Faye Miller - Building developmental networks of early career academics

[ Silence ] >> Greetings everyone, this is Dr. Bill Fisher, I'm on the faculty of the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State and I'm pleased to welcome you to the first of our fall Colloquium series presentations. With us today is Faye Miller, who is a PHD candidate at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Some of you may be aware of or have heard of Queensland because we have a cooperative program with them, Faye is actually not attending Queensland through our program, she is an Australian and actually lives in Australia and is joining us today to help share some of her information about her current doctoral studies. She is also a lecturer in Information and Knowledge Management at Charles Stewart University in Australia and the University of Canberra in Australia. She has worked in a number of research roles in Australia and higher education and is with us today actually not in Australia, but she happens to be visiting the United States so she's actually in San Jose and you'll see Faye in just a second as I turn the mic over to her and welcome her to our Colloquium series. >> Thank you very much Bill and thank you very for the opportunity to speak here at San Jose State University today. I am really enjoying my visit here on campus. Today, I would like to share some current findings from my doctoral research, titled, Building Developmental Networks of Early Career Academics: An Informed Learning Perspective. So here's an overview of what I'll be covering today. I'll introduce the topic by talking about the project's history, where the project has come from and how it has evolved and progressed since 2010. I'll then speak about the contexts of the research, the research problem, research questions and outcomes, some brief findings from literature review on methodology which is constructed [inaudible] theory followed by a discussion of my current findings and the potential implications and contributions for a number of groups or audiences who may benefit from this study. I'd just like to give you a bit of a personal account of my topic; I'd like to speak about where that topic has come from and how it has developed over the time. I'd like to speak personally about myself as an emerging researcher, my topic and my research journey so far, so where I've come from, where I'm up to and where I like to take this project. As Bill mentioned, I have been working in the higher education sector for several years, mainly in research, support roles, and more recently as a [inaudible] academic at both Charles Stewart University and University of Canberra in Australia. I consider myself to be an early career academic as a higher education, a higher degree research student working on my own research and collaborating with other academics and balancing that with part-time teaching and assessment duties. So this topic for me is quite personally meaningful. If we go back in time and I'll try to pinpoint when the topic was born, it was probably a few years ago when I had some pretty profound experiences about my true calling and making that decision that, yes I wanted to pursue an academic career, and yes, I really was going to tackle that great big mountain they call the PHD. I can talk about it now in a calm and collected way, but at the time I felt as though I was never to be seen again. But then I wondered why I was feeling that way and after some time, I realized that it was because I managed to isolate myself and there was not need to disconnect when others wanted to help me. So, one of the things that I had to learn was how to allow others to help me and how to ask for help when I needed it and also how to give support in return. There's been a lot talk recently about the future of Universities and mentoring on new academics to replenish the academic workforce, I have been very fortunate having now three really great research mentors, but from the perspective of some of my early career academic colleagues, it has just been a lot talk and not a lot of action in this area of supporting new academics. This topic has grown from my own learning experiences, what I learned about myself, developing the confidence to make important decisions in my life and talking to other early career academics and research students about their learning experiences. Sharing our stories and normalizing these feelings of anxiety or about our failures and mistakes, talking about our issues and being more open about discussing them with everyone, especially those who take an interest in our development, both as new and potential academics and as human beings with lives that go beyond academia and this really what I hope to advance. Embarking on this study has definitely helped me grow more confident in all of the aspects of my life and to learn that work life balance and really important in being successful. So, I think the more we discuss the experiences of early career academics, the more we can help each other learn and grow, it's about being opened enough to share our knowledge and our experiences and I hope this study encourages having that ongoing conversation and a shared understanding between early career academics and all of those people in their networks who support them. The thing I've noticed about early career academics or anyone entering a new profession for that matter is that if the right support mechanisms aren't in place or the new person doesn't have a the right skills to use those support mechanisms, then the whole system just collapses. And perhaps, more importantly if the academic doesn't feel supported initially, then all the right information and knowledge needed for them to perform effectively doesn't flow on from that and again the system collapses. So I ask how can we avoid that? How can we build the support networks that we need? The metaphor of the spider web was often used by the participants in my study. Universities are complex, ever changing eco systems to use that metaphor. There are a multitude of skills and attributes required to perform all facets of the role and all rely on information and knowledge and knowing how and when to use that information and knowledge. Perhaps in times of rapid change the skill of learning becomes even more important and in order to learn these skills and attributes required to progress as early career academics, the ability to use information underpins all of those necessary skills. Information is the molecule or the building block and how information shapes or influences our learning experiences is kind of a mysterious process, but if we look at the issue of encouraging open communication to early career academics and their support networks, it is obvious that we must work towards a better understanding of what informs learning and how information is experienced for developmental purposes particularly in a complex learning environment that blends new and traditional ways of communicating and interacting with information and knowledge sources. In terms of my time line for the project, the research was designed throughout 2010, with the first round of data collection and preliminary data analysis completed in 2011. This is followed by a second round of data collection and the final data analysis earlier this week, with findings now being written up for my thesis chapters and I aim to complete the project by June 2013. Something about the research context, the changes are manufactured here, changes in higher education sector, both in Australia and internationally, we're looking at changes in government policy, changes in work practices, work roles and work culture in universities. There's an emphasis on a more output oriented culture and the conception of universities are sources of creativity and innovation in the knowledge economy. They'll be career academics and their future, the future academic work force as I mentioned earlier, there's been a little talk in that area recently as we prepare for the future of universities worldwide. Looking at the complexity of their roles and so these programs are focused on the issue of research teaching nexus, hence my use of the term Early Career Academics and not just early career researches. I'm acknowledging the relationship between research and teaching, so that covers a whole range of support networks. Within this context, is this complex information and knowledge environment which blends traditional and new ways of interacting and learning within those in emerging academic cultures. Just looking at the research problem more closely the trends that are happening right now, there's a shift occurring from a focus on the individual experience to a relation or collaborated experience, this has been reflected in the recent literature in human resource development, education, information [inaudible] and information behavior. The other trend is this increasingly complex information practice, the blend of new and traditional ways of interactions with information in this context particularly for the beginning university academic. So, what we need here is to gain a clearer picture of how early career academics are using information to learn within this complex information practice, to build, maintain, and utilize their networks for professional growth and development. And to do that, I'll be using the Informed Learning Concept as developed by Professor Christine Bruce and I'll be using it as my conceptual framework for this research. The study has two main research questions; how do early career academics use information to learn while building their developmental networks and also what informs their learning while building developmental networks? The knowledge gained throughout this research would then be applied to produce the following outcomes. A theoretical model of early career academics use of information to learn how to create and utilize their developmental networks for the purposes of enhancing their research and teaching and an empirical basis to inform academic development strategies and information development strategies to enhance mentoring, career development and network training at universities. Now I'll move on to speaking about my literature review, just a bit of a introduction, obviously this is an interdisciplinary study it draws together research from a few...a range of fields including information literacy, information behavior, higher education, social learning, and human resource development. The main purpose of this initial literature review is to develop a familiarity with the key concepts in my studies, so the literature reviews and granted theory studies are not conducted in depth, initially as the findings from the data analysis will inform later stages of the literature review. So the literature review covers all the key concepts used in the design of the interview guide to have a general understanding of the key concepts and issues and get the knowledge related to my topic to effectively participate as a researcher in the interview conversations. The networking and academia section really identify that major shift in the individual experience, the relational experience that I mentioned in my research problem earlier, so that relational focused suggested the need for further research in affective or emotional factors to compliment the dominate cognitive based research. The emerging focus on building social networks and human relationships by collaborative technologies and traditional communication methods suggests an increasingly complex use of information and knowledge by university academics. Developmental networking; not much research done in this area in the higher education context with only one major American study by Baker which examines the nature of developmental network in the post graduate research experience. Also studies into supervisory [inaudible] enhancing learning experiences for post grad students provide valuable insight into the supervisor research student learning relationships, however; these studies focus on the research context only, so we need more research that encompasses a more holistic view of the early academic experience. A bit about my methodology, the research exploring early career academic use of information to learn about developmental networking employed a constructor's [inaudible] approach. The paradigm emphasizes personal, subjective making or construction of reality and the multiples realities perspectives approach. Closely related to this paradigm is symbolic interactionism, [phonetic] a perspective which is used the individuals are active, creative, and reflective and that socialized consists of processes. So there are three major theoretical principles [inaudible] about a theory, these are the creation of a sense of reciprocity between participants and the researcher in a co-construction of meaning and ultimately a theory that is grounded in the participants and research experience, the establishment of relationships with participants that explicate the power and balances in attempts to modify these imbalances, clarification of the position the author takes in the text, the relevance of biography and how one renders participants stories into theory through writing. These broad principles were adhered to in working with the [inaudible] academics for the following reasons. The notion of co-construction of meaning and theory were [inaudible] in both the participants and researcher's experiences add a great value to this study to generate new perspectives and concepts that genuinely represent the voices of a somewhat understudied group. Being closely linked to the embryonic concepts of informed learning and developmental networking means the methodology needs to allow for exploration of any connections or interactions between these broad areas. As a researcher has significant work experience in higher education alongside other early career academics a theoretical sensitivity from the researchers can effectively facilitate the construction or shared meaning or inter subjectivity. When my participant selection of purposely sampling was used to identify and select suitable participants; participants were selected based on the following criteria. They must be an academic within their first five years of a full time, permanent appointment to a university faculty who engages in both teaching and research activities. They must have had significant industry or professional experience before joining the academy and they must have had experience with networking for professional and personal development towards learning how to be an academic. So in the first round of data collection, participants were identified through searching the university communication directory and academic staff web pages online. So eight early career academics based on one campus of a regional Australian university within the faculties of education, science, and arts agreed to participate in the study. In the second round of data collections, six participants from a major metropolitan Australian university were identified through staff directories, these early academics were located in faculties of science and engineering and business. In total, fourteen early career academics across two universities participated in this study. Data collection involves individuals semi structured face to face interviews with selected early career academics. The individual interviews lasted approximately forty-five minutes and were [inaudible] taped using a digital voice recorder and then transcribed by the researcher. During the interviews of participants were guided by set of broad questions; can you tell me about your position as an early career academic; can tell me about your professional experience prior to becoming an academic; can you tell me about your experiences with developmental networking as an early career academic and how do you use information to learn or what informs you while building your developmental networks? Data theory, data involves an iterative process, iterative meaning that I keep returning back to various points within the process and revisit so it's not a linear process, it's continuous and the data collection and data analysis occur concurrently. It starts with the initial coding and categorizing of interview transcripts, coding involves going through each interview transcript line by line and identifying the key issues and concepts mentioned. Early coding is called open coding and the second round of coding is called focus coding which looks more closely at the emerging concepts. When codes are identified, they are organized into categories, which are developed from frequently occurring concepts within the data. Constant comparison technique was used to compare the emerging codes and categories across each interview transcript but a category was...has reached saturation point, that means a particular concept has been mentioned by a significant number of participants and no new data can be collected within that category. Memo writing is to record reflections on various experiences and the incidents within the study and these are used to enhance and flush out the emerging categories and things towards grounded theory development. I have one modified interview question which came from a reflective discussion that I had with Professor Christine Bruce about the potentially limiting nature of the second question for a participant especially when one's conception of information was more in a textual realm and not necessarily in a social...so in order to try and gain a wider of range of conceptualization of information, we have broadened the question to what informs you as you learn to build your developmental networks in an attempt to capture a wider range of experiences that may be occurring. So this conceptual diagram illustrates how early career academics use information to learn about building their networks for professional development. It works towards answering the questions of how early academics use information, the processes involved as identified from the data and also what informs it learning. The key concepts within this diagram assesses knowledge as informed learning, so in this study it's knowledge rather than information which is recognized by early career academics as primary resource for their learning and development. The following quote suggest the idea of knowledge from people as informing the development of their learning networks so information is just a piece of paper until you can relate it to someone knowing who wants it. For the, for the early career academic information is conceptualized as tangible content or text, a piece of paper, while knowledge is created knowing he wants it through the process of relating it to the information until you can write it someone. For a particular purpose of learning, information remains important, however; as the next [inaudible] suggests, career academics place a stronger emphasis on knowledge that is intangible and fluid particularly knowing the right people in order to access the most relevant and valuable information. So a few quotes, here are the really valuable stuff in networking is not the stuff you can find in a journal or website Benjamin is who you want to speak to, that sort of thing, you know or he's doing the best stuff, you should check it out. But then you might find some of his stuff on his website but you only know that through your networks so you have to know someone or you don't have access to that. First there's intelligence which is having and knowing plenty of people who will give you information and being able to react to that intelligence very quickly if needed. Intelligence is knowing what's what and being able to take advantage of that. In the next quote, so further emphasis is placed on accessing knowledge including skills, as a usable resource for their self-development and simultaneously the development of others so the team around me. Information for developmental purposes is only accessible through early career academics knowing people and people knowing them. So a few quotes here, I think it's not necessarily about the information or content, but more about accessing skills or knowledge. I use the knowledge of others in the network, not only to develop myself, but to develop the team around me. I think that the main form is through the network of people that you know already because what happens in that is if they think or [inaudible] think there is something relevant coming for our development or other research, teaching or servicing I would touch base with my fellows or peers. I think you need ultimately the most important and the most relevant way in which I get access to information and in a way it's also how I keep track of my development, my learning. There's the human network that knows the sort of person I am, just sort of things I'm interested in and can piece it together when they come across something and I'll do the same for them. So the last two quotes here they suggest that knowledge is created through relating to information, relating in this sense means having the ability to know what's relevant or valuable for theirs or another person's development. In developmental relations or networks these intangible knowledge types are shared or potentially shared within early career academics in their development...between early career academics and their developers. The following section discusses five types of knowledge constructed from the data that informs early career academic's learning emerging from the findings. Each knowledge type refers to knowledge co-created in relationships, so knowledge from the early career academic and knowledge from their developers. So these knowledge types are experiential knowledge which is knowledge gain and stored in one's memory banks from past experience. Experience from knowledge does not include one's specific expertise in theory but does include the knowledge associated with one's expertise that informs decisions or judgments related to learning a new task or activity. This includes [inaudible] knowledge or know how gain from practical experience, that may differ or contrast with expert or technical knowledge. Experiential knowledge includes intuition, developed over a long period of time but also informed decision making and the rate at which an action or response can occur. In this way, experiential knowledge is the intuitive way of knowing and using technical expertise. In the context of these studies experiential knowledge can include knowledge gained from being a practitioner a [inaudible] academic. There's also technical knowledge, technical knowledge refers to the knowledge of processes related to technology, skill, scientific expertise, policies and procedures, this knowledge can be found in humans or data bases, for example how to guides. As a participant about suggesting her quote some forms of technical knowledge can only inform her learning to a certain extent and that experiential knowledge is far more useful for learning her role. Disciplinary knowledge refers to knowledge that is unique to a particular discipline, this means that each discipline has different understandings of particular concepts or each discipline has contributed specific theories, this knowledge occurs more often when interacting within their own discipline and learning more about discipline specific research or teaching. Interdisciplinary knowledge is knowledge gained only from interdisciplinary interaction and collaboration; it is often synthesized from sources of different disciplinary knowledge such as experts working on a joint project or the project work itself. The fifth form of knowledge is personal knowledge which arises from personal or social interaction, some examples include common sense or survival instinct, interpersonal skills, social savvy, rational and emotional knowledge such as trust and empathy. The study interprets information use as any interaction between people and information sources to create knowledge, whether the knowledge remains implicit or becomes explicit. Interacting with different types of knowledge for learning activity is essential to studies conceptualization or informed learning. Using information to learn is described by every participant in this study as manifested through engaging in development, growth and/or learning through relationships between people. The following quotes are from participant interviews and [inaudible] this notion so early career academics must be able to relate to the information before they can learn their relationships between people make their learning and knowledge meaningful. What informs me is the relationships that I have, the development of those relationships and ow they grow over time. Learning is informed by anything you receive through your [inaudible] that enables you to improve, enables you to do something at a better capacity that you have previously done. To me that's what a network is, it's not just people it's text you read, It's articles you read, it's blogs, pod casts, everything. While each of these quotes expresses the importance of human relationships in relating to information for learning the second part places further emphasis on the relationship itself and some of its various dimensions as informing ones learning. This difference in conceptualizing the relationships approach suggests that there are at least ways of experiencing informed learning in this context. So, 1 early career academics learning being informed by their developmental relationships so what I call the inner focus and the second one is suggested by the third quote, early career academic relationships being informed by a variety of sources so this is what I call after focus. This presentation will discuss what is meant by inner focus comprised of concepts such as knowing self, knowing others and layering of relationships. So when we talk about inner focus learning from knowledge within developmental relationships this view places a focus on the knowledge generated from interaction within relationships in a developmental network. This is an inner focus which can concentrate on relationships themselves as knowledge context. So to build on this notion of human relationships in response to either of the open ended questions posed each participant suggested and discussed the idea of reciprocity as being critical to successful creation and maintenance of developmental relationships and networks. Such reciprocal relationships are conceptualized as being mutually supportive in that they provide benefits in the form of information, learning and support to the early career academics and the those people who act as their mentors. A developer in his study refers to someone who does not act as a mentor but still has a significant impact on the early career academics learning such as a colleague, a friend or relative. Data analysis involves the construction of a variety of ways in which early career academics use information to learn while building mutually beneficial relationships and networks. So the main processes are identified which enable reciprocal interactions between early career academics and their developers on knowing self, knowing others and recognizing layers of relationships. So this presentation will focus on how they use self knowledge and knowledge of others to build their developmental networks. So knowing self, knowledge of ones own beliefs, preferences, experience, expertise, skills, capacities and needs in a holistic sense is key to establishing and maintaining developmental relationships. Developing and awareness of and learning about ones self as a source of information and knowledge can enhance the quality of the relationships within the network. The focus here is on how the early career academic informs the development of a network or relationship as the following quote conveys, you've got really got to get a sense when accessing a network of not only what I can get from the network but what I can bring to it, they're always very generous but I think it appropriate to actually have a sense of what you're bringing to it as opposed to what you can get out of it if you expect them to cooperate with you for very long, so that sense of reciprocity. Self knowledge can also inform early career academics decisions about which relationships networks are most suitable and most effective for their own development. For example participants discuss service activities, both within and outside the university context such as volunteering to participate in academic committees, reviewing government policy documents or advising about educational technology use and sharing this knowledge. So these activities allow the early career academic to offer their self knowledge for the benefit of others. As a way of building and strengthening networks for developing their teaching and research. The following six activities emerging from the data begin to illustrate the process of how early career academics interact within self knowledge to learn while networking. So the first is identifying, the first step in the process of learning for in the self knowledge context involves early career academics identifying critical information from personal experience towards forming an academic focus or niche. The next is testing, this activity involves early career academics testing out and evaluating a variety of information or knowledge for personal relevance or suitability for developmental purposes, it is related to the process of experimenting and keeping an open mind about what informs their learning so having an open and inquisitive approach. Now feeling involves interacting with emotional aspects of personal knowledge involves feeling particular emotional states set and form early career academic development. So based on emotional aspects or the personal knowledge early career academics used a particular course of the action that can either help or hinder their learning in subsequent development. The feeling process is underlying each phase of self knowledge development and essential to learning while developmental networking. Discovering, this activity relates to early career academics, discovering self knowledge to arrive at certain realizations or understanding of one's self. So early career academics discovery of self knowledge can involve the use of their own experiential and personal knowledge over time to realize or to become consciously aware what has not been known about themselves before. So it is the act or bringing to consciousness a new perspective, idea or concept that existed in one's mind but had remained latent and triggered by interaction with insight from experiential or personal knowledge. Reflecting the activity involves interacting with rational and emotional aspects of personal and experiential knowledge through deliberate introspection, this process comprises of thinking about an analyzing experiences of relationships and networks to increase self knowledge. The act of reflecting allows early career academics to make informed decisions about their networking prior to engaging in the next step of the process of offering self knowledge. So the activity of offering self knowledge involves contributing all types of knowledge to build a relationship with a developer or potential developer. At the same time learning while building networks is informed by their knowledge or their perception of others. In terms of creating broader networks one participant describes his experience as I know everyone who works in my area, I know who they are and I make an effort to interact with them and help them and give them information so there's the kind of broader intelligence of knowing what's going on, that means people think of you when they're thinking who would be put on this committee or we need an advisory panel and who would you ask. Similarly in an affective mentoring relationship knowing how one benefits the mentor helps in building reciprocity. Mentoring is a two-way thinking and often it's about someone seeing or recognizing that someone has the ability to make money for you or help you and I guess even now I look at people and think this person could actually be quite good so it's worth me spending money to take them to a meeting because I can see some advantage in it. In this way the reciprocal nature of the developmental relationship enhances the perceived quality of learning while building networks. The following six processes emerging from the data illustrate how early career academics interact with the knowledge of others to learn while networking. The first is accessing, so this activity involves knowing how to access various types of knowledge from developers or potential developers within their network. The second is monitoring, the activity of monitoring involves early career academics maintaining an awareness of other people's personal interdisciplinary knowledge to learn their roles. Aligning involves only career academics joining and adapting to existing new developmental networks, thinking involves, academic thinking of other peoples knowledge to inform their development so early career academics mainly seek experiential, technical, disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge to inform a range of task involved in learning their roles. Applying...this activity involves applying and demonstrating what they have learned from other people in their networks, in this activity the academics are using experiential, technical disciplinary to interdisciplinary knowledge going from interaction with developers. And sharing, this activity involves sharing all types of knowledge to build networks and differs from the offering of self knowledge, sharing knowledge with others also involves sharing knowledge gained from others and knowing the overall impact if it is shared. So the diagram also shows that building relationships occurs mainly in the informal sphere with different types of learning experience early career academics in the informal, non-formal and formal spheres. Just a bit about the contributions discussion of my findings in that sense, recent reviews of developmental networking of the general human resource development strategy highlight the importance of the mutuality perspective. So findings from these current study of early career academic reflect the reciprocal nature of successful contemporary developmental relationships. To build further on this perspective the informed learning framework of which [inaudible] focused on the information, use and learning allows the researchers to work towards revealing what informs early career academics learning while developmental networking. Firstly mutually supportive relationships comprised of the early career academic self knowledge, knowledge of others and various relationship layers can be linked to researched into early career practitioners particularly in concepts of relational and individual agencies as discussed by authors such Edwards and Darcy [phonetic] Hopwood and Sutherland [phonetic] and Warhusrt [phonetic]. As participants each discussed both working collaboratively and independently according to their learning needs and situations, this study suggests that a combination or balance of relations or knowledge about this and individual self knowledge informs learning and growth. For these capacities to be successfully developed we must first understand what informed such learning and how this informed learning varies across different situations. Secondly this study indicates the use of or interaction with informal information much closer...this needs much closer attention. Literature on learning informally in higher education needs to focus on information sharing while social networking however information used for learning in professional development is a different context and the use of information to enhance quality of learning needs further research. In general strategies to facilitate informal interactions through relationships of mutual benefit are needed. Academic developers for teaching, research and career are mentors formal or informal, early career academics and information and knowledge manages within higher education, we all need to collaborate to enhance learning within the informal sphere. This could involve providing opportunities and support for informal interaction and informal information used both online and off line to develop personalized developmental networks towards quality learning experiences, early career academics and a successful development of relational and individual agencies. So just to conclude things of human relationship building and developmental networking in the context of the growing use of social collaborative technologies blended with traditional communications methods suggest an increasingly complex experience for information knowledge use particularly for the beginning university academic. The notion that information of learning are inexplicably linked by the concept of informed learning deserves further attention in a complex practice such developmental networking. In an in-depth study an in-depth study of this issue from an informed learning perspective has a potential to contribute to improving holistic support for early career academics and also to the higher education and human resource development sectors more broadly. So providing detailed insights into what informs early career academic's development of itself as ell as key relationships from research, teaching, collegial mentoring and personal spheres may prove to be a useful platform on which components of academic development could be built. Thank you very much. >> Great thank you very much Faye, very nice presentation, we're going to open things ups to questions so if someone has a question you can either put something into the chat box or raise your hand, I do want to make a comment or two aimed predominately at our students and then I do have a question for you Faye but first of all if anybody is thinking in terms of pursuing and advanced degree after your MILS at some pint this was a wonderful example of the process that Faye went through from her initial introduction to how she got the idea to her discussion of her research and the implications for the findings, etcetera, very, very nicely done in that regard and this is how you take a study like that and begin to work with it prior to the actual dissertation being finished and being improved and everything like that so it's an exemplary model in that regard in my opinion. My question for Faye is with regard to your findings in what you've discussed, A do you feel that your research is applicable and then if the answer is yes, to what degree or how so, do you think it's also applicable not only to early career academics from the faculty perspective but also is it applicable to students who are coming back in or in programs especially programs that are totally online like ours, like San Jose State and are there things in your research that can potentially help students have a better educational experience while they're still in school? >> Okay thank you Bill, yeah that is a great question and it's obviously something that I've thought about myself being a PHD and student and obviously a lot of my participants are also PHD students while working. I think it doesn't really matter whether they have the professional experience or not or whether is somebody is just a full time student because I think a lot of the issues that I'm finding and obviously today I haven't touched on all of my findings, there are other things there that are obviously applicable to online education as well and that is a big area. So yeah I definitely think that there will be some implications for higher education students and whether...so Christine Bruce has actually done some work into pedagogue for higher degree research students and some of that work will be used because there are some things that I'm coming up with at the moment. >> Great thank you Faye so if any of our participants have any questions now is the time to either add something into the chat box or if you click on your microphone you'll be able to ask Faye a question directly. >> Okay thank you Elizabeth the questions is do you have any specific online networks that have been most helpful to you building networks. Okay well that's an interesting question, that touches...goes into looking at social networking online for learning and that a lot of my participants mentioned things like looking at well there are believe it or not educational sites through Facebook and I think most of my participants use Linkedin a lot when joining some of their professional organizations and learning through those sort of online groups I think is a major findings as well. So how they go about using the knowledge gained through online networks and then using that for their learning how to be an academic. >> And I would suspect and in fact hope that some of the universities that they may be a part of may have internal systems whereby faculty are able to interact. >> Sure. >> With each other and so those you know may not become readily available to us outside the university because I know we do a lot of stuff with our part time faculty to sort of keep them connected to what's going on at both SLIS itself as well as San Jose State. >> Yeah. Okay yeah well internal social networking is also another finding of mine we'll probably discuss later in next chapters that I'm writing currently but that is also a theme that popped up quite a lot when we talked about internal...and how that changes the whole nature of the work flow within universities so things like that. Okay Sybil has sent a question, thank you Sybil, how would you develop more informal spaces online, that is a very good question. Yeah so well obviously when we look again at social networking a lot of my participants mentioned that they use sort of informal spaces and just looking at the nature and the pattern of use of those social networking sites and then how again how that knowledge gained from...what kinds of knowledge were gained from interaction within those sites and then how that sort of translates back into sort of the physical communication, so yeah there's a whole blend of communication [inaudible] that also obviously effects as I said the work flows and the work culture within universities. But yeah that is a very good question and it's something that I would definitely like to seek more about now that I'm developing a clearer picture of what's happening and towards like the end of my study I will probably be able to answer that question a little more clearly but at the moment I'm just gathering some understanding of that but thank you, that is a great question and I will keep it in mind, thanks. >> And that kind of brings to mind a question that you really didn't get into, you talked a little bit about your participants and how they were...have been in academia for under five years and did have some industry experience but my question would then be what was like the median age of your participants because I would think that younger people would begin to develop some of those informal spaces online more naturally taking sort of the generational theory approach that if they may be new to academia but not kids if you will and they may still be struggling with some of the technology as opposed to younger academics that have been dealing with this stuff as they grew up. >> Yeah, sure. Yeah I think that is definitely something...that is a major issue obviously but we've also I would say that the median age for my participants is probably 30...about 38, around there...around there. So yeah I think that the major issue too was that they were not just using Facebook or Twitter just because they were in a younger age group it was looking at use of it in a critical sort way so how useful to there particular developmental situation was...how useful that social networking technology was for them to actually develop their academic work something like Facebook in a sense so there were certain things within Facebook that were not actually helpful so just knowing the difference, I suppose that's a form of which we've seen itself of knowing how to use the social networking sites more effectively and not just using it because they of a younger age group or they'd like to use it. Okay we have another question, did they use second life or anything within real time? No, second life was not mentioned by the participants that I interviewed. I'm not sure what you mean by anything within real time. >> Well, this session would be considered real time, I guess potentially a lot of web conferencing or at least you know web conferencing where you can't go back and listen to the recording later. >> Yeah, definitely. >> You need to be there. >> Yeah, also we have live webinars we mentioned as very useful for people who couldn't actually at that level of academia, couldn't actually travel to the conference so virtual networking was a big area being able to do these online obviously such as what we're doing today. Yeah. >> Great think you, any further questions from our participants? Okay I don't see anybody with the icon indicating they're typing or anybody going for the microphone so let me again thank Faye for her presentation and being with us and being willing to share her research with us while she's visiting the U.S. Let me thank our participants and of course thank Randy Chang our IT specialist who helps us keep everything looking very seamless and again thank you all for helping us kick off our Colloquium series for fall 2012, thank you. [ Silence ]