constructing a professional presence - hea professional presences for academics workshop -...
DESCRIPTION
This presentation formed part of the HEA workshop on Professional Presences For Academics and looked at the different social sites on which academics should develop an online presence in order to promote themselves, engage students and employers and publicise their research.TRANSCRIPT
Constructing A Professional Presence For Academics
Thomas Lancaster
Overview
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Twitter Hash Tag
#heaprofpres
We Encourage Discussion!
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Plan For The Day
10:00am
Welcome and HousekeepingThomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University
10:05am
Professional Development At Birmingham City UniversityDavid While – Birmingham City University
10:15am
Constructing A Professional Presence For AcademicsThomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University
11:00am
Leveraging Your Online Presence To Develop A Professional Learning NetworkSue Beckingham – Sheffield Hallam University
11:30am
Coffee
12:00pm
Practical Computer Session On Constructing Professional PresencesThomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University
1:00pm Lunch2:00pm Employability From The Higher Education
AcademyMark Ratcliffe – Higher Education Academy
2:15pm Examples Of Online Promotion For AcademicsThomas Lancaster – Birmingham City University
2:35pm Questions and Discussion3:00pm Finish
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HEA Computing 2012 Workshop
“Enhancing The Employability Of Computing Students Through An Online Professional Presence”
http://www.bcu.ac.uk/tee/events/previous-events/employability-workshop
Contains copies of talks and set of teaching materials (the “step by step” what to do)
We Are Following On From…
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Resources
Why Do Academics Care?
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“Savvy scientists must increasingly engage with blogs and social media. A new generation of young researchers has grown up with an ever-present Internet. Publishers have been quicker than academics to react to this new world, but scientists must catch up. Even if you choose not to blog, you can certainly expect that your papers and ideas will increasingly be blogged about. So there it is — blog or be blogged.”
Paul Knoepfler (In nature)
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110727/full/475425a.html
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Personal marketing
Personal brand building
Media, research and speaking opportunities (contacts)
Career prospects
Promotion of university and course
Promotion of wider research area
“Humanisation” of research
Demonstrate social media and employability interests to students
Why A Professional Presence?
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Your Professional Presence is the cumulative set of web sites, online contributions and social media profiles which define who you are to someone looking at you online
Often, this is in addition to any information supplied about you to your university
Can direct people to a preferred view of yourself
Can rely on people directly finding out about you using search engines/links/recommendations
What Do We Mean? (Informal)
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Selectiveness!
It is impossible to be active with every single social media website and opportunity out there
This workshop will take a balanced view looking at some of the services (both general and academically aimed) which it is worth considering joining
However, you should pick and choose which of these opportunities are most suitable for you to engage further with…
Most of this workshop relates to “what I do…”
Immediate Principle
Examples Of Professional Presences
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And Also…
http://www.adamtsmith.co.uk
http://www.alaurentiu.com
http://ayeshaprofessionalpresence.webnode.com
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Academics…
http://thomaslancaster.co.uk
http://thomaslancaster.co.uk/blog
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And Also…
http://jagdevbhogal.wix.com/jbwebsite
http://jagdevbhogal.wordpress.com
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Wider Computing Community
http://www.tubblog.co.uk/
Components
Professional Website
Contribution to Institutional Web Sites
Social Media Presence
Academic Research Profiles
External contributions to increase overall visibility
What Makes A Good Professional Presence
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Important to make yourself “findable” in Google
Want to receive invitations to progress yourself
Industrial engagement
Contacts to work with students
Speaking engagements
Ranking
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Work out what “moniker” you will use to represent yourself online
Decide on the main marketing text and images that you can use to represent yourself
Set up your Facebook account and Google account (as so many other services require these/integrate with these)
Work out when/how you will keep your sites and profiles current and accurate
Pre-Planning
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General Professional Resources
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Very important – the web site is owned by you and transferrable
Should relate “your name” in some format
Should be a .com or .co.uk, ideally without hyphens
e.g. yourname.com
Website contains general background and information about you relative to your career (e.g. expertise, teaching and research)
Professional Website
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Ideally part of your main website
e.g. yourname.com/blog
Can also be hosted by a third party service
e.g. hosted WordPress, hosted Blogger
But, you lose some control
Create posts relating to the wider interests within your subjects (the news, your teaching, your research)
Your Blog
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http://thomaslancaster.co.uk/blog/
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Important to own your Facebook identity
Register a “vanity url”
Use the privacy settings to control who can see what parts of your profile
There are many differing views about how to use Facebook within education
Use apps like BranchOut to monitor professional contacts
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https://www.facebook.com/ThomasLancaster
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http://branchout.com/ThomasLancaster
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A Google account is necessary to access many widely used services
Try and establish a recognisable name that can be used on many social sites
Google Account
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Google+ is Google’s social network and the results can feature in Google search engine results
Google Authorship of blog posts currently a powerful way to get search engine traffic
Google+
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https://plus.google.com/116238595431272315085
gplus.to/thomaslancaster
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2nd biggest search engine in the world
Many people are visual learners and head directly to YouTube
Short videos can relate to teaching, research
YouTube
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http://www.youtube.com/user/DrThomasLancaster
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Main professional social network
Used to keep a record of work and experience and to develop professional Connections
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http://uk.linkedin.com/in/thomaslancaster
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Popular site used to collect and share images
Replicates “pinning” images to a noticeboard
Can pin your own images or curate them from other sources
Infographics popular for sharing
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http://pinterest.com/thomaslancaster
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Provides short updates about areas of interest
Promote events and activities
Often used to produce a “second level of networking” within academia
Institutional Websites
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Profiles on institutional web sites are valued
But they can sometimes be difficult to take control of
They rank well in the search engines
Institutional Web Sites
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http://www.bcu.ac.uk/tee/ctn/our-staff/thomas-lancaster
Specific Academic Resources
The LinkedIn Publications view can be used to list all of your academic publications
Use the Abstract to provide the content to match with the publication
The suggestion is to link these directly to the official source for the publication (such as the Digital Object Identifier page)
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http://uk.linkedin.com/in/thomaslancaster
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Social network aimed specifically at the academic community
Can follow other academics based on their research interests
Academia.edu
52http://bcu.academia.edu/ThomasLancaster
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Alternative social network for academics
Can be used to ask questions, gain answers and find people to work with
ResearchGate.net
54http://gigaom.com/2013/05/06/academic-social-network-researchgate-raises-20m-filing-shows/
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https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Lancaster/
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Primarily a reference manager, but also a further social network
Can be used to create an online archive of papers
Mendeley.com
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http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/thomas-lancaster
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Provides a search engine for academic literature
Used widely in the industry due to its convenience
Makes available a Profile Page showing citations and reach of the research
Monitor who has cited your work
Can manually add missing publications
Google Scholar
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http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lViA0GAAAAAJ&hl=en
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http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=lViA0GAAAAAJ&citation_for_view=lViA0GAAAAAJ:d1gkVwhDpl0C
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Alternative academic search, but with fewer direct options for academics
Can edit publication details, but needs manual verification by Microsoft
Microsoft Academic Search
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http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/456808/thomas-lancaster
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Unique identifier given to each researcher to manage their publication lists
Solves the problem where multiple researchers share similar names
Generate citation metrics
Integrates with ORCID
ResearcherID
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http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1534-7547
Third Party Sites
Providing content for other sites is an excellent way to grow your social reach
Invited Blog Posts
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http://blogs.heacademy.ac.uk/stem/author/thomaslancaster/
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http://blogs.bcu.ac.uk/ctn/author/id103781
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Use relevant forums and question sites to demonstrate your wider interest and expertise
Engage On Other Sites
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http://www.quora.com/Thomas-Lancaster
Document Sharing Sites
Used mainly to share copies of slides
Can also be used to share other types of documents
Useful for widely circulating copies of presentations
Can be provide presentations in a format whereby they can be embedded within other pages (similar to YouTube videos)
SlideShare
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http://www.slideshare.net/ThomasLancaster
The Challenge!
Keeping everything up to date!
Work out processes for:
Adding a new teaching area
Publishing a new academic paper
The Biggest Challenge
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What does your profile on each site look to:
A standard person who finds the site through a search engine?
A non-logged in user who follows the link to your profile?
A logged in user on the site?
What other information is being posted on the Internet about you?
The Checks
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Use sites like Klout.com
Measures your engagement with others on sites like Twitter and Facebook
Finding Out Your Influence
Any Questions?