First seminar details

First seminar was held on
10 December 2008
10.30am - 4.30pm

at London Knowledge Lab


The main aims of the seminar were to:

• Explore the intellectual and practical opportunities, problems and risks concerning the rise in digital and multimodal research presentation – particularly that of the PhD thesis


• Provide a forum for the exchange of practice in this area


• Inform thinking, including that on regulations and guidance, regarding new formats for the PhD in education and the social sciences


• Provide better commerce between the creation of knowledge in the field and its dissemination to users

Seminar programme

Richard Andrews, Caroline Pelletier, Andrew Burn: A survey of existing practice


Part of this presentation looked at examples of alternatives to the conventional written PhD thesis, drawing particularly on traditions of practice-based, studio-based, options for doctoral study. Certain models, especially in the field of art and design, have long histories, and variations on these have proliferated in recent years, addressing the interests and professional contexts of researchers, artists and designers in multimedia, games and virtual worlds. Recurrent themes in the discussions of these models include practical questions about the balance of different elements of the doctoral submission, epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge and the function of research, methodological questions about the relationship between investigation and design. These were briefly reviewed and opened up for discussion: a number of institutions currently running practice-based programmes were represented at the seminar.






Peter Halfpenny: The problem from an e-social science perspective


e-Social Science aims to harness innovations in digital technologies to enable social science to advance in ways not hitherto possible. Its drivers are the abundance of digital data, the availability of immense computer power and the ease of collaboration over time and space. e-Social Science affects every stage of the research life-cycle. As a consequence, it has numerous implications for the doctorate. Some of these were teased out in this talk.

Download Powerpoint file here.


Carey Jewitt: New multimodal and visual forms: what counts as knowledge in the doctoral thesis


Until relatively recently, the thesis has been a written form sometimes quietly ‘illustrated’ with visual evidence. The noise of audio files and multimodal media has been allowed to live in the appendix of the doctoral thesis. This separation of writing, image and multimodal forms is, however, challenged by the rise in research on and through digital media. Visual and multimodal perspectives, technologies and the data these generate in combination, put writing, image and the multimodal into new relationships. Further this has led to new forms of transcription and representation of data and findings and the re-thinking of what counts as knowledge. Contemporary multimodal texts will be used to explore the opportunities and problems of rethinking the relationship between writing, image, and other modes in order to comment on the possible futures for the PhD thesis. How might image and writing be put into more dynamic conversations within a thesis to move beyond the written comment on the visual or multimodal? What might visual and multimodal dialogues and arguments look like? In short, how might the multimodal move out of the appendix?


Claire Robins: Artists’ interventions and the doctoral thesis


This paper discussed the role of art practice within my doctoral research in which I examine the interpretive role of contemporary artists’ interventions in galleries and museums. I do this in part, by staging an intervention, An Elite Experience for Everyone, at the William Morris Gallery, London. Artists’ interventions draw on multi-modal means of communication, bringing together text, image, object, display technologies and performances, in this instance, set within a parodic frame. I propose that the potential of this element of practice allows for a close (embodied) examination of disruptive and parodic methodologies which are common to many interventions. My concerns are to gain insights into how parodic and confrontational practices can be understood to ameliorate years of sedimented privilege within cultural institutions promoted as panaceas for achieving social goals. In order to reconcile parody and irony’s somewhat denigrated status in education I draw on the writings of Bakhtin (1966), Hutcheon (2000) and Kierkegaard (1841), to explore the effects of distraction and disruption.

Remaining programme

Seminar 4: University of London, Institute of Education (Autumn term 2009)
Implications for governance, examination and for research schools - Andrew Brown (IOE)
The role of EthOS in the curation of digital theses – Anthony Troman (British Library)
A drama perspective – Anton Franks (IOE)
Work in progress by research students 4

Seminar 5: Middlesex University (Spring term 2010)
Evaluative techniques in arts-based research – Dr Magnus Moar (Middlesex)
An electronic arts perspective – Stephen Boyd Davis (Middlesex)
New directions and new formats for the PhD – Stephen Boyd Davis and Magnus Moar (Middlesex)
Work in progress by research students 5

Seminar 6: The British Library, St Pancras (Summer term 2010)
What has been achieved during the seminar series? – Richard Andrews, Stephen Boyd Davis, Jude England
Completion of the guidelines for new formats for the PhD in Education and the social sciences – Andrew Brown (IOE)
Repositories for digital/multimodal theses: the issue of curation and accessibility/availability (Barry Knight, British Library, plus librarians from the three participating institutions)
How the initiative fits into Gateway, the proposed National Digital Centre for HE (Joanna Newman, BL)
Areas for further work/research; the editing and production of a book devoted to the issue; continuation of the website

Aims and objectives of the series

The main aims of the seminar series are to:

• explore the intellectual and practical opportunities, problems and risks concerning the rise in digital and multimodal research presentation – particularly that of the PhD thesis


• provide a forum for the exchange of practice in this area


• inform thinking, including that on regulations and guidance, regarding new formats for the PhD in Education and the social sciences


• provide better commerce between the creation of knowledge in the field and its dissemination to users

The objectives deriving from the aims and the problem, therefore, are:

• the creation of generic regulations and guidance for new formats for the PhD in Education and the social sciences


• see what Education and the social sciences can learn from arts-based theses and computer science practice


• the distillation of the debates about new formats into articles, a book and a website


• the creation of a sustainable community of scholars who will take forward thinking in the field

The problem

The problem that the conventional printed thesis presents for research students who are exploring e-learning, especially where multimodality is foregrounded, is that such a printed format necessitates a linear, largely monomodal (i.e. verbal) medium for the presentation and conveying of the research. In much contemporary research, the print format is not problematic; even where screen shots and other images need to be included, they can be incorporated into the print medium of the conventional thesis. These images, plus moving images, can be appended in a CD that can be bound into the back cover of the thesis.

But such solutions are partial and transitional. The deeper problem is that a linear print-based format may not be suitable for the subject-matter of the thesis, which may require a different logic and a different rhetorical shape. For example, a research study on complexity theory or on a problem with many variables may require different points of entry, allowing the reader/user to choose which point of entry, and which navigational route through the material, bests suits their ends. Furthermore, in terms of curation, dissemination and speed of access, electronic formats for the PhD thesis will make it more readily available to other researchers and users. A 2007 survey of policies relating to electronic theses by the Consortium of Research Libraries, however, suggests considerable variation in approach to this matter (11 were considering the matter, 2 had voluntary schemes, 8 had mandatory depositing of electronic versions of theses). It will be important to bear in mind such university variation, and to ensure that readers/examiners are fully apprised of the need to read such theses as carefully as they would in conventional format.

Content

The problem is set out and explored in Andrews and Haythornthwaite (2007), with some solutions offered. This Handbook of E-learning Research emerged from a previous ESRC seminar series on dialogue and communities of enquiry in e-learning in higher education. The handbook contains sections on the content for researching e-learning, theory, policy, language and literacy, and design issues. However, the Handbook does not address specifically the question of the format of PhDs in Education and the social sciences, nor the question of multimodality. Such a question is central to the concerns of research students in this increasingly popular field for research; and for supervisors and users of the research. The problem is compounded by the fact there is little or no research literature on the topic, because it is a new area for practice, policy and research. The information is buried in diverse regulations and practices of UK universities. Part of the aim of the seminar series will be to bring these practices to light, and to see where and how arts- and computer science-based practice can inform new developments in Education and the social sciences.

Accordingly, the seminar series will consist of six one-day seminars at three universities and the BL, all with different areas of expertise and experience to lend to the challenge of making a breakthrough in PhD formats for Education and the social sciences. The series will consist of papers in the morning and early afternoon; and a concluding small-group workshop session in which solutions to the problems encountered are worked out.

References

Andrews, R. and Haythornthwaite, C. (eds) (2007) The Handbook of E-learning Research London: Sage

Context

All universities in the UK have print-based requirements for the submission of PhDs in Education and the social sciences. Such formats will remain excellent in terms of suitability for the topic they are addressing, and for archiving and dissemination. However, the format may not be the most appropriate vehicle for research that addresses e-learning, nor may it be the best way to archive and disseminate the research. The issue is more complex and more urgent than it may at first appear. It is not only a matter of the relationship between the content of the research and its presentation; it is also a matter of the arrangement (in classical rhetoric, dispositio) of the research. The print-based thesis or dissertation assumes a linear sequence: chapter 1 is followed by chapter 2, and so on. The conventional shape of the PhD thesis is to set out an introduction followed by chapters on the literature, on context, on methodology, on results and thus on to the conclusion. There is thus an implied logic to the arrangement, and a framework for argumentation.

PhD research into e-learning (in which definition is included mobile and ubiquitous learning) looks at two dimensions which have implications for the presentation and format of theses. First, electronic media on handheld and desktop computers and software such as Word, dataprocessing programs etc provide a fluid, revisable approach to verbal language. Increasingly, users of these media are encouraged not to print their texts for reasons of sustainability and ecology. Second, the convergence of these new media with an increased attention to multimodal communication (the combination of verbal, visual, aural and other modes of communication) brings about a need to address research both about and through multimodality. Bringing e-learning together with multimodality (as evident on the computer screen, however large or small, desk-based or portable) provides a rich field for research and particularly the consideration of formats for PhD research.

These two dimensions have been considered in the regulations and guidelines for arts-based, computer-science-based and some practice-based PhDs (though not, on the whole, EdDs) at some universities, but they do not form part of conventional practice at most universities. Research students are therefore forced to compromise the intellectual momentum of their research into e-learning by using a print-based, linear format that is not always entirely suitable to their needs, or to the needs of the wider research and research transfer communities. Most literature to date (very little of it is research) is about the archiving of electronic theses. Copeland et al. (2007), JISC (2007), MacColl (2002), Key Services et al. (2006) and UNESCO (2007) all discuss the matter and propose solutions, the latter most comprehensively; but the UK response has been patchy to date, and social science has not addressed the key issue in the present proposal: the creation, supervision and administration of theses in and about electronic/digital multimodality, as well as the archiving of and access to them.

References

Andrews, R. and Haythornthwaite, C. (eds) (2007) The Handbook of E-learning Research London: Sage

Copeland, S., Siddhartha, S. and McMillan, G. (2007) Electronic Theses and Dissertations: pragmatic issues and practical solutions Oxford: Chandos

Index to Theses (2007) – available online and accessed 17.12.07

JISC (2007) Electronic Theses – available online and accessed 17.12.07

Key Services Ltd and UCL Library Services (2006) Evaluation of Options for a UK Electronic Thesis Service: findings from a study of EThOS

MacColl, J. (2002) Electronic Theses and Dissertations: a strategy for the UK, in Ariadne, issue 32 (July 2002)

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (2007) available online and accessed 17.12.07

UNESCO (2007) The Guide to Electronic Theses and Dissertations – available online and accessed 17.12.07

Outputs and plans for dissemination

Outputs will include, at minimum:

• at least one article in each of a peer-reviewed academic and professional journal


• guidance for HEIs in the UK and internationally on regulations and procedures for the creation, supervision, examination and archiving of digital/multimodal theses and dissertations


• an article in the Times Higher Educational Supplement and in The Chronicle of Higher Education (USA)


• an edited, research-based book submitted to a major international publisher, e.g. Sage, Routledge


• managed web pages on the sites of each of the participating institutions, and links made to other HEIs in the UK


• links with existing bodies and networks, especially the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) and EthOS (British Library repository of electronic theses)

Dissemination will be ongoing during the seminar series, via the dedicated web pages. Papers will be put on the web pages in advance of the seminars, with an invitation to respond before, during and after the seminars themselves. The final conference will invite a wider range of academic and professional users of the research, providing a showcase of the work completed during the seminar series. A communications strategy, in line with guidelines and suggestions on the ESRC Society Today web pages, will be developed. Target audiences are Education and social science departments in UK universities, and research students registered in thosedepartments.

Involving Research Users

There are four main research users identified in the present series: research students; administrative and management staff concerned with regulation, guidance and implementation of practices in Education and social science departments; academics and supervisors of research; and librarians concerned with the archiving, storage and availability of doctoral theses.

Research students

At each seminar there will be one presentation by between one and three research student(s) on their work in progress, and on overcoming problems concerned with the arrangement, format and presentation of their research. Research students will also contribute to the afternoon workshop sessions in which small groups will work on solutions to the problems in the field.

Administrative and management staff

Often forgotten in academic research seminars are the staff who manage, revise and implement the regulations and guidance for students. Because this seminar series aims to make a difference to practice in UK universities, management and administrative staff will be invited and encouraged to comment on the papers; as well as contribute to the workshop sessions in the afternoons.

Academic/supervisors of research

These will be the principal contributors of papers to the series. They will also be key players in the encouragement and implementation of new practices in universities with regard to the format and submission of PhDs. The inclusion of one pre-1992 university, two post-1992 universities and the British Library in the series means that there will be capacity building for all partners through interaction and common outputs. The relationship between arts-based departments (Middlesex, Coventry) and social science (Institute of Education, the British Library Department of Social Science Collections and Research) will also be developed. Such capacity building will be between supervisors and examiners in established and new universities, and also for the next generation of research students who will push boundaries in the fields of multimodality and multimedia/e-content in the social sciences, both in terms of content and presentation.

Librarians

Librarians from The British Library and the libraries of each of the participating institutions will not only provide feedback on proposals that are made in the series; they will also take part in the workshops on designing solutions to the problems encountered, and make presentations at the seminars. The last seminar, in particular, will provide a focused forum for the discussion of implementations of the research for librarians and information scientists. Recordings of the six seminars will also be archived in print and/or electronic form at each of the four participating institutions.

Indeed, the last seminar will take the form of a national conference at the British Library site at St Pancras. We will invite not only all the attendees of the previous five seminars, but a wide national range of participants including research students; administrative and management staff from HEIs; academics and supervisors of research; and librarians and information scientists. We will also invite representatives of existing initiatives in the field – NDLTD, EthOS – as well as publishers and journal editors.

Participation Policy

Identity and firmness of commitment of proposed speakers

Professor Peter Halfpenny, Executive Director, National Centre for e-Social Science, University of Manchester – invited and agreed

Professor Richard Andrews, Chair in English, Department of Learning, Curriculum and Communication, Institute of Education – firmly committed
Professor Andrew Brown, Chair in Education; Head of the Doctoral School and Associate Dean for Research, Institute of Education – firmly committed
Dr Andrew Burn, Reader in Education and New Media, London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education – firmly committed
Anton Franks, Senior Lecturer in Education, English and Drama, Department of Learning, Curriculum and Communication, Institute of Education (near completion of PhD on cultural theory and what learning in drama looks like) – firmly committed
Dr Carey Jewitt, Reader in Education and Technology, London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education – firmly committed
June Parnell-Parmley, PhD student, Department of Learning, Curriculum and Communication , Institute of Education (starting work on complexity theory and e-learning) ¬– firmly committed
Dr Caroline Pelletier, Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Learning, Curriculum and Communication, Institute of Education – firmly committed

Dr Stephen Boyd-Davis, Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts, School of Arts and Education, Middlesex University – firmly committed
Professor David Durling, Professor of Design, Middlesex University – firmly committed
Dr Magnus Moar, Senior Lecturer in Digital Design Technologies, Middlesex University – firmly committed
Helen Bendon, Senior Lecturer in Moving Image, Middlesex University – firmly committed

Erik Borg, Lecturer, Centre for Academic Writing, Coventry University (near completion of PhD on the study of writing in Fine Arts Practice and Design at PhD level) – firmly committed
Mark Evans (Coventry) and Mark Hill (Northumbria) – tentatively committed

Jude England, Head of Social Science Collections and Research, The British Library – firmly committed
Barry Knight, Head of Conservation Research, The British Library – firmly committed
Joanna Newman, Strategic Partnerships Manager and leading on project Gateway, The British Library – firmly committed; Anthony Troman, Head of EthOS, The British Library - committed
Johnny Robinson, Social Science Collections and Research, The British Library – firmly committed

Myrrh Domingo, PhD student, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University (research on multimodality and social dimensions of literacy) – firmly committed

Range of students to be invited

The principal audience, among students, will be research students. However, past experience has shown that interested Masters students will also attend. Experience has also shown that most of the attendees come from the host institution, but the funding will ensure at least 12 students from outside the host institution. As indicated in the next section, the costs of speakers and a finite number of research students are met by the proposed budget. In addition, we will invite staff and students from all other UK universities to attend at their own cost. We expect 40—50 attendees per seminar.

Publicity and follow-up action

Publicity will be the responsibility of the Institute of Education and will take the form of posters for the series as a whole, and individual posters for each of the seminars. UK universities will also be informed through information networks, and there will be publicity too on the web pages of the seminar series at each of three participating universities and the British Library. As the focus of the proposed seminar series is national, it is unlikely that we will advertise the series internationally. The administrative team responsible fore the series at IOE will keep a database of attendees, and will ensure that all seminars are advertised to the growing list of attendees via email and via the web pages. See previous section for final conference details.

Justification for funding

The principal costs for this series are shared by the travel expenses for speakers and participants; web design and maintenance; and secretarial costs. There are no costs associated with fees or with the hire of rooms.

Travel and subsistence

Speakers and academics

The series will take place in London (IOE, the British Library and Middlesex University) and Coventry, thus allowing easy access from anywhere in the UK and no overnight stays. The costs of speakers are covered and will not be exceeded. The costs of other academics and users attending the seminars will be covered by the institutions themselves from personal and departmental development funds.

Research students

The bulk of the travel and subsistence costs is devoted to research student attendance. Students from the three universities will be subsidized at £50 per student. This will cover most of their train fare to Coventry or London, including underground fares to IOE and Middlesex. Such subsidy will allow 12 students per seminar to be subsidized. The seminar series will be of particular interest to research students at the beginning of their studies, as they work out the research questions, methodology and emergent structure and format of their theses.

The proposed series envisages modest international costs. These are to cover one return air fare plus three nights’ accommodation in London for Myrrh Domingo, an outstanding PhD student working in the field of multimodality and new literacies, at New York University.

Secretarial/administrative

Administrative time is built in to deal with publicity, registration, arrangement at a local level (e.g. catering, room booking) and handling of expenses claims. Although the principal applicant will be responsible for the budget, he will be assisted by the administrator/secretary in the day-to-day management of the budget.

Web design and maintenance

Previous experience in running a seminar series suggests that a well-designed and well-maintained website is essential in a number of ways. It:

• helps with publicity for the series


• provides continuity


• is a location where papers can be lodged in advance of and after a seminar


• provides information for speakers, participants and those who cannot attend (e.g. other national and international academics, users and students)

Importance of the topic/rationale/why funding from other sources in unavailable

The topic is important to Education/social science departments in universities in the UK – and their staff and research students – because it gets to the heart of key issues in terms of the substance, methodology and format of the doctoral thesis. That is why the bulk of the projected funding is devoted to research students, and to the dissemination of the series through a dedicated website. A further problem is that because the issues are generic to all UK higher education institutions and to all disciplines, there is no disciplinary association or learned society funding in this area. There are no other sources of funding for the exploration of this new development, other than small departmental priming amounts. Such small amounts would not allow the coordination and scale of the series we envisage.

We need an international dimension to the project for comparative and dissemination purposes. This will be provided via the inclusion in one of the seminars of a paper by Myrrh Domingo, and outstanding doctoral student at New York University. She is engaged in research on multimodality and new literacies in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.

She will attend other seminars via video- or audio-link; and co-ordinate the North American side of website materials generation and dissemination.

Her presence will allow better dissemination of the series in the USA, and extra impetus and information about practices in the USA for the website. Although she is not a senior social science researcher, she is well known to the principal organiser of the proposed seminar series in his capacity as Visiting Professor in the Steinhardt School at NYU.