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Project Name: Media Enabled Organizational Workflow
Project Leader
Project Co-Leader
Researchers
- Abby Goodrum (Ryerson)
- Catherine Middleton (Ryerson)
- Elaine Toms (Dalhousie)
Theme Distribution
Project Description
This project will use new media technologies, such as tools for web-based collaboration, web syndication and social networking, to support the recording of information regarding the mini-projects research activities, to appropriately disseminate this information across the network researchers thus enhancing the cohesiveness of the network, and to use it as necessary for financial and reporting functions. The objective is to simplify the network reporting processes, as well as improve their quality, by making the collection of the necessary information a natural by-product of the primary research and collaboration activities of the network researchers. To that end, we are interested in the following research questions.
- What new media technologies can be used to support research and how? What are the "best practices" in identifying and adopting such a technology?
- How might such technologies support knowledge translation across research disciplines? What are the processes by which the information disseminated across the network researchers can advance the development of common vocabulary and methods?
- What types of information can be recorded through the use of each such technology and how relevant is this information to managing the research activity within a research network, such as GRAND?
- What are the cost-benefit tradeoffs between the effort required by the network researchers to use each such technology and the measurable improvements incurred by the technology in network management?
- Are there legal, policy, or regulatory issues that arise due to the adoption of these technologies in the context of a research network? And if so, what might be some technological and/or practical methods to address them?
Throughout the life of the network we will explore a variety of new media technologies, wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, collaborative tagging, social-networking tools, web-based conferencing tools and virtual worlds, just to name a few of the technologies we envision. Among them, wikis seem to be the first candidate to explore: we have already adopted a wiki to support the process of preparing the NCE proposal and we have gained some experience with respect to the types of support they can offer to research and reporting activities.
We will also work closely with our industry partner Precision Conference Systems to adapt their commercial conference submission and review product for use in out research reporting, and also in a novel peer-review process that will allow graduate students to assist each report on their research activities.
Excellence of the Research
Development of Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP)
The graduate student peer-review process will provide valuable experience with peer review in a protected environment free from some of the rough-and-tumble practices of the competitive journal and conference submission process. Graduate students will see all aspects of the peer-review process, not just those usually experience by junior researchers. This will accelerate their growth into mature members of the international research community.
Networking and Partnerships
The project is strongly focused on internal networking.
Knowledge and Technology Exchange and Exploitation
By involving partners in the research review process, an increased awareness will be developed of the research underway in GRAND. This will also provide valuable feedback to the researchers about the needs and views of partner organizations.
References to the Literature
Publications
Presentations
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