Using Technology to Enhance Research Practice: Analysing the use of ICT and e-science by academic researchers

Oxford E-Research Conference11-13 September 2008

Using Technology to Enhance Research Practice: Analysing the

use of ICT and e-science by academic researchers

Dr. Nick Pearce

Centre for e-science

Lancaster University


Outline

• Background to study

• Relationship between culture and technological innovation

• Importance of disciplinary culture

• My survey

• Results

• Analysis and conclusions


Background to study

• Universities early adopters of ICT

• E-science Vs web (1 and 2)– Access Grid Vs IM

• Funding for online staff survey of ICT use

• Key question –– How do disciplinary differences affect which

ICTs do researchers use when researching and collaborating?


Relationship between culture and technological innovation

• There is a central problem– Advocates of ICT suggest revolutionary

benefits– Yet adoption of ICT more likely if compatible

with current values and beliefs (cf. Rogers 2003:243)


Importance of disciplinary culture

• Becher and Trowler (2001)– Discipinary culture affected by epistemology– Hard/ soft applied/pure

• Fry (2006,2007)– Applied the above to ICT

• Few other studies


My survey: a case study

• Fairly new (est. 1967)

• Mid sized– 16k UG students– Of which 3k PG students– 2.5k staff (just less than 900 academic)

• Research led

• Organised into 3 faculties


Survey details

• November to December 2007

• Online survey

• Aimed at research active staff (and students)

• Fairly representative in many respects

• Skewed towards younger academics


Response rate

Faculty Research Staff

Responses

Response Rate

FST 470 105 22.3

FASS 250 52 20.8

MS 141 37 26.2

Total 861 202 23.5


Results

• Tried to break the research process into generic stages– Problematic!

• The following is a selection– More comprehensive results available on

request


Resource DiscoveryTraditional Web 1 Web 2

Faculty

Reading

Colleagues

Database

Web searc

h

Journalnotificatio

ns

e-mail

list

Google

scholar

Wikipedia

RSS

FST 88 77 77 63 42 26 53 26 5

FASS 95 88 94 72 53 42 66 31 11

MS 91 78 81 59 57 28 57 12 3


Technology use of primary project

Faculty Web page Wiki e-mail list Blog

FST 41 19 36 2

FASS 36 4 32 6

MS 36 9 28 9


Collaborative technologies

Faculty

Instantmessagin

g

Conference

calls

Desktop

VC

Google docs

FST 29.0 21.7 6.5 3.6

FASS 22.4 18.8 4.7 3.5

MS 43.1 19.0 8.6 3.4


Awareness and Use of Access Grid

Faculty Awareness (%)

Use (%)

FST 23 7

FASS 12 6

MS 21 13


Use of blogs

Faculty Subscribe(%) Write(%)

FST 16.3 2.2

FASS 27.4 7.3

MS 10.5 8.8


Summary

More likely Less likely

Science and Technology

Find references through reading

Projects more likely to have wiki

Write research blogs

Arts and Social Sciences

Find references through reading and databases

read research blogs

Use desktop videoconferencing

Aware/ Use access grid

Management School

Projects with blog

Use Instant messaging

Use access grid

Projects with email lists


Summary and conclusions

• Considerable variety across faculties

• Wide variety of tools used to help research– More often web 2 than e-science?

• Cultural differences could be significant– Norms of co-authorship/ collaboration– Size/ spread of project teams– Perceived ease of use/ usefulness of ICT


Final Questions

• If e-research is enhanced research it will likely combine e-science and web 2.0– What can e-science learn from spread of web

2.0?– How can adoption and utility of web 2.0 tools

be enhanced through existing e-science infrastructures?

Using Technology to Enhance Research Practice: Analysing the use of ICT and e-science by academic researchers

Technology

enhanced research

research process

research practice

research active staff

research blogs arts

use of ict

likely science

online staff survey