Research Skills

Collaborate and connect: event for LSE research students

On Tuesday 17^th June LSE Library and Centre for Learning Technology are hosting an informal networking event for research students. It will start from 6pm and be held in the Sixth floor Bar / Terrace of the Saw Swee Hock Building. We will be offering free drinks and canapés and have information available about the support on offer.

It will be a chance to meet colleagues, make new connections with PhD researchers at LSE. This informal event is also a chance to find out about some of the research support services offered by the Library and Centre for Learning Technology and to network with PhD students across the School. A limited number of tickets are available for this exciting event organised in collaboration with the Students’ Union. Book here to secure your place: http://www.lsesu.com/ents/event/2804/

June 10th, 2014|Research Skills|Comments Off|

Piirus: the researcher networking tool

Would you like to be one of the first LSE researchers to receive an invitation to join Piirus, the new researcher networking website? CLT and the Library are working with the University of Warwick who developed this tool for their own staff initially but it is now being released on a limited basis to several other institutions, including LSE.

Piirus is a free service that helps you collaborate by putting you in touch with researchers with expertise on a specific topic or technique. If you want to make contacts, or find a collaborator, within your field or from a different discipline, then Piirus is a tool to help you get in touch. More details available on the Piirus website.

200 LSE invites will be sent out from 19^th May 2014. You will automatically receive 10 invites when you sign up, and can invite researchers from any institution. LSE PhD students and researchers should complete this form if you would like to receive an invitation.

May 9th, 2014|Research Skills|Comments Off|

Research Data Management: new course at LSE

Research Data Management: Introduction to Concepts and Practices is a new hour long training session being run by colleagues in the Library on Friday 25th October at 10:30 in the training room of the Library – LRB.R08.

This session introduces some of the main principles of research data management. It includes orientation to this approach to creating and working with research data, as well as a consideration of its effective use in research.

A mix of discussion and practical activities will allow participants to reflect on their own research needs. There will be opportunities to discuss data management planning, curating data, sharing data and related ethical and legal responsibilities. The growing importance of research data management in funding applications is also addressed.

There will be potential for future sessions aimed at particular research departments, or even projects, subject to interest from participants. If you are interested please book a place through the LSE Training System.

October 17th, 2013|Research Skills|Comments Off|

Embedding Digital and Information Literacy in Undergraduate Teaching report

The latest piece of research by CLT on Embedding Digital and Information Literacy in Undergraduate Teaching compared strategies being used by three projects that are part of the JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme and the opportunities and threats for adopting some of these strategies as part of the work to embed the ANCIL framework into undergraduate teaching.

The report recommends a dual approach for Information Literacy and Digital Literacy skills to be successfully embedded into undergraduate teaching at the LSE. As explored in the CASCADE programme, student change agents provide contextualised, peer-to-peer support, but also important feedback on the kinds of issues faced by students, and the tools and technologies being used to overcome them and gain IL skills.

The ‘top down’ approach advocated by McGuinness (2007) is also needed to complement and support change agents. There needs to be increasing communication between academic faculty, academic support staff and librarians to better understand each others roles and remits, and find areas for effective collaboration.

We have already starting to explore some of the recommendations of this report, and have got the ball rolling through the ‘Student Ambassadors for Digital Literacy project’ (SADL), which will be looking at the role of student ambassadors to support digital literacies, and provide vital feedback to the project team on the embedded approach.

The report is now available via LSE Research Online.

References:

McGuinness, C. (2007). Exploring Strategies for Integrated Information Literacy: From “ Academic Champions ” to Institution-Wide Change. Communications in Information Literacy, 1(1), 26–38. Retrieved from http://www.comminfolit.org/index.php?journal=cil&page=article&op=view&path[]=Spring2007AR3&path[]=14. Accessed 26 July 2013.

July 26th, 2013|Reports & Papers, Research Skills, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off|

Exploring Social Media as data sources for research

Last Wednesday, CLT ran a workshop on Exploring Social Media as data sources for research as part of our NetworkEd series.

There was an excellent turnout of around 35 academics and PhD students from across the LSE’s departments attending, which shows that there is real interest in developing effective research methods to analyse the wealth of data social media can provide.

Some of the tools we explored can be found here. We got the ball rolling by discussing the advantages and disadvantages of using social media data for research, which Jane presented below:

July 1st, 2013|Events & Workshops (LTI), NetworkED, Research Skills, Social Media|Comments Off|

LSE cited as example of best practice in digital and information literacy

I am delighted to report that LSE’s MY592 Information Literacy for Research programme (run jointly by the Library and CLT), has been highlighted as an example of good practice in enhancing the information literacy skills of postgraduate students and early career researchers in UK higher education. On behalf of the Research Information and Digital Literacies Coalition (RIDLs), the Research Information Network (RIN) and Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) have announced the results of this research, which showcases fifteen resources for information literacy training provision in a variety of UK higher education institutions.

The analysis draws from these cases, which provide a range of online and in-house training resources, and incorporates various recommendations that may be of value to those planning to develop such resources. The analysis is founded on the provisional criteria developed by RIDLs to describe and assess training provision in information literacy.

Project officer Dr Charlie Inskip said: “A number of self-selected information literacy resources have been evaluated, leading to a shortlisting of a selection of 15 good practice examples.”

RIN’s Stéphane Goldstein went on to say: “The value of the RIDLS criteria in this research has been to provide an analytical framework for such evaluations (for the researcher) and act as a reflective tool (for the developers/deliverers). Hopefully some of the recommendations and comments within the report, combined with a reflective look at the examples – and contact with their helpful representatives – may assist those attempting to deliver good practice information literacy in UK HE in 2013 and beyond.”

The full report and short list is now available on the project website, http://rilads.wordpress.com/

June 11th, 2013|Announcements, Events & Workshops (LTI), Research Skills, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off|

Need help researching academic resources for your major review?

Want to keep up to date with the latest academic writing on your research area
Need advice on citing materials and structuring your bibliography?
Looking for statistical data for your research.

Then book a place on this term’s MY592: Workshop on Information Literacy
This six week programme (part of the Department of Methodology’s Workshop series) is taught by the Library and Centre for Learning Technology. Six 2 hour ‘hands on’ workshops will enable you to build up your research skills as we cover:

Literature searching, citation searching and finding academic materials using resources such as IBSS, Scopus, Web of Science, Econlit, etc.
Getting the most out of the internet for research
Managing information – creating bibliographies and using tools to manage your information, e.g. EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley
Dealing with data – resources for data and how to use them
Finding and using newspaper, conference, theses, research and specialist publications for research
Next steps, keeping up to date, sharing your research, developing your online presence and building a network.

MY592 is supported by a course in Moodle and all participants receive feedback on resources for their individual research topics. The course is ideal for first and second year PhD students.

This term the programme will start on Wednesday 13 February 10-12 in STC.S175 for 6 weeks. Further information is available and places can be booked on the LSE Training System .

Please email Maria Bell (m.bell@lse.ac.uk) if you have any queries about the course.

February 1st, 2013|Announcements, Research Skills|Comments Off|

Developing digital and information literacy at Cardiff University: next NetworkED seminar

I’m pleased to announce that the next NetworkED seminar will be held on Wednesday 6th February at 2.30pm. The presenters are Cathie Jackson, Joe Nicholls and Janet Finlay who will be talking about the development and implementation of a digital and information literacy strategy at Cardiff University. The work is part of the Digidol Project, which was funded by Jisc under their Developing Digital Literacies programme. You can find out more about the seminar from our NetworkED website. The event is open to all. LSE staff and students should book via the online booking system.

External visitors wishing to attend should email j.secker@lse.ac.uk to book a place. As ever we hope to be live streaming the event and if you wish to watch the seminar online you simply need to visit the event webpage at 2.30 on Wednesday 6th February and do NOT need to book a place. You can follow the event in Twitter using #LSENetEd

January 16th, 2013|Events & Workshops (LTI), NetworkED, Research Skills|Comments Off|

What CLT (can) do for you: Social Media

CLT – what we do for you…
An occasional series about stuff we support and promote & which we think you should know more about. Today’s post is about Social Media.

Social Media
‘Social media’ is a generic term that describes all those online applications you use to communicate, share and collaborate with others for variety of reasons, networking, fun, politics and of course learning. Blogs, social networking sites (eg facebook), twitter, wikis (eg Wikipedia), flickr – all these are social media. For a comprehensive guide, check out the JISC InfoNet guide on social software.
CLT have been promoting and supporting the use of social media in education for quite some time and especially in the last two years LSE academics have really started to embrace them. Blogging and twitter have become particularly popular, as their potential for making connections in learning, teaching and research has become more apparent. In our CLT NetworkED seminar series last year, Patrick Dunleavy indeed made a great case for academic blogging as part of a new digital revolution in the academic publishing world. Facebook groups are used by PhD students as a platform to share information and academic tips across the disciplines. Moodle wikis are used to facilitate collaborative writing to great effect. The new director Craig Calhoun has an established twitter presence and recently encouraged anyone out there to ask him questions via twitter (#askthedirector) which he answered in real time at a particular hour at the beginning of term. And if you still need convincing that twitter can (i.e. most emphatically not must!) have a place in academia, have a quick read of the LSE guide to twitter.

If you’re planning an academic conference or event, however small or big, you should really consider creating a hashtag so that the wider community can participate: online backchannels are now as important as face2face meetings. And if you’re not sure about which social media are right for you – teaching, networking, learning or research – then you should get in touch with us! Drop us a line, drop in on us, book on one of our training courses: we’ve been supporting the use of social media for a long time!

Our workshops change over the years of course – recently we have started to concentrate more on how to write effectively for the web and moved away from the more step by step learning of how to create and manage blogs. We can also tailor workshops to particular departments’ or groups’ needs. Get in touch if this is something that interests you.

Timeline:

2005	CLT start running blogs via wordpress
2006	CLT host first externally facing blog for Charlie Beckett, blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis
2007	Libraries & Social Software in Education (LASSIE) project, project blog still going strong and maintained by CLT’s Jane Secker
2008	Digital Literacy workshop programme, offering workshops on blogging, social bookmarking, twitter, using rich media (youTube, flickr etc) in teaching…
2010	set up the lse.ac.uk yammer domain – a sort of corporate ‘walled’ twitter application for all LSE account holders.
2011	Workshops on social referencing tools: CiteULike, Zotero, Mendeley
2011	#LSEnetED: CLT seminar series NetworkED: Technology in Education launched with funding from the LSE Annual Fund.

Update: Conor Gearty’s Reflections on ‘new media’ , published yesterday (12/11/12), is a measured and well-informed discussion of the pros and cons of academics’ (esp. Public Lawyers) use of twitter and blogging.