Hannah Whaley . com

This week the Library of Congress announced, via a tweet, that they have been given the full back catalogue of tweets from Twitter to archive. This is kinda huge, and I don’t just mean in terms of storage space.

For the Library of Congress, they are confirming loudly their continued commitment to preserving and researching what matters to their nation, and with it the absolute requirement there is for them to do so. This furthers the important work they have already done in digital file standards and the semantic web, and shows an understanding and sensitivity towards the way history is now being written, and by whom. For some time now we have spoken of the changes in the news and publishing industries, and the role the average person can now play in communicating news. With this announcement, there is a sense of validation for what was already a widely accepted change in communications medium.

For Twitter, they have become the social network of history - it is the information passed through the channel they created that is being stored for all of time. One of the underlying concepts that has led Twitter to this has been their ideal of openness. Facebook, MySpace and even Friends Re-united before them kept everything locked down and internal - holding the data their users created close to them, in case it represented any possibility for further revenue. When you post on Twitter, the information you create is publicly available - therefore it can justifiably be viewed as such, archived and made available to researchers.

Twitter has therefore come to represent the thoughts of the population at any given snapshot in time, including historical events like the Obama election, topical events such as Michael Jackson’s death and real-time news like the Hudson Bay plane crash. While admittedly it is an unfortunate aside that many of the populations thoughts continue to be drivel, contained within them are the views of the masses on key events, and the idea that these remain open and accessible for researchers is very significant. A colleague rightly commented today that much content of newspapers is also drivel, but as with Twitter, the key news is still documented, discussed and evaluated within. How heartbreakingly (in fact, chillingly) different the communications surrounding 9/11 would be to look back on had twitter been used then as it is now.

We can therefore hail this as an important step for both research and open access. We can expect university researchers to draw immediate and fascinating data from the archives that attracts public interest and engagement. As many academic papers, conferences, and concepts are discussed online and tweeted, we may even find new ways to collate the information surrounding ‘published research’. This creates an odd irony - a company’s committment to openness may have made it easier to access what people think about a piece of research than it is to access the actual published document.

The 33rd Annual UKSG Conference was in Edinburgh this week, with a varied programme and over 850 attendees. A number of themes started to recur through the sessions and discussions, as summarised:

- Big deal bubble must burst, as it is unsustainable for many institutions

- We must move further towards open access, but it is not yet clear how

- Journal impact factor isn’t good enough anymore, we need to review the commentary and produce new ranking factors

- Linked information is nearly here, allowing informal and pre-publish conversations to be viewed and measured in a structured way on the web

- The age of the article is here, meaning metrics, usage and discoverability will increasingly be at article level rather than the ‘journal container’

- Just-in-time must replace just-in-case, as no one can maintain a full array of items that may only occasionally be required

The discussion around these issues is healthy, as is the growing volume with which librarians and researchers are willing to speak them out loud.  However these key themes are notable for representing problems, not solutions. It is clear that licensing models, researcher metrics, electronic and open access still have some way to evolve to meet the growing needs and expectations of the community.

I gave a presentation at the recent Blackboard World Conference (#bbworld09) in Washington DC on ‘Groupwork Assessment’. The powerpoint for this presentation is available on the Blackboard Connections site. The talk was videoed by the 360 people, and you can watch the video here. Thanks to everyone that turned up - and asked questions and spoke to me at the end. The feedback was all positive, and appeared to highlight the genuine requirement for a system of this kind to be more widely available within Blackboard. The rise in group teaching and assessment, and the issues students face with it, appear to be consistent across disciplines, year groups, institutions and continents.

The ability to work effectively in a team is seen as a crucial skill within many professions and industry sectors. There has been a rise in the use of assessed group work in many disciplines over recent years. There are numerous reasons for this increase, including larger class sizes (therefore making it efficient to have group submissions) and a greater emphasis on employability and transferable skills.

Despite this rapid progression, methods for assessing the individual contributions of team members have not advanced significantly causing a feeling of dissatisfaction amongst many students. Faculty are also concerned about the possibility of students gaining high marks because of their team’s effort, when the individual contribution was unsatisfactory.

An approach to collaboration has been developed that teaches about team work by focusing on assessment criteria and peer evaluation aspects of group working. As the amount of group work that students complete continues to increase, enhancing their learning in this area helps them achieve more from project work and benefit from collaborative learning approaches. By ensuring fairer grading for individual contributions to groups, students are less stressed by the challenges of team working and are better able to focus simultaneously on the project deliverable and team interactions.

It has been a busy few weeks, and I thought I would share a couple of recent challenges with you.

I recently spent two weeks in Germany, completing a 2000 mile driving holiday in our Lotus Elise. We spent some time at the Nurburgring - the longest, most challenging and unforgiving racetrack in the world. I chose to drive a lap - a genuinely nerve-wracking experience and not a decision I took lightly given the well documented dangers of the track. Also driving the 13 mile ring was a Lambo, Corvette ZR-1, Ferarri F430 Scuderia, Nissan GTR, and more GT3 RSs than you could shake a stick at - all doing some serious speeds on track. It was an amazing experience, a genuine feeling of accomplishment and I am incredibly glad I chose to tackle it.

This was not the only challenge of the last few weeks. Immediately before I left for Germany I had a job interview, and I have been delighted to accept the position of Assistant Director of the Library and Learning Centre at the University of Dundee, responsible for Research and Systems. I am looking forward to working more closely with the Library and Learning Centre staff to build on existing work and tackle the many challenges being presented within this area - not least the changes in the publishing sector, effective search, integrations, open access repositories and research management initiatives.

This week I am at BbWorld09 in Washington DC and have been presenting on both the challenges with Groupwork Assessment and with effective implementation of content systems for learning and teaching. Common themes from talking to colleagues here have centred on  moving elearning systems forward (the adoption of Bb9) and providing stable, integrated systems that meet our staff and student’s expectations for modern working. It never fails to impress me how much progress there is in the sector year on year, and yet how we feel constantly challenged by the needs and requirements of the university community. I understand how people can feel swamped by this, but it is important to realise just how quickly we can adapt, and how far we have already risen to meet the challenge of achieving 21st century education.

I hope that challenges of all kinds continue to present themselves to me in life, as the biggest challenges tend to bring the best opportunities with them.