Joho the Blog » academics

New criteria for academic recognition

davidw — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:56:26 +0000

The University of Maine has approved new guidelines for tenuring and promoting academics [later:] in the New Media program (although see the comments for a complexification of this). The new guidelines allow crediting an academic for contributing to social media.

This the right thing to do not only because it is a more realistic assessment of an academic’s worth. It’s also the right thing to do because it helps to build the value of the network. If knowledge and expertise are becoming properties of the network, it is the social responsibility of our institutions to encourage the enhancement of that network.

[Tags: social_media social_networks academics universities scholarship expertise ]

Universal academic directory

davidw — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:29:02 +0000

Academia.edu lets you add yourself to its gigantic Tree of University Departments. It’s a slick, slidey, Ajaxy UI, and there seem to be only benefits to adding your name to it, even though it will forever be incomplete.

The question is whether it’s easier and more beneficial to count on participants to centralize their contact info at Academia.edu or to hope that universities somehow might agree on a metadata standard â€” a microformat â€” for how they list faculty members on their own sites. Since the latter isn’t happening, the former becomes appealing. (Thanks to John Palfrey for the link.)

[Tags: academics universities taxonomy folksonomy everything_is_miscellaneous ]