Science and the Web 2.0

Do you remember this blogpost from March 2011? Probably not. It contains a mindmap on open science in technology enhanced learning. I mentioned back then that we will use it as an input for a publication. Almost two years later, I am very happy to announce that this paper is now published in IJTEL. The postprint of the article is open access and can be found on Mendeley.

An intense process

In September 2010, Günter Beham and I came up with the idea for a visionary article on open science in technology enhanced learning. Flying back from EC-TEL in Barcelona, we discussed our growing concern with the irreproducibility and incomparability of TEL research. A lot has happened since then. In November, I posted a note on TELpedia looking for further collaborators. Soon thereafter, an enthusiastic Derick Leony joined us, and we started working on an abstract. We submitted this abstract in January 2011 and received encouraging feedback and important hints from two anonymous reviewers. After that we created the mindmap, and I wrote the aforementioned blogpost to include more people in the spirit of Open Science. Wolfgang Reinhardt read the post and was immediately interested; thus, he became the last member of the author collective. We intensified our research and produced several drafts accompanied by regular Skype calls and flashmeetings. We submitted a first version of our article to Inderscience in May 2011. The manuscript was reviewed by three anonymous referees. The reviewers had various requests for revisions, but we were accepted for publication on the constraint of a successful re-review. We started incorporating the changes, broadening our initial focus on reproducibility and comparability to further benefits of Open Science. A final re-review in November 2011 gave green light to publication eventually.

It was interesting to see, how the open process drew people in and how that helped to grow and refine the article. In retrospect, I think that we could have been even more open, discussing our ideas beyond the mindmap in social networks and on Twitter. That might have helped to include people other than the original authors. Well, there is always a next time! Thanks to my co-authors for an awesome collaboration, and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.  We do not see the publication as the end of the process; it is merely the start of a conversation. We want to invite you to download the paper, and tell us what you think.

Abstract: In this paper, we make the case for an Open Science in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). Open Science means opening up the research process by making all of its outcomes, and the way in which these outcomes were achieved, publicly available on the World Wide Web. In our vision, the adoption of Open Science instruments provides a set of solid and sustainable ways to connect the disjoint communities in TEL. Furthermore, we envision that researchers in TEL would be able to reproduce the results from any paper using the instruments of Open Science. Therefore, we introduce the concept of Open Methodology, which stands for sharing the methodological details of the evaluation provided, and the tools used for data collection and analysis. We discuss the potential benefits, but also the issues of an Open Science, and conclude with a set of recommendations for implementing Open Science in TEL.

Update: Below is a presentation of the paper that I held at the Opencamp in Graz.

There are still some open spots for junior reviewers at the IJTEL Young Researcher Special Issue on “State-of-the-Art in Technology Enhanced Learning”. This is a good opportunity to get to know the work of a referee. Junior reviewers will be asked to review 1-2 papers; furthermore, we require junior reviewers to participate in a workshop on article reviewing. If you want to become a reviewer, please apply here. The full CfR can be found below.

International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning  (IJTEL)

Call for Papers

Young Researcher Special Issue on: “State-of-the-Art in TEL”

Guest Editors:
Peter Kraker, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Moshe Leiba, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Martina Rau, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Derick Leony and Israel Gutiérrez Rojas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Dirk Börner, Open Universiteit in the Netherlands, The Netherlands
Antigoni Parmaxi, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn, Germany

Introduction

The International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL) invites paper submissions for a special issue targeting young researchers in the community of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). This call for papers encourages a review of state-of-the-art of TEL topics, topped with a description of the current and future work carried out by the authors doing research on these topics.

This special issue is directed to all young researchers such as PhD students, post-graduate students, and post-docs working in topics related to TEL both in academia and industry, and from different disciplines of the community (technologists, educationists, psychologists, etc.).

The purpose of this special issue is manifold: (a) to provide a better overview on TEL research lines; (b) to investigate and expand current TEL research themes; (c) to promote international and multidisciplinary collaboration and exchange of ideas among young researchers; (d) to encourage young researchers to formalise their research questions, topics, and methodologies.

The International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL) recognizes the value and importance of the reviewing process in the overall publication process both in shaping the individual manuscript and in highlighting the reliability and reputation of a journal. Within this framework, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a productive review process.

Reviewer profiles

We are inviting:

• Junior reviewers (post-graduate students, PhD students, recent post-docs) working in research related to TEL in both academia and industry, who would like to get experience in being a reviewer and participate in a workshop on article reviewing;

• Experienced reviewers working in research related to TEL who would like to participate in the reviewing process for the special issue.

Workshop for Junior Reviewers

We will hold a workshop on initiation to article reviewing focusing on the subject of the special issue. The workshop will be online and it will take place on late February. The participation of junior reviewers is mandatory since it is the core of their mentoring process. Experienced reviewers are welcome to join in order to provide advice from their experience.

Review process

Contributions to the Young Researcher Special Issue of the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL) will undergo a double blind review process. All submissions will be reviewed by two or three reviewers, including at least one experienced reviewer. Junior reviewers must have participated in the workshop in order to get assigned articles to review.

How to apply

Please use this form to apply as a reviewer: http://bit.ly/zkcTlG

Important dates

Application deadline: 10/02/2012
Review of full papers: 01/04/2012
Publication of the special issue: second half of 2012

Last week, I attended Websci’11, the 3rd International Conference on Web Science. It was a great experience to engage with such a diverse crowd; there were people from computer science, information science, social science, psychology, philosophy (and some others that I probably missed here) representing many different aspects from this multi-disciplinary field. I am still not done with going through my notes, reflecting on all the interesting things that I have learned. Koblenz itself was very welcoming to us as well: we had the pleasure to watch the lunar eclipse while sitting on the banks of the Rhine.

Our contribution to the conference was a poster on Science 2.0 practices in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), originating from our research in the STELLAR Network of Excellence. You can get a full sized version of the poster by clicking on the image below.

For this study, we conducted two focus groups to find out about research practices in TEL, and how they are supported by Web 2.0. You can read the accompanying paper here. In a nutshell, we asked people to list their daily tasks and duties in a classification form of their choice. Afterwards, we discussed the most interesting tasks and duties with regards to Web 2.0. In the analysis, we aggregated the results to model a map of the TEL research process. Then we identified the mentioned practices and assigned them to the process steps. Furthermore, we deduced strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats from the discussion. As the main conclusion, we found that in the early stage (“design phase”) and in the late stage (“publication phase”), researchers are very well supported. This is not the case in those process steps where the actual work is being done (i.e. “development”, “implementation”, and “evaluation”).

All in all, the poster was well received. People were able to situate their research within the process map, and they also confirmed that there was little support in the core research work. I got some suggestions for tools that are used in other disciplines. Some of them are well-known, such as myExperiment. Others I had never heard of, because they are only used within single institutions, such as a self-developed social warning system for large physical experiments. One point of critique was that the core process should be displayed as being more iterative, with the possibility to break off after a few steps (which I totally agree with). Of course, these are only the results of a smale scale study which need to be further validated. Nevertheless, I am very happy with the first feedback, and I am looking forward to exploring the subject of research practices in the context of Web 2.0.

Our contribution to the Research 2.0 Workshop at EC-TEL 2010. Get a pre-print of the paper here.

Feeding TEL: Building an Ecosystem Around BuRST  to Convey Publication Metadata
Peter Kraker, Angela Fessl, Patrick Hoefler and Stefanie Lindstaedt.

Abstract. In this paper we present an ecosystem for the lightweight exchange of publication metadata based on the principles of Web 2.0. At the heart of this ecosystem, semantically enriched RSS feeds are used for dissemination. These feeds are complemented by services for creation and aggregation, as well as widgets for retrieval and visualization of publication metadata. In two scenarios, we show how these publication feeds can benefit institutions, researchers, and the TEL community. We then present the formats, services, and widgets developed for the bootstrapping of the ecosystem. We conclude with an outline of the integration of publication feeds with the STELLAR Network of Excellence and an outlook on future developments.