Category: University culture

The ARMA conference, social media, the future of this blog, and some downtime

The Association of Research Managers and Administrators conference was held in Southampton last week, and I’ve only got time to scribble a few words about it.  It’s a little frustrating, really – I’ve come back from the conference with various ideas and schemes for work, and a few for the blog, but I’m on annual leave until the end of July.  While I’ve always written this blog in my own time, I’m going to have a near-complete break (apart from perhaps a little Twitter lurking) so my reader will have to wait until July at the very earliest for the second instalment of my impact series.

I co-presented a session at ARMA on ‘Social Media in Research Support’ with Phil Ward of ‘Fundermentals‘ and the University of Kent, Julie Northam (Bournemouth University Research blog), and David Young (Northumbria University Research blog).  Phil has written a concise summary of the plenary sessions, and our presentation can be found on the Northumbria blog.

I have a slight stammer that I’m told that most people don’t notice, so I’m not a ‘natural’ public speaker, but I’m very pleased with the way that the session went.  I’m very grateful to my three co-presenters for their efforts and for what really amounted to quite a lot of preparation time, including a meeting in London.  I’m also very grateful to the delegates who attended – I think I counted 50 or so, which for the final session of the conference and scheduled against a very strong line-up of parallel sessions, was pretty good.    It was a very warm afternoon, but energy and attention levels in the room felt high, and this helped enormously.  So if you made it, thank you for coming, thank you for your attention, and most importantly of all, thank you for laughing at our jokes.

David opened the session by asking about the audience’s experience with social media, I was surprised at how much experience there was in the room.  We weren’t far short of 100% on Facebook, probably about 20% or more on or having using Twitter, and four or five bloggers.  Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise, as perhaps the title of the session would have particularly appealed to those with an interest or previous experience.  But it was good to have an idea of the level to pitch things.

The session consisted of a brief introduction and explanation of social media, followed by four case studies.  Phil and I talked about our motivations in setting up our own blogs, our experiences, lessons learnt, and benefits and challenges.  Julie and David talked about their experience in setting up institutional research blogs, and how they went about getting institutional acceptance and academic buy-in.  It was interesting to see that the Open University had a poster presentation about a research blog that they’ve set up, though that’s internal only at the moment.  ARMA itself is now on Twitter, and this was the first year that the conference had an official hashtag – #ARMA2012.  While there’s no need for an official one – sometimes they just emerge – it’s very helpful to have an element of coordination.  I don’t think blogging or social media are going away any time soon, and I can only see their usage increasing. – though I do have reservations about scalability and sustainability.

As I said in the presentation, my motivations in setting up a blog were to try to join in a broader conversation with academics, funders, and people like me.  We get to do a lot of that at the annual ARMA conference, but it would be good to keep that going throughout the rest of the year too.  A secondary motivation was to learn by doing – I’m expected to help academics write their pathways to impact, which almost inevitably involve social media, and by getting involved myself I understand it in a way that I could never have understood as a mere bystander.

My blog is now a few weeks shy of its first birthday, an auspicious event marked by a birthday card invoice from my hosting provider, and a time for reflection.  I’ve managed reasonably well to hit an average of 2-3 posts per month – some reactions to news, some more detailed think pieces, and some lighter reflections on university culture and life.  That’s not too bad, but looking into the future I wonder whether I’ll be able to sustain this, and whether I’ll want to spend my own time writing about these things.  While I’m hopeful that I might be able to shift a little of the blog into my ‘day job’ (discussions on that to follow), one other option is to share the load, and I think the future for most blogs is multi-author.  Producing semi-regular, consistent quality content is a challenge, and I’m going to be soliciting guest posts in the future to feature alongside my own – whether that’s semi-regular or one off.  So, if you’d like to write occasionally but don’t want a whole blog, this might be a good opportunity.  Happy to discuss anything that’s a good fit with the overall theme of the blog.  Please drop me an email if you’re interested – I don’t bite.

One issue that came up in the questions (and afterwards on Twitter), was the question of the personal and the professional.  My sense was that a fair few people in the room had their own Twitter accounts already, but used them for personal purposes, rather than for professional purposes, and were concerned about mixing the two.  Probably there was little or no reference to their job in their bio, and they tweet about their interests and talk to family and friends.  This issue of the personal and the professional was something we touched on only very briefly in our talk, and mainly in reference to blogs rather than Twitter.  But it’s clearly something that concerns people, and may be an active barrier to more people getting involved in Twitter conversations.  Probably the one thing I’d do differently about the presentation would be to say more about this, and I’ve added it to my list of topics for blog posts for the future.

Unless anyone else wants to write it?

An Impact Statement: Part 1: Impact and the REF

If your research leads directly or indirectly to this, we'll be having words.....

Partly inspired by a twitter conversation and partly to try to bring some semblance of order my own thoughts, I’m going to have a go about writing about impact.  Roughly, I’d argue that:

  • The impact agenda is – broadly – a good thing
  • Although there are areas of uncertainty and plenty of scope for collective learning, I think the whole area is much less opaque than many commentators seem to think
  • While the Research Councils and the REF have a common definition of ‘impact’, they’re looking at it from different ends of the telescope.

This post will come in three parts.  In part one, I’ll try to sketch a bit of background and say something position of impact in the REF.  In part two, I’ll turn to the Research Councils and think about how ‘impact’ differs from previous different – but related – agendas.  In part three, I’ll pose some questions that are puzzling me about impact and test my thinking with examples.

Why Impact?

What’s going on?  Where’s it come from?  What’s driving it?  I’d argue that to understand the impact agenda properly, it’s important to first understand the motivations.  Broadly speaking, I think there are two.

Firstly, I think it arises from a worry about a gap between academic research and those who might find it useful in some way.  How may valuable insights of various kinds from various disciplines have never got further than an academic journal or conference?  While some academics have always considered providing policy advice or writing for practitioner journals as a key part of their role as academics, I’m sure that’s not universally true.  I can imagine some of these researchers now complaining like music obsessives that they were into impact before anyone else and it sold out and went all mainstream.  As I’ve argued previously, one advantage of the impact agenda is that it gives engaged academics some long overdue recognition, as well as a much greater incentive for others to become involved in impact related activities.

Secondly, I think it’s about finding concrete, credible, and communicable evidence of the importance and value of academic research.  If we want to keep research funding at current levels, there’s a need to show return on investment and that the taxpayer is getting value for money.  Some will cringe at the reduction of the importance and value of research to such crude and instrumentalist terms, but we live in a crude and instrumentalist age.  There is an overwhelming case for the social and economic benefits of research, and that case must be made.  Whether we like it or not, no government of any likely hue is just going to keep signing the cheques.  The champions of research in policy circles do not intend to go naked into the conference chamber when they fight our corner.  To what extent the impact agenda comes directly from government, or whether it’s a pre-emptive move, I’m not quite sure.  But the effect is pretty much the same.

What’s Impact in the REF?

The REF definition of impact is as follows:

140. For the purposes of the REF, impact is defined as an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia (as set out in paragraph 143).
141. Impact includes, but is not limited to, an effect on, change or benefit to:
• the activity, attitude, awareness, behaviour, capacity, opportunity, performance, policy, practice, process or understanding
• of an audience, beneficiary, community, constituency, organisation or individuals
• in any geographic location whether locally, regionally, nationally or internationally.
142. Impact includes the reduction or prevention of harm, risk, cost or other negative effects.
Assessment Framework and Guidance on Submissions, page 26.

Paragraph 143 goes on to rule out academic impact on the grounds that it’s assessed in the outputs and environment section.  Fair enough.  More controversially, it goes on to state that “impacts on students, teaching, and other activities within the submitting HEI are excluded”.  But it’s possible to understand the reasoning.  If it were included, there’s a danger that far too impact case studies would be about how research affects teaching – and while that’s important, I don’t think we’d want it to dominate.  There’s also an argument that the link between research and teaching ought to be so obvious that there’s no need to measure it for particular reward.  In practical terms, I think it would be hard to measure.  I might know how my new theory has changed how I teach my module on (say) organisational behaviour to undergraduates, but it would be hard to track that change across all UK business schools.  I’d also worry about the possible perverse incentives on the shape of the curriculum that allowing impact on teaching might create.

The Main Panel C (the panel for most social sciences) criteria state that:

The main panel acknowledges that impact within its remit may take many forms and occur in a wide range of spheres. These may include (but are not restricted to): creativity, culture
and society; the economy, commerce or organisations; the environment; health and welfare; practitioners and professional services; public policy, law and services.
The categories used to define spheres of impact, for the purpose of this document, inevitably overlap and should not be taken as restrictive. Case studies may describe impacts which have affected more than one sphere. (para 77, pg. 68)

There’s actually a lot of detail and some good illustrations of what forms impact might take, and I’d recommend having a read.  I wonder how many academics not directly involved in REF preparations have read this?  One difficulty is finding it – it’s not the easiest document to track down.  For my non-social science reader(s), the other panel working methods can be found here.  Helpfully, nothing on that page will tell you which panel is which, but (roughly) Panel A is health and life sciences; B is natural sciences, computers, maths and engineering; C is social science; and D humanities.  Each panel criteria document has a table with examples of impact.

What else do we know about the place of impact in the REF?  Well, we know that impact has to have occurred in the REF period (1 January 2008 to 31 July 2013) and that impact has to be underpinned by excellent research (at least 2*) produced at the submitting university at some point between 1 January 1993 and 31 December 2013.  It doesn’t matter if the researchers producing the research are still at the institution – while publications move with the author, impact stays with the institution.  However, I can’t help wondering if an excessive reliance on research undertaken by departed staff won’t look too much like trading on past glories.  But probably it’s about getting the balance right.  The number of case studies required is approximately 1 per 8 FTE submitted, but see page 28 of the guidance document for a table.

Impact will have a weighting of 20%, with environment 15% and outputs (publications) 65%, and it looks likely that the weighting of impact will increase next time.  However, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the actual contribution ends up being less than that.  If there’s a general trend that overall scores for impact are lower than that of (say) publications, then the contribution will end up being less than 20%.  My understanding is that for some units of assessment, environment was consistently rated more highly, thus de facto increasing the weighting.  Unfortunately this is just a recollection of something I read years ago, and which I can’t now find.  But if this is right, and if impact does come in with lower marks overall, we neglect environment at our peril.

Jobs in university administration

This man had hair before he started shortlisting.....

The Guardian Higher Education network recently hosted a careers clinic on ‘How to break into university administration‘, and I posted a few thoughts that I thought might be useful.  According to my referral stats for my blog, a number of visitors end up here with similar questions about both recruitment processes and what it’s like to work for a university.  I think it’s mainly my post on Academics vs University Administrators part 94 that gets those hits.  I’ve also been asked by friends and relatives for my very limited wisdom on this topic.

I also think it’s good to share this information, because one of my worries whenever I’m involved in recruiting staff is that we end up employing people who are best at writing applications and being interviewed.  In my particular line of work, that’s fine – if you can’t write a strong job application against set criteria, you probably shouldn’t be helping academics with grant applications.  But that’s the exception.

So what follows is me spilling the beans on my very limited experience of recruiting administrative staff in two institutions, both as panel chair and as an external panel member.  I’m not an HR expert.  I’m not a careers advisor.  But for what it’s worth, what follows is an edited and expanded version of what I posted on the Guardian page.

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When an administrative job is advertised, a document called a ‘person specification’ is drawn up. Formats vary, but usually this is a list of skills, attributes, experiences, and attitudes that are either classed as “essential” or “desirable”. Often it’ll say which part of the recruitment process these will be examined (application, aptitude test, or interview).

In all of the recruitment I’ve been involved in, this is an absolutely vital document. Decisions about who to short list for interview and who not to and ultimately who to appoint will be made on the basis of this person specification and justified on that basis.  And we must be able to justify our decisions if challenged.  As panel chair I was required to (briefly) explain reasons for rejection for everyone we didn’t interview, and then everyone we didn’t appoint.  I’m sure the importance of the person specification isn’t unique to universities.

To get an interview, an applicant needs to show that they meet all of the essential criteria and as many of the desirable ones as possible. My advice to applicants is that if they don’t have some of the desirable criteria, they should make the case for having something equivalent, or a plan to get that skill. For example, if a person spec lists “web design” as desirable and you can’t do it, express willingness to go on a course. For bonus points, find a course that you’d like to go on.  If you’re offered an interview, you can use the person spec to predict the interview questions – they’ll be questions aimed at getting evidence about your fit with the person spec.  You could do worse than to imagine that you’re on the interview panel and think of the questions you’d ask to get evidence about candidates’ fit with those criteria.  Chances are you won’t be a million miles off.

Unfortunately, if you don’t meet the essential criteria, it’s a waste of time applying.  You won’t get an interview.

As an applicant, your job in your application form is to make it as obvious as possible to the panel members that you meet the criteria. Back it up with evidence and at least some detail. If a criterion concerns supporting committees with minute taking and agenda prep, don’t just assert you’ve done it – say a bit about the committee, and what you did exactly, and how you did it.  Culturally, we’re not good at blowing our own trumpets, and a good and effective way round this is to just stick to the facts.  Don’t tell, show.

Panel members really appreciate it when applicants make it easy – they can just look down the person spec, look through the application, and tick, tick, tick, you’re on the potential interviewees pile.  Don’t make panel members guess or try to interpret what you say to measure it against the criteria.  There’s nothing more frustrating than an applicant who might be exactly what we need, but who hasn’t made a strong enough or clear enough case, especially about transferable skills.

Panel members can tell the difference between an application that’s being tweaked slightly and sent to every job vacancy, and one that’s been tailored for that particular vacancy. Do that, put in the effort, and you will stand out, because so many people don’t. Take the application seriously, and you’ll be taken seriously in turn. And spell check and proof read is your friend.  A good admin vacancy in a university in the current climate attract hundreds of applications.  That’s not an exaggeration.

Two other tips. One is always ask for feedback if you’re unsuccessful at interview. In every process I’ve been involved in, there’s useful feedback there for you if you want it. Even if it’s “someone else was better suited, and there’s nothing you could have done differently/better”, you still want to know that. If you were good, chances are that the university in question would like you to apply again in the future. The second is to always take up any offer of an informal conversation in advance of applying.  If you can ask sensible questions that show you’ve read all the documents thoroughly, there’s a chance that you’ll be remembered when you apply. You won’t get special treatment, but it can’t hurt.

Jobs will be advertised in a variety of places, depending on the grade and the degree of specialism needed.  Universities will have a list of current vacancies on their websites, and often use local papers for non-specialist roles.  Jobs.ac.uk is also widely used, and has customisable searches/vacancy emails, as well as some more good advice on job seeking.

Finally….. every job interview process that I’ve been involved with has attracted outstanding candidates. Some with little work experience, some with NHS or local authority admin experience, many from the private sector too. Universities are generally good employers and good places to work. It’s competitive at the best of times, and will be doubly so now.

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The fact that most of you reading this not only (a) already have university jobs; and (b) know perfectly well how the recruitment process works isn’t lost on me.  But this one’s for my random google visitors.  Normal service will be resuming shortly.

Are institutions over-reacting to impact?

Interesting article and leader in this week’s Times Higher on the topic of impact, both of which carry arguments that “university managers” have over-reacted to the impact agenda.  I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, but I suspect that it’s all a bit more complicated than either article makes it appear.

The article quotes James Ladyman, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol, as saying that university managers had overreacted and created “an incentive structure and environment in which an ordinary academic who works on a relatively obscure area of research feels that what they are doing isn’t valued”.

If that’s happened anywhere, then obviously things have gone wrong.  However, I do think that this need to be understood in the context of other groups and sub-groups of academics who likewise feel – or have felt – undervalued.  I can well understand why academics whose research does not lend itself to impact activities would feel alienated and threatened by the impact agenda, especially if it is wrongly presented (or perceived) as a compulsory activity for everyone – regardless of their area of research, skills, and comfort zone – and (wrongly) as a prerequisite for funding.

Another group of researchers who felt – and perhaps still feel – under-valued are those undertaking very applied research.  It’s very hard for them to get their stuff into highly rated (aka valued) journals.  Historically the RAE has not been kind to them.  The university promotions criteria perhaps failed to sufficiently recognise public engagement and impact activity – and perhaps still does.  While all the plaudits go to their highly theoretical colleagues, the applied researchers feel looked down upon, and struggle to get academic recognition.  If we were to ask academics whose roles are mainly teaching (or teaching and admin) rather than research, I think we may find that they feel undervalued by a system which many of them feel is obsessed by research and sets little store on excellent (rather than merely adequate) teaching.  Doubtless increased fees will change this, and perhaps we will hear complaints of the subsequent under-valuing of research relative to teaching.

So if academics working in non-impact friendly (NIFs, from now on) areas of research are now feeling under-valued, they’re very far from alone.  It’s true that the impact agenda has brought about changes to how we do things, but I think it could be argued that it’s not that the NIFs are now under valued, but that other kinds of research and academic endeavour  – namely applied research and impact activities (ARIA from now on) – are now being valued to a greater degree than before.  Dare I say it, to an appropriate degree?  Problem is, ‘value’ and ‘valuing’ tends to be seen as a zero sum game – if I decide to place greater emphasis on apples, the oranges may feel that they have lost fruit bowl status and are no longer the, er, top banana.  Even if I love oranges just as much as before.

Exactly how institutions ‘value’ (whatever we mean by that) NIF research and ARIA is an interesting question.  It seems clear to me that an institution/school/manager/grant giving body/REF/whatever could err either way by undervaluing and under-rewarding either.  We need both.  And we need excellent teachers.  And – dare I say it – non-academic staff too.  Perhaps the challenge for institutions is getting the balance right and making everyone feel valued, and reflecting different academic activities fairly in recruitment and selection processes and promotion criteria.  Not easy, when any increased emphasis on any one area seem to cause others to feel threatened.

Resourse list for academics new to social media

(This didn't happen)
"You will make sure that your research methodology links with your research questions, you snivelling little maggot!"

This week I was asked to be involved in a Research Grant application ‘bootcamp’ to talk in particular about the use of social media in pathways to impact plans, and academic blogging in general.  I was quick to disclaim expertise in this area – I’ve been blogging for a while now, but I’m not an academic and I’m certainly not an expert on social media.  I’m also not sure about this use of the word ‘bootcamp’.  We already have ‘workshop’ and ‘surgery’ as workplace-based metaphors for types of activity, and I’m not sure we’re ready for ‘bootcamp’.  So unless the event turns out to involve buzzcuts, a ten mile run, and an assault course, I’ll be asking for my money back.

But I thought I’d try to put together a list of resources and examples that I was already aware of in time for the session, and I then I wondered about ‘crowdsourcing’ (i.e. lazily ask my readers/twitter followers) some others that I might have missed.  Hopefully we’ll then end up with a general list of resources that everyone can use.  I’ve pasted some links below, along with a few observations of my own.  Please do chip in with your thoughts, experiences, tips, and recommendations for resources.

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Things I have learnt about using social media

Blogging

  • You must have a clear idea about your intended audience and what you hope to achieve.  Blogging for the sake of it or because it’s flavour of the month or because you think it is expected is unlikely to be sustainable or to achieve the desired results.
  • A good way to start is to search for people doing a similar thing and contact them asking if you can link to their blog.  Everyone likes being linked to, and this is a good way to start conversations.  Once established, support others in the same way.
  • You have to build something of a track record of posts and tweets to be credible as a consistent source of quality content – you’ve got to earn a following, and this takes time, work, and patience.  And even then, might not work.  Consider a ‘soft launch’ to build your track record, and then a second wave of more intensive effort to get noticed.
  • Posting quality comments on other people’s blogs, either in their comments section, or in a post on your blog, can be a good way to attract attention.
  • Illustrate blog posts with a picture (perhaps found through google images) – a lot of successful bloggers seem to do this.
  • Multi-author blogs and/or guest posts are a good way to share the load.
  • And consequently, offering guest posts or content to established blogs is a way to get noticed.
  • The underlying technology is now very straightforward.  Anyone who is reasonably computer literate will have little trouble learning the technical skills.  The editing frame where I’m writing this in looks a lot like Word, and I’ve used precisely no programming/HTML stuff – that can all be automated now.

Twitter

  • The technology of @s and # is fairly straightforward to pick up – find some relevant/interesting people to follow and you’ll soon pick it up, or read one of the guides below.
  • A good way to reach people is to get “retweets” – essentially when someone else with a bigger following forwards your message.  You do this by addressing posts to them using the @ symbol
  • Generally the pattern of retweets seems to be when people find something interesting and it suits their message.  So… the ESRC retweeted my blog post linking to their regional visit presentation when my blog post said nice things about the visit and linked to their presentation
  • Weird mix of personal and professional.  Some twitter accounts are uniquely professional, others uniquely personal, but many seem a mixture.  Some of the usual barriers seem not to apply, or apply only loosely.  Care needs to be taken here.

General

  • Social media is potentially a huge time sink – keep in mind costs in time versus benefits gained
  • It can be a struggle if you’re naturally shy and attention seeking doesn’t come easily to you

Resources and further reading:

Examples of individual UoN blogs:

Patter – Pat Thomson, School of Education http://patthomson.wordpress.com/
Political Apparitions – Steven Fielding, School of Politics http://stevenfielding.com/
Registrarism – Paul Greatrix, University Registrar  http://registrarism.wordpress.com/
Cash for Questions, Adam Golberg, NUBS  https://socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk/

UoN Group/institutional/project blogs:

Bullets and Ballots – UoN School of Politics: http://nottspolitics.org/
China Policy Institute http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/
Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/betterbusiness/
UoN blogs home http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/

Guides:

Twitter Guide – LSE Impact in Social Sciences
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/09/29/twitter-guide/

6 tips on blogging about research (Sarah Stewart (EdD Student, Otago University, NZ)
http://sarah-stewart.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/my-top-6-tips-for-how-to-blog-about.html

Blogging about your research – first steps  (University of Warwick)
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/researchexchange/topics/gd0007/

Is blogging or tweeting about research papers worth it? (Melissa Terras, UCL)
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/04/19/blog-tweeting-papers-worth-it/

A gentle introduction to twitter for the apprehensive academic, (Dorothy Bishop, University of Oxford)
http://deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/gentle-introduction-to-twitter-for.html

Twitter accounts:

List of official University of Nottingham Twitter accounts
https://twitter.com/#!/UniofNottingham/uontwitteraccounts

Lists of academic twitter accounts (Curator: LSE Impact project team)
https://twitter.com/#!/LSEImpactBlog/soc-sci-academic-tweeters

https://twitter.com/#!/LSEImpactBlog/business-tweeters

https://twitter.com/#!/LSEImpactBlog/arts-academic-tweeters

https://twitter.com/#!/LSEImpactBlog/think-tanks

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Some of the links and choices of examples, are more than a little University of Nottingham-centric, but then this was an internal event.  I’ve not checked with the authors of the various resources I’ve linked to, and taken the liberty of assuming that they won’t mind the link and recognition.  But happy to remove any on request.

Any resources I’ve missed?  Any more thoughts and suggestions?  Please comment below….