The Social Mediums are kind of metrics wonks. The work of promotion and social engagement can seem very *squishy* if you can’t measure your impact and figure out what’s working and what’s not. Increasingly, as scholarship moves online it’s becoming harder to aggregate the impact of all the ways research can be shared. This article describes a new toolkit that helps people do this and puts it into a very attractive page (take a look at this sample here: https://profiles.impactstory.org/u/0000-0002-4517-1562 ). Think of it like CV for your research’s digital impact. It’s pretty impressive – The Social Mediums
Author: Jason B. Jones
It’s easy to forget that “social media” encompass much more than Twitter of Facebook. As social media fellows, we don’t just think of it as platforms, but also as a way of thinking about digital life that encourages interaction, discussion, and collaboration. Sometimes, technology as simple as discussion boards in classes presents opportunities to rethink praxis. This great article from The Chronicle of Higher Education brings together a wealth of useful material on encouraging discussion in classrooms. Nearly everything here is of use in digital spaces, too! – Social Mediums
As more information is made available via social media channels, in order to reach the largest audience and maximize reach and effectiveness, the content published must be as accessible as possible. About 20% of the population is estimated to have disabilities including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities (www.digitalgov.gov/). The more accessible the content, the more people it can reach.
According to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), content should be made perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. They define these four principles as follows;
- Perceivable – Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. This means that users must be able to perceive the information being presented (it can’t be invisible to all of their senses)
- Operable – User interface components and navigation must be operable. This means that users must be able to operate the interface (the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform)
- Understandable – Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable. This means that users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding)
- Robust – Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. This means that users must be able to access the content as technologies advance (as technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible)
While we usually think about social media in terms of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, some of the best work using social media in academia emphasizes the collaborative opportunities. In this post from The Chronicle of Higher Education, the author looks at using collaborative annotations in class and as examples of the ways scholars share knowledge. — The Social Mediums
This is a guest post by Carol Jackson, the digital content strategist at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and lead producer, with Alison Jones and Karen Kemp, of the school’s podcast_ Ways & Means Show. It was originally published over at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Prof. Hacker Blog. It adds to some of the discussion Naomi started with her post about podcasting last week.Â
