Social Construction of Technology (SCOT)

Technological problems and solutions are constructed through the negotiations within and among relevant interest groups

A practical problem:

No systematic way for students or staff at the Lincoln School of Architecture to access examples of high quality student work from previous years

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Use of Multimedia in a Lecture/Seminar Context

Virtual Studio: Aims

The Virtual Studio aims to . . .

Integrate design practice with theory

Archive the best student work alongside staff teaching materials

Make past student work available as a learning resource & aid to teaching

Broaden the range of media available for use in lectures & seminars Capture comments on work made by tutors, students and external experts Encourage more efficient use of space

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An Integrated Archive

Virtual Studio: Features

A web-based teaching/learning resource

Combines digital samples of best student work (images, video and text) with slides & video of key buildings, links to external sites, etc.

Used in a variety of contexts: studio teaching, student research, lectures & seminars

Created and maintained by users, students & staff (Wikipedia)

Exists within database stored on network & accessed via web-based search engine using keywords/ directories

The Virtual Learning Environment…

JORUM: The National Learning Objects Repository…

For video, we know this works…

For images, we know this works…

For bookmarks, we know this works…

Upload… Title… Tag… Describe… Share.

'Open Access' Repositories:

Originally subject-based, serving the science communities

i.e http://arxiv.org (1991)

£14m (€17.7m) investment in repositories and preservation in UK Higher Education

(2006- 9)

122 Institutional Repositories in the UK (ROAR)

Only one ‘Teaching and Learning Object’ repository listed:

EdShare http://www.edshare.soton.ac.uk

UK Government research funding is partially linked to citation rates.

Research Excellence Framework (REF) will use bibliometrics.

For text, Institutional Repositories appear to be working…

We’ve made some changes...

Can academics and students working in different disciplines be easily accommodated within the same archival space?

What’s next?

Looking at other (open source) tools:

• Creation of a ‘Studio Community’

• Wikis?

• Web CMS?

• Social networking tools? (http://elgg.org/)

• Integration with external web service APIs?

• SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) for Institutional Repositories?

• Use the IR for storage but develop the studio in a separate application? i.e MACE ?

Andy Earl: aearl@lincoln.ac.uk

Carl O’Coill: cocoill@lincoln.ac.uk

Joss Winn: jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk