skills training and research technologies blog

This last Monday I witnessed something extraordinary. It might not be as extraordinary for you as it was for me, but the event I am about to talk about has a story behind…a narrative with a plot that evolved over time as new characters joined in to help write the story.

More than a year ago I had talked to Prof. Myriam Salama-Carr about doing an online conference in her field. I had already run the first Trainers in Europe online conference and knew these things can actually work. Furthermore, the process of organising it as a team is an extraordinary learning experience, and I thought this would be a great way to get students introduced to these kind of environments and approaches.

To be honest, I am not at all interested in doings sessions without a context. Not anymore. I’ve learnt the hard way that they don’t work. They have little effect on people’s practice, because they have a hard time relating to things that seem to be really out of their main focus. Instead, I want people to not only regard technologies in their field, I want them to embed them in their practices. My goal is to help people make relevant use of these technologies and perceive their value in action. So what better way to do that than finding an excuse for PhD students, researchers and myself to get involved in something that genuinely interests us - even if for different reasons - and contributes to their area and learning. Also,  it helps me get my message across. I don’t want to deliver stuff. Rather, I want to help create meaning, or as one of my mentors has inspired me to do, to co-design contexts in which the people I work with also become responsible for the environments we develop.

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On Monday, 6th September 2010, the Centre for Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies at the University of Salford, United Kingdom is organising first student-led, International Online Conference in Translation and Interpreting Studies (OCTIS1 2010) on Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies: Methods of the Past, the Present and the Future. The conference is open to all and free to attend. To receive updated information about it please register here.

The aim of OCTIS 2010 is to bring together international postgraduates from within the various areas of Translation and Interpreting Studies and to give them the opportunity to present papers to their peers. We hope that participation will be a rewarding experience for all, open new perspectives, establish new venues for networking and discussion and help to develop crucial academic and social skills in a friendly setting.

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The beginning of a new academic year is approaching.  Here at the Research and Graduate College, we have a new Director of Graduate Studies, Prof Vian Ahmed (click here for more details). We are all getting ready to welcome the new cohort of PhD students. The welcome week starts on the 20th September and we are really keen on working with new and old students and colleagues across the University. There are a lot of new reasons to be happy. We have a new cohort of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs), the SPoRT programme is looking better than ever, and new collaborative projects await.

Congratulations to all the successful GTAs applicants. Jaye will be working with 23 post-graduate students this year in teaching development. This has been the largest GTA cohort ever across all the 4 Faculties, I am told! Looks like there is an increasing interest in teaching in Higher Education by the post-graduate community. That can only be good. Teaching is also another form of learning, and we are really committed in providing our PhD students with such skills. So much so that Jaye is also developing a new teaching programme to be launched in semester 2.  It will be called Teaching at University for postgraduates and it is designed for  those who are teaching or would like to learn about teaching. For further information watch this space often.

Victoria, amongst other projects, has been fine-tuning the SPoRT programme before it is released online. Looks like some really interesting and new sessions are being offered. Check the PG website for updated information very soon.

I have been working on two new projects based on a networked-learning approach, and supporting the organisation of the first PhD students-led Online Conference in Translation and Interpreting Studies.

It’s going to be an exciting year for all of us.

So before it gets even more hectic than it already is, I’d like to share a video message by a very inspiring academic: Prof. Randy Pausch. I hope you enjoy it and value his words.

In a nutshell, the message we want to pass on to our future and current PhD students is the follwoing:

We are here to help you follow your passion for research, teaching and learning. See this phase of your lives as a journey that will help you grow, develop and mature your expertise and your ’selves’. As Pausch says, doing a PhD should mean more than getting a title or award. The real reward is in the learning and the networks you construct around you, and the reputation you are able to establish based on your deeds and achievements. Make the best of your stay in Salford by engaging in the activities we offer and also by putting forward other ideas and suggestions. Make the best of this experience. We are here to help!

Any PhDs (students) out there willing to inspiring new postgraduate students with their stories and experiences?

So, it looks like it’s that time of the year when the University goes quieter and we are all ready for a break.

You must have realised it by now, as the blogging has slowly decreased over the past few weeks. The three of us here at the Research & Graduate College are getting ready for a summer break. We have been sending the last emails before we leave, making sure we don’t leave anything urgent behind. Of course we are also planning and getting ready for the new academic year.

Meanwhile, Jaye hosted a luncheon to celebrate the achievements of our GTAs completing their teaching assistantships this year. Well done you guys! Congratulations and all the best with your new projects! [photos are available here].

Clifford Whitworth library

Victoria has been busy editing the July’s newsletter and putting together the 2010-11 SPoRT programme [check this link often for updates], and I have been preparing for some projects when I come back, amongst which is the first edition of a student-led online conference our PhD students in Translation and Interpreting Studies are organising.



It’s been an interesting, hectic academic year highly marked by collaborative ventures and team work. It was a good year! Now with most of the student community and staff away for the summer holidays, the place seems to lack the same kind of energy. It’s a good hint for a break. So here we go!

We will be back at the end of August, when we will resume the blogging activity too. Until then, enjoy the summer.Any ideas worth sharing or comments, please don’t hesitate to post them here.

Liverpool born sociologist and Radio 4 broadcaster, Laurie Taylor, gave this guest lecture last week at the University of Liverpool. He is well known in academic circles for his long-running column in the Times Higher Education

He says that we constantly hear about the virtues of education but it’s always assumed that such education involves learning. He questions the value of formal learning in educational insitutions, colleges and universities - learning that is based on acquiring credentials - and further, claims it is counter-productive. Some of his other questions:

How can formalised learning encourage us to think more widely and deeply, when we learn within narrow disciplines and specialisms?

Is formal education the only way in which we acquire learning?  (No)

How do other types of learning lead to general enlightenment in our society?

My questions:

What other types of learning are you involved with?

How does this contribute to your person and your roles in society?

Is university the only place where real learning takes place?

Your thoughts?

Yesterday my colleagues Fiona Christie and Tahira Majothi organised the second edition of the PhD Futures - Careers event: Spotlight on academic careers.

PhD Futures 2010 - University of Salford

I participated in a panel on What is doing a PhD really like?

I found it quite an interesting experience. I especially liked the fact that we were all doing research in different areas: Environmental Studies, Business, English, and Learning Technologies, and had therefore slightly different takes on how things work around our micro academic world. Deep down, however, we shared the same principles and ideas, i.e., doing a PhD is a journey. More important than passing the viva and getting the title is the trajectory you go through, how much you’ll learn about the topic you study and how you’ll find yourself in it.

The session was quite informal, leaving the delegates to shape the conversation. Indeed, it felt like a conversation. We did not have to do any formal presentation and we just talked about our own experiences, feelings and practices based on what the audience wanted to know. I think it works better this way!

There were some very interesting questions, which led us to reflect about our own experiences. And that was exactly what we were there for: to share our own path with others.

Before my memory starts failing me, I would like to share some of the key issues which were raised at that panel session and the answers we provided. Of course there are no right or wrong answers on the best way to do a PhD - it is pretty much linked to what works better for you (your personality) - but sometimes it is useful to learn what strategies others have developed to cope with their doctoral studies.

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The annual SPARC postgraduate research conference celebrated its 10^th anniversary last week, marking the occasion with its largest ever attendance.

The conference has always been an excellent opportunity for dialogue between postgraduates from North West institutions, and this year the remit was expanded nationally. There were over 160 delegates, and alongside presenters from the Universities of Chester, Bolton, Cumbria, Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores, Salford welcomed researchers from the Universities of Reading, Bristol, Exeter, Canterbury Christ Church and the Open University.

The conference offered a full and very varied programme over the two days (10 - 11 June). There were a number of parallel sessions of paper presentations. Several of these sessions reflected the Salford’s six strategic themes while others promoted strengths in international business, literature, translation, e-learning, and digital applications in banking and education. You can view the full programme and the abstracts for all the papers on the Salford Postgraduate Research website.

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Dear all,

just a very quick and short post to update you on the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (#SPARC10) which we are running here at Salford. I think I can say it has been the best SPARC conference ever! We owe  much of its success to my colleague Victoria Sheppard, who has done a terrific job organising it. So for that alone a big clap! Well done Victoria!

But there are also the delegates. The atmosphere has been incredible and the research presented very, very interesting. Congratulation to all the PhD students who have decided to present at SPARC this year.

Further, our guest speakers were just inspiring has ever. Prof. Ghassan Aouad, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation), addressed the audience with a talk on real life experiences of supervising PhD students. Slides are available here. (I will try to create a slidecast with the recording of the presentation once I get back from the academic writing school I will be taking part in next week.)

Prof. Paul Haywood, from the School of Art & Design was our dinner guest speaker and gave the most amazing talk about one of his projects: Wearpeace. Sorry if you missed it, it was truly inspiring!

This year the conference dinner was at the Old Trafford. For those who support Manchester United, I am sure it was a great experience. Our tour guides told us very interesting stories and  we were even allowed into the players changing room!  Even for those whom football means very little ( maybe like me…(cough)! ) it was still a very fine experience. It was fascinating to listen to Big Alan’s stories, our guide!

In short, Day #1 of SPARC10 was amazing. Day #2 promises to be as interesting!

Finally, I’d just like to remind everybody that we are tagging all the content related to this conference with SPARC10. If you are blogging, tweeting, using flickr or slideshare, etc to upload your slides, pictures, or any other type of content related with this conference please do use the tag (#SPARC10). Also, leave us a link back to your resources on the comment box. It makes it easier for us to aggregate everything after the end.

We have created a slideshare event channel for this event. You are welcome to add your presentations on to it.

Last Thursday I attended a VITAE workshop on Integrating Technology for Researcher Training where I presented about ‘ A shared space for learning about YOU and your research. The main ideas and slides of that presentation can be found here.

I like this kind of small events, where people get to talk to others and share their experiences. Such events are really good for people to discuss and share ideas. Although the majority of people attending were, in one way or another, already using technology, not all of them were totally convinced about this story of going online. I like the challenge such mix of opinions and approaches generates. It makes us think from a different angle, and consider other people’s perspectives too. I liked the fact that the entire afternoon was dedicated to group discussion. The facilitator did a great job as usual.  She’s so full of energy. It’s contagious!
We were asked to form groups with people who we didn’t work with or had never met before. I knew very few people at this event, which is something that I always think to be quite scary but also really good, as it ‘forces’ me to connect to people I don’t yet know.
Usually when we go to conferences and events with people you know there’s a tendency to not even look outside that group. I am not really fond of cliques and like the idea of having to challenge my initial fear to go and meet other people. It usually turns out to be quite enriching. This time it was no exception. Apart from the Manchester colleagues and  Tristam Hooley, whom I only knew from twitter, the group I ended up working with all afternoon was new to me. And their opinions were diverse, which was great.

At some point we were discussing how we can support/enable/help interaction online. We obviously had different definitions of interaction in mind. I, for once, could not think of anything else, but the communication flow social media enables. The conversation, as Tristam so rightly put it. Nevertheless, some people were still holding on to the idea of Human-computer interaction (HCI), in which one can develop given skills in a mechanical way, as a response to the stimulus provided by the software. I was miles away from the Pavlovian mode of learning, but indeed this is something that many of us still see as elearning.
Especially at a Higher Education level I don’t see the point of such HCI packages. I truly believe in the power of conversation, be in face-to-face or online. The advantage of it being online is that it does not (have to)  happen behind closed doors, be restricted to an hour session, nor limited to the people in the room. It is how people become intellectually attached to each other by the stories they share, and the narratives they jointly create while taking part in that collective learning experience that sells it to me. I see (spontaneous) interaction being a fundamental aspect of any learning experience, both face to face or online.

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Yesterday I was reading one of the Nieman 2010 fellows experience at Harvard, and she also touches on this subject.  I like her enthusiastic description of students engaging in the discussions in a bold, passionate way. That’s the romantic view I always had of University, which I never experienced as a college student, but which I get to engage with now as a lifelong learner!
I much prefer the idea of creating content relevant to my learning needs to the notion of being given access to ‘packages’ of it. I like the idea of picking and choosing; having the freedom to choose and especially the opportunity to get advice on it.

We all have access to content these days. Sometimes too much!  the problem is to make sense of it all without getting overwhelmed. Hence, the need to connect and access people who not only can point us to key resources but convince us of their importance (negotiation of meaning). That’s interaction again, isn’t it?!
Although there is a new area to explore, that of managing and selecting information available online, what students (should) want is to be stimulated with activities/debates that allow them to build on established knowledge. Isn’t that what research is supposed to be and do: to advance knowledge? In my opinion, that is better achieved in a dynamic, flexible, multi-layered, interactive environment, where the individual can voice their thoughts. Their own voice, that is!
One of the things I like about interaction online, be it through twitter, blogs posts and comments, discussion fora, etc is that I not only learn about others, I end up learning also about myself as my ideas start forming at the tips of my fingers as I type them away! However, thou shalt not think it is an easy deed! In matter of fact it is a hard one, but, truth be said, it also gets easier with practice! Broadcasting our thoughts for the www to see (and react on) is hard, mainly because we fear fierce criticism. It’s a natural feeling. We are being exposed. But it shouldn’t be a bad one. What we need to work on is actually on becoming better feedback provider and educate others to do the same. It is quite an important aspect of (academic) learning, isn’t it?. We learn with different opinions, what we do not learn with is with patronising, unthoughtful comments. And that’s what we need to aim to change!

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So all of this to say that in parallel conversations I had with Lisa Harris , who, by the way, I still haven’t met face to face, and also with Tristam at teh Vitae event , we all agree we should start collecting evidence regarding online interaction. We were thinking about personal testimonies of how the social web has really worked for you and added value to your research/learning journey.

It would be interesting to learn about your interactive experiences online, with all its advantages and implications. It is as important to learn about what works as it is to know what may not, or what we need to be aware of. You can post them here in the comment box, as a guest blogger, or simply link it to your blog.
Which ever way you decide to do it, we look forward to your contributions. Just get in touch!

I’ll be sharing some more of mine soon too.

Just as I was about to leave home, I checked my twitter stream one more time, and there it was - a link to the video below about deleting your facebook permanently (the steps you have to go through can be accessed here).

But is this something we really want to do, or do we rather want to alert facebook, and the world, to the issues of online privacy? All of this is debatable, and right now I don’t have an exact answer.  I have decided to keep my facebook account for a little longer, but to be honest my activity there is very scarce, if you consider that most of my content is fed through twitter. I can’t say the same about the discussions such 140 character sound bites have generated, and that is what I don’t want to lose. Like danah boyd pointed out, I feel stuck and I don’t like it!   So I am waiting, more anxiously than patiently, for new developments on the facebook ’soap opera’!

Most of my digital footprint is related with my socio-professional life, so all of this might upset me less than other people. Still, I do not appreciate it at all, and would like to see facebook withdraw in their decisions and actions. Failing that, I think many of us might really consider to move. Be that as it may, this event raises issues we can no longer avoid and provides us with one more opportunity (almost a necessity!) to discuss and reflect about our Digital Identity! And for that I could almost thank you facebook, was I not so annoyed by all this!

Meanwhile Frances Bell also started a meme about facebook privacy. Have a look at it here.

This video raises another very important issue: Digital Identity. (… I might have to do some more written thinking about it…soon!)

This is something we have been discussing in the Social Media sessions I have been offering both here in Salford and at the University of Manchester, but I think there is still space for more discussion about the issues surrounding one’s digital footprint.

Any comments or questions you have regarding this issue, express them here. If you are interested we can also host more of such debates. Just let us know too.

Meanwhile, Pascal Venier and I are working on a session on how to twitter, another social network site mentioned in the video. If you are interested in it, enroll here. [NB: places are limited. I am not really sure, but I think we might be already fully booked. By submitting your interest, however, we will be able to identify the need to repeat the session in a near future]