Friday, 20 November 2009
Open knowledge and the role of public funding
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Sakai 3 is coming...social media and embedded tools
Sakai 3 already manages site security very well (as did its predecessor, version 2) and implementing new social media ways of working is going to be a big hit. It will change the way we manage online relationships with our colleagues, students and clients for sure.
In Sakai 2, each tool sits separately with the worksite you use. So, as a user you may want to encourage your research or teaching group to vote on an important matter of the day either by sending an Announcement or engaging communication via Forums. To complete the vote, however, the user must navigate away from the communication point (e.g. forum) to select the vote tool and then make the vote. Sakai 3 overcomes this limitation and allows users to embed different tools into, say forums, much like a photo in the text document. No technical skill will be needed (e.g. html) but will be drag and drop in operation. What this means is that less clicks are required to navigate around the site simplifying the user engagement process. This new way of working also opens the door to better knowledge management practice. When a vote is cast in Sakai 3, the result would also appear in the forum itself, meaning that knowledge on complete array of activites will be available in one place and be searchable.
Over the coming months the Lancaster Center for e-Science will be installing Sakai 3 as a demonstrator for all existing and new Sakai users to take a look at. In the mean time, if you are interested in learning more about Sakai 3 go to Go to http://sakaiproject.org/future-directions.
Sunday, 18 October 2009
US Universities making software for themselves
Lancaster Centre for e-Science now on Twitter
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
The question to pose at this stage is how can we keep busy business people online once their LEAD programmes complete? It would be incredibly useful to have a large, easily accessible group of business people. For instance, at the beginning of the recession information on the impact of the recession at the small business level was scarce. Typically, knowledge of impacts has to wait until the dust settles and aggregate statistics come out of the Office of National Statistics. If we engage with business people electronically, in a trust based environment it could provide us real-time information on events. The Sakai portal technology we produce and provide as a service has capabilities as a e-community building device. It contains the usual tools, probably the most popular are forums. e-Facilitators (people that maintain electronic communication) are able to develop trust in in their LEAD communities allowing them to ask fairly confidential information to delegates. Responses to trusted e-facilitators are usually rapid and from multiple sources. Responses form very useful qualitative insights into problems. Additionally to forums, delegates are highly likely to response to online surveys that can be posted via the portal. For instance, we gather survey data from delegates as part of the evaluation of the programme; we have no problem getting to 100% response rates which is incredibly high. The evidence does suggest a high value should be placed in developing and maintaining groups of business owners online.
Collaborative Research in Business
To begin the process we are currently surveying all university staff at Lancaster University that communicate with business in any way (e.g. consultancy, advice, research, teaching, student projects). Want to participate in the survey or want to learn more about the research? Click on the following link or cut and paste it into your browser to take part.
http://www.ictresearch.org/crib/crib.htm
Thursday, 7 May 2009
When innovation stalls.....
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Synchronous communication in e-Research
Friday, 30 January 2009
The dangers of Web 2.0 for business?
It is hardly surprising that many businesses struggle to make effective use of the internet. The article on the beeb about the World Economic Forum below highlights some key aspects of their inability to do so.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/davos/7861090.stm
I'm not certain using Web 2.0 technologies is really the right platform for, say, strategic business planning or idea generation and I hope this isn't what Davos people describe as 'businesses struggling with the web'. It is far too easy to have critical secrets whizzing about strangers screens in an uncontrolled way. I understand from Wikinomics that this is "a" new way forward (i.e. social networking for business activity), but it seems to me to be far too chaotic to be healthy as long term and secure business activity. Sure, to have an online place for customers to discuss products is a good thing (BT are quite advanced in this respect). If managed correctly it becomes a source of nearly free market research. BUT in the more chaotic WWW, what if an organisation becomes a target of subversive activity? Much like a denial of service limits connectivity of customers to a firms website, the targeted provision of mis-information could be just as damaging. I have no evidence of this occuring presently, but I can vision it happening.
Friday, 23 January 2009
The future IS super computing and the cloud
Datasets (i.e the information that we collect on any matter we choose) have become larger often running into terescale dimensions. Our ability to conduct useful estimations on data of this size is greatly deminished. It is no longer uncommon to hear of very large corporations having difficulty processing data for this reason; limiting their ability to take advantage of the latest estimation processes, slowing innovation. A scientific example of this scale of data generation is provided by the Cern laboratory that will generate terabytes of data per experient. On a singe computer it is practically impossible to run models or run tests that would 'sift' this data to enhance knowledge. The cloud provides us a 'super computing' platform to reduce this issue as all data storage and computations take place away from the users machine, harnessing many computers simultaneously, dramatically reducing computational time for many user groups. This is multiprocessor computation. The issue however, is that many organisations may not allow their data to be stored and processed outside of their own IT networks due to data security risks; something we hear rumblings of already...for academic researchers this is likely to much less of an issue.
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Future proofing university e-infrastructure?
The vision of the national e-Science programme and JISC is to develop and provide future proof IT platforms for universities. The question this discussion raises is which direction universities should take now that they face technological choices? The new way of thinking (from a JISC perspective) is that universities need an open standards platform or range of 'embeddable' open standard platforms that will support many university operations (e-learning, e-research, admin) that can be tailored to each institution or be applied using a generic tool stack depending on need. An example of this technology is the Sakai platform (there are others, e.g. Pluto). Although it is an observably advanced e-learning platform it can also be used to embed research tools developed by researchers as it offers open standards they can use to 'hang' their tools in (e.g. terascale computing tools, embedded model estimators, new forms of database handling/management, alumni management, student enrollment management, accounting). This provides a huge amount of flexibility. What this means is that a researcher can view online experiments and teaching resources under a single point of sign on from any internet enabled computer. The issue presently is that whatever the platform the university chooses now will determine how flexible we can be in, say, 5 or 10 years. For example, choosing Microsoft solutions will imply that researchers will be tied into the Microsoft tool stack in the future; and it would be very difficult to tie in bespoke tools that are now becoming common place in academia into the Microsoft closed source framework.
Much has been said about the potential of Moodle as a VLE, but there is no discussion of the development of research tools within this framework; yet teaching AND research is in need of support simultaneously. A great reservation that I have regarding Moodle (personally speaking and would like to hear your views) is that very little investment is coming in at its base, implying a reduced rate of innovation relative to other platforms. If the university were to choose Moodle for e-Learning, it would mean that independent e-learning and e-research solutions would be needed in the future which is far less efficient (e.g. two sets of programming skills, two servers, two databases, two sign on points, difficulty in transferring common data between the platforms etc.). Ideally, the university should have a Director of e-learning AND e-Research (one person, not two) so that issues of functionality and simplification across the work fields can be addressed simultaneously in an unbiased way.
Key to this discussion is that universities should have a core of 'skill set' simultaneously adept at both e-learning and e-research deployment and tool design that can advise researchers on these matters. To hand this to an external supplier misses the point about what Web 2.0 is all about (i.e. the flexibility to design content and tools to meet the need) as suppliers will find it very difficult to keep abreast of high performance research needs and cannot be expected to have in-house, bespoke, research focused software development skills. Once 'digitally native' researchers come online in a few years, this is what they will want from IT and we need to be in a position to hand it to them when they arrive. Therefore, we need to make the right platform choices now to provide them what they will need in their future. To make the wrong platform choice risks damaging the potential of our future researchers and therefore research outputs.
I look forward to your comments.