop at OGF21 URL
The Third International Conference on e-Social Science, 2007 URL

Making sense of data archives

2007-10-14T20:51:46Z

The US Association for Institutional Research is quite serious about utilising their data archives and improving research in postsecondary educational institutions. This fellowship program for attending the Summer Data Policy Institute (June 8 - 15, 2008) and learning how to use their postsecondary education databases is open for researchers form all countries. (NB. The AIR's databases might be a useful resource for comparative educational research.)

Core URLs:

AIR's web site: URL
Program description: URL
SPIN link: URL

Other related links and thoughts are in the blog

]]> Researcher's margin

It seems that most countries have already generated quite large social and educational data archives: US (NCES, NSF), Australia (ASSDA), UK (EDINA, MIMAS, UK data archive, AHDS) and others (URL). Of course, these datasets are mainly from various censuses and large international, national and state surveys. Nevertheless, it is obvious that they are a rich source for new and meaningful research discoveries.

It is also obvious that most counties struggle getting something useful out of these data archives. The US, UK and some other counties obviously adopted "push-type" strategies. This approach looks compelling and promising. Even if various courses, scholarships and fellowships do not immediately result into new research outputs, it is probably a wise investment into research capacities and social research quality - might be a good supplement, if not an alternative, to the RQF, if we are serious about educational research quality.

Building data infrastructure for collaborative research

2007-10-07T20:38:52Z

All right. Let’s face it: “Today’s research community must assume responsibility for building a robust data and information infrastructure for the future” (p.1). Recently the group of QUT researchers produced the report that analyses the legal aspects of research data infrastructures and provides some suggestions how to build it:

Fitzgerald, A. & Pappalardo, K. (2007). Building the infrastructure for data access and reuse in collaborative research: An analysis of the legal context. Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project. URL

Summary

“This Report examines the legal framework within which research data is generated, managed, disseminated and used. <…> The Report considers how these legal rules apply to define rights in research data and regulate the generation, management and sharing of data. The Report also describes and explains current practices and attitudes towards data sharing. A wide array of databases is analysed to ascertain the arrangements currently in place to manage and provide access to research data. Finally, the Report encourages researchers and research organisations to adopt proper management and legal frameworks for research data outputs…” (CreativeCommons, 12-09-2007).

]]> Educational researcher’s margin

All right. Let’s face it again. New knowledge discovery and educational innovation rely on data. Politicians ask for research evidence for distribution of funds, principals and teachers seek to make data-informed school and classroom changes, parents want data-based proofs about improved performance. Hence, data is everything.

We talk about lifelong education, ambient and ubiquitous learning. Thus, for educational research we are asked to do we need:

Databases that document all aspects of learning throughout individual’s lifespan.
Protocols to collect such data in legally and ethically acceptable way.
Infrastructures and mechanisms to gather and integrate identifiable and re-identifiable personal information coming from multiple data sources (including administrative and research information).
Specialists (data curators, managers, etc.) who understand educational data and know how to manage it.
Culture and, probably, incentives to share, deposit and reuse our research data.

Present educational administrative information and research data are fragmented and disintegrated. There is little knowledge and expertise as how to create such integrated databases that involves data coming from human subjects. (NB. Numerous examples from sciences, provided in the above report, don’t look very relevant for education and social sciences. Nevertheless, some practices from health might be applicable.)

Homework for government: Whatever solutions are of all these questions, data integration is, for sure, critical for educational research. Without this component, education, unlike sciences, risks to have large and almost useless data archives. The integration of personal information is quite sensitive and not a trivial issue (no obvious solution comes from the Report too). It could be quite challenging task for governments and, probably, educational associations.

Homework for academics: “Data management expertise become a core skill for researchers, including graduate and postgraduate science students across all disciplines, and that they receive data management training as part of their education.” (p. 9, ref. PMSEIC, 2006). A couple of developments makes this citation quite tangible: (a) from 2008 ARC and NHMRC introduce open access to published papers and data resulting from funded projects. So this data and resulting papers will have to be deposited to institutional/subject repositories; (b) ESRC already funds similar courses and learning resources for social scientists (e.g.,“The Linking International Macro and Micro Data”). Time to learn all this, seems, will come soon.

References

PMSEIC (2006) From data to wisdom: Pathways to successful data management for Australian Sscience, December 2006, Prime Ministers Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, Working Group on Data for Science Working Group on Data for Science. URL
Fitzgerald, A. & Pappalardo, K. (2007). Building the infrastructure for data access and reuse in collaborative research: An analysis of the legal context. Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project. URL

Database for enhancing quality teaching and school leadership

2007-09-30T21:05:53Z

This blog complements the earlier blog Data repository for teacher education.

It's worth noticing that the need for a database for enhancing teaching and school leadership is one of the five core recommendations in the recently published Australian's Institute's for Teaching and School Leadership report “Teaching and leading for quality Australian schools” (Zammit et al., 2007, pp. 40-43).

“Much research has been conducted investigating the so-called ‘knowledge society’ in which knowledge production, knowledge transfer and knowledge networking have emerged as critical capabilities. However, as Fullan (2002) reported, historically schools have been weak at knowledge building and sharing. It is important to identify not only the data needed by classroom practitioners and school and system leaders, but also how best to engage educators and policy makers in collecting, using and sharing evidence to improve teaching practice and student outcomes. Moreover, through research the teaching profession can participate in shaping its own directions and contribute to the development of policy, practice and frameworks of excellence." (Zamitt et al., 2007, 40).

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Understanding and supporting knowledge transfer, so that research had a greater impact on the schools, teachers, education leaders and their capacities to apply and further develop this knowledge.

The need for a quality teaching and school leadership database, so that it supplemented, but not duplicated present databases and its possible uses.

Suggested database's content that covers: access to relevant information; current research and working papers; exemplars of best practice in audio, film, and written text online; development of an online community for professional exchanges; etc.

Encouraging engagement of education community to use, and contribute to, the database: deposit contributing exemplars; use interactive research database for performance appraisal and reporting; access to research reports, be able to identify areas requiring research and fill in these gaps.

Creating the database and maintaining the online environment: mechanisms to facilitate searching and how the database should operate and be maintained.

There is an obvious strong focus on research, access to, and dissemination of, research knowledge in the sketch of the Quality Teaching and School Leadership database. However, the vision of the Education Australia database is quite different from the ACDE vision. The former focuses on research results and resources, and gives less attention to ‘raw’ data, resource integration and interoperability (it is more a resource repository, not only a database), meanwhile the latter focuses on ‘raw’ research and administrative data and the integration of different datasets (thus, potentially it could provide more opportunities for secondary analysis and e-research). It's worth noticing, that these two ideas and databases complement each other; and in an ideal e-research world they could be integrated/interlinked and developed together.

References

Zammit, K., Sinclair, C., Cole, B., Singh, M., Costley, D., Brown a’ Court, L. and Rushton, K. (2007) Teaching and leading for quality Australian schools: A review and synthesis of research-based knowledge. Canberra: Teaching Australia. URL
Australia, House of Representatives (2007) Top of the Class. Report on the inquiry into teacher education. Canberra: House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training.
Fullan, M. (2002). The role of leadership in the promotion of knowledge management in schools. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 8(3/4), 409-419.

Data repository for teacher education

2007-09-28T11:30:02Z

An interesting scoping study called "Data Repository for Teacher Education" (Australian Council of Deans of Education) was funded by the Carrick Institute In the beginning of the year. This is probably one of the first signs of a ‘serious’ e-research in Australian education.

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Summary

The study will investigate and recommend on the role, nature, management and etc of a national data repository directed at quality improvement and efficiency in the initial and continuing education of teachers. The features of the national data repository will include:

Includes data and information necessary to inform important decision-making related to teacher education, including evaluation of existing programs and the development of new courses, teacher workforce planning, etc.
New collections of data are compatible with existing data collections.
Has a research oriented data structure.
Data is collected and maintained over the long term and integrated, i.e. documents trends and developments in programs, contexts, individuals, etc.
Data is available in a timely manner (e.g., real time).
Includes high quality ‘business intelligence’ software for interrogating and generating relevant reports for decision-making, etc.
Has a web-based interface for deans and public access.

Full summary of the Proposal: URL.

Learning social research methods: From traditional to new

2007-09-25T21:00:24Z

Most of the projects and online methodological resources produced under the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Researcher Development Initiative (RDI) are a great asset for social scientists, particularly those who are interested in e-research.

One of recently made available resources includes self-learning materials for those UK researchers who want to use international databases “The Linking International Macro and Micro Data”. Some of these materials are accessible for everyone (not databases however).

]]> Other RDI projects and resources include:

Training Researchers in Online Research Methods (TRI-ORM)
Sociolinguistic Ethnography in a Changing Society
Building Research Capacity in Social Work
Writing Across Boundaries: Explorations in Research, Writing and Rhetoric in Qualitative Research
Building Capacity in Visual Methods
Geo-refer: Georeferencing Resources for Social Scientists
Linking International Macro and Micro Data
Live Sociology: Practising Social Research with New Media
Longitudinal Data Analysis for Social Science Researchers
Managing Research Projects: Supporting Researchers in Collaborative Project Management
Qualitative Data Analysis Skills for Social Researchers
Tools and Training for Analysis of Multilevel Data with Missing Observations
Training in Pragmatic Social Interventions: Problems, Promises and Protocols

Access to resources at: http://www.rdi.ac.uk