Wonderfully considered and lucid post from Nancy. Concerns us all. Thank you. I just joined a new campus and the CIO was asked about this kind of thing (specifically does Blackboard pedagogical activity "count") at a faculty open house. He bypassed the question by saying it was the old issue of teaching and research and service and the risk of doing work in emerging areas (implicitly, therefore, the answer was no, a syllabus is a syllabus is a syllabus, online or off, and doesn't "count" any more than any syllabus does). Yes, you're welcomed as new blood, thanks for the contribution and help with pulling along the late adopters, but expect to pay your dues like everyone else before you. So: Is work in Net studies like other emerging areas? Can we learn from the battles fought by women's and environmental studies, for instance? Or cultural studies? Are the issues different, perhaps, among other reasons, because of the corporate-supported IT grants and other soft money not available to other disciplines (e.g., these being tough times for the humanities)? Net-supported research seems to have enjoyed much greater cross-campus and global support than other areas, even though there are unlikely to be departments of Internet Studies as Nancy pointed out. What we do has seeped through and become mainstream remarkably quickly. I wanted to keep Nancy's thread alive, but I don't have As to her Qs either. I strongly agree that these are concerns we need to address going forward if the AoIR is to provide practical support to our careers, as well as to subjectively nourish relationships that are, nonetheless, predicated on common research and avocational (we aren't all academics on the AoIR list) interests. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wendy Robinson wgrobin@uc.edu Asst Prof, Dept of Comm wgrobin@fuse.net Univ of Cincinnati homepages.uc.edu/~robinswg 620C Teachers College tel: 513-556-4468 Cincinnati, OH 45221-0184 fax: 513-556-0899 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At 12:01 PM 11/8/02 -0500, you wrote:

Message: 1 Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 11:18:24 -0600 To: air-l@aoir.org From: Nancy Baym <nbaym@ku.edu> Subject: Re: [Air-l] What is a discipline - role of AoIR. Reply-To: air-l@aoir.org

I of course can't help but think about all of this quite specifically in terms of the role of AoIR in Internet Studies and what our lofty goals should be, and I wanted to pose some of the questions this discussion raises for me. I start from the premise that while AoIR may be many members' favorite affiliation and conference, we are not likely to be conducting academic careers in an institutionally recognized department of Internet Studies. So one goal may be to provide a form of institutional credibility so that members' work will be recognized by tenure and promotion committees that want evidence of outside review. This is of course one of the major functions of well known academic associations, usually in the form of peer review association journals and conferences.

[snip]

How important is it that AoIR provide credibility? How do we apply standards? What kinds of structures could we build through which to apply them? How do we maintain and nurture a kind and stimulating ethos? How do we discipline and nurture one another in a way that does its best to speak to all the home disciplines and traditions in which members make careers?

I don't have a good answer to any of these questions. I see a lot of challenges and balancing acts ahead. My hope is that the right answers will emerge as we continue to discuss these and related issues together.