Suzana, thank you for the clarification. I find academic transformations are both amazingly fast and staggeringly slow depending on the field. My perceptions... In teaching, the fast part is the rapid changes pushed by new technologies and expectations of use by (some) incoming students. The laptop in classes discussion is an example of a push from such students as far as media goes, but new technologies include far more than just media. We're also pulled to be up to date with the skills we provide students as they go out to employers. My perceptions of the latter is that the academic tradition of widening people's view of the world still very much holds. For those of us who are involved in online education, the changes are dramatic and swift, with what one might call a 'revolution' in teaching and learning practices accompanying e-learning. For many of us this drives significant changes in our overall teaching practice (there's lots of references on this, including some of my own :) ). Some of the other recent AoIR discussion has touched on this topic and there's lots in the online learning/asynchronous learning/e-learning/collaborative learning/computer-supported collaborative learning literature on new ways to approach teachiing. Unfortunately, I am always tremendously surprised to hear vehement anti-online teaching stances I encounter regularly. Some have no clue about what it really means to teach and/ or learn online, and the change in learning practices the combination of new media and online teaching bring. My perception is that the real 'revolution' in online learning is the new way of teaching and learning, not so much that it is done through new technology. But teaching is only part of the academic game ... I mean tradition. Tenure holds a lock on what we do, and the tenure evaluation system is very slow to change. I have colleagues even now (not at my university) who say an online publication in an online refereed journal will not 'count' to tenure for them. The online/offline nature of this will, I believe, change, but the reputation system associated with publication venues will not. Everyday we make a judgement of where to send papers for publication. In shifting traditions -- where online gets more exposure, but offline/reputation gets you tenure -- the decision is not straightforward. You asked originally "What is it in shifting traditions that affects you as an academic in your daily work?" For me, the changes are bringing online education approaches to teaching in general, and making balancing decisions about where and how I disseminate my work and ideas. /Caroline ---- Original message ----
Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 10:56:45 +1000 From: Suzana Sukovic <suzana.sukovic@uts.edu.au> Subject: Re: [Air-l] Academic traditions To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org
Caroline, my doctoral study into the roles of e-texts in the humanities investigated some of these issues. I finished data-gathering and analysis, but this aspect of findings hasn't been published yet. I am still very curious about issues of academic tradition and change. My question for the list is a matter of interest and curiosity, not formal data-gathering. I hope that the list participants could provide a variety of answers and insights because Internet researchers may have different experiences from people who study religion and conduct part of their studies online, for example.
I am coming to Urbana-Champaign to present some of my findings at Digital Humanities 07. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to continue this conversation. Cheers, Suzana
At 11:34 PM 21/05/2007, Caroline Haythornthwaite wrote:
An interesting question. Can you give us some context -- more that general curiosity -- for the questions. Do you have a particular incident that generates you question, or a research project? Is this information for a research study or for academic practice?
Suzana Sukovic PhD Candidate _________________________________________ Information & Knowledge Management Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Technology, Sydney
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---------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Associate Professor Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820