We’ve chatted (see e.g. here) about blogging and academia, and some of the scares associated to it, (largely due to ignorance which is hopefully short-lived). I’ve also told you about the meeting I was in last week where several interested parties brainstormed about the issue. Here’s another article* about the matter, this time by Robert S. Boynton, in Slate magazine, sensationally entitled: Attack of the Career-Killing Blogs – When academics post online, do they risk their jobs? Looks like he’s been chatting with Crooked Timber‘s John Holbo, who was one of my fellow brainstormers last friday. He’s been thinking about several approaches to making academic blogging more accessible and more… acceptable. Some of his thoughts (many of which would be excellent to implement) are in the article.
In my view, at the stage blogging is right now, it is primarily a matter of educating our colleagues about how powerful a tool blogging can be for research, teaching, and outreach, among other things that a university is supposed to be doing. (See thoughts on this here.) Your blogging should be no more frightening to our colleagues than you having a course website, or you giving a public lecture in the local bookstore or school. We need to help them realize this.
In universities enlightened enough to have promotions committees that give serious consideration to that part of your tenure dossier that falls under outreach (teaching and research aside for the moment…), blogging activity should at least make a positive contribution there (I’m not talking mostly about pictures of your dog, or your trip to the museum, I’m talking about the other stuff blogging can be about – your work. Although…never mind, another time).
If you can incorporate blogging into your teaching and research (more on this from me in a post to come very soon), then it fits into those parts of your dossier too. We need to educate our colleagues about its value, and get more of them to blog too, if they want to (for example, letting people know how easy it is to set up a blog…..and that it can take up however much time you choose it to take up, and no more).
These things will change fast if we lead by example, show good practice, and demonstrate tangible benefits. Remember how short a time ago it was that the ArXiv was just an underground mailing list, and people were suspicious? They thought the world was going to collapse because they could read a paper from across the world that had not been refereed! I recall being one of the only people in the field who had LaTeX-ed transparencies, and with colour on them (I used coloured pens to shade stuff in…no colour printer available, you see), and then later again with projecting talks from a computer (which I refuse to call “powerpoint”, since it is not). Now everyone’s doing it, and it happened in a really short space of time -just a few years… (Now people think I’m a bit weird when I show up and give a chalk talk….!!) Remember back when you were the only person you knew in your department with a website? Or when you had that camera conencted to your computer, but there was nobody else to have a video collaboration with? (Oh, wait….that’s still a problem…)
Anyway, thing can change fast and new genuinely useful tools will find always their way into the academic workplace. I hope this will be the same for blogging very soon.
Have a read of the article. What do you think?
-cvj
(*Thanks for the link, Nick Warner!)
November 18th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
I don’t want to be too cynical here but remember, Institutions of Higher Learning are “in the business” of selling information for a price.
From a business perspective, the fact that people can get via a blog or via the internet, information that they previously would have to pay tuition for, could be perceived as extremely threatening.
The complete transparency of the Web is as much of a potential threat to Academia as peer to peer networking is to the music industry.
I am going to predict that these institutions will in the near future develop “guidelines” for academic blogging. Some of it (protecting institutionally sponsored intellectual property assets) may seem to make sense but it will be utilized to place some clear limitations on this type of activity. Academics will be required to agree to the guidelines or risk loss of job or denial of tenure.
Like I said I don’t want to be too cynical about this but I want to be naive either.
I guess we’ll see.
Elliot
November 18th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
Hi Elliot,
You say:
I say:
I don’t agree that is what universities are in the business of doing, and I don’t think that most university administrators think that either. Information is not the same as an education. I write papers. They are published. Nobody at the university stops me from doing that because I am not asking for money for it. I give public talks. Same thing. I have course materials on the web. Same thing. Several professors have course materials on the web which have arbitrary levels of detail. (You can even dowload podcasts and video podcasts of lectures from some university websites such as USC -for some (not all, I admit) materials).
Universities are there to serve the community too. Most of the information we generate is put out there in the public domain.
A blog need be no different. When people realise that a blog is also a way of organising stuff on your own desktop, or within a group of people working together on the same thing and carrying out a conversation, then it will sit right there alongside the telephone.
As for your prediction…I think that you’re right.. people will make up rules… if we work fast, we can sit at the table and participate when those rules are being made.
Cheers,
-cvj
November 18th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
I sincerely hope you are more right about this than I am.
Elliot
November 18th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
It will also be interesting to see if these sorts of efforts at “regulations” will be differing for: private versus public institutions; sites that generate greater versus lesser revenue from blogads or donations; academics whose blogs are within or concern their own fields versus those that concern widely different topic threads; bloggers who advocate for political agendas versus ones who attempt to stay neutral and/or solicit diverse views; and so forth.
One could imagine the various conversations that are already going on in the admin buildings between Deans/Presidents/Board members and their corporate/ philanthropic benefactors. The proverbial cauldron of worms, chum, and snake oil.
November 18th, 2005 at 6:49 pm
I am glad the article ends on a happy note. While I don’t have one (a blog) I think physics and science blogs are the best thing since the wheel and pretty soon will be the norm, just like the arxiv is now the norm. Last year I started reading Peter Woit’s blog then Lubos M’s blog. Then I discovered Jacques Distler’s blog and then Sean Carroll’s blog. And now this one. Compulsive reading every day. The amount of technical material I feel I have learned and picked up from these blogs is just astounding. Then there are usually links to papers, lectures, seminars, news stories etc. Plus all the non-technical stuff and other interests and hobbies the bloggers have and the travels they do and conferences they attend. You get a real feel for what is going on. Time spent on going through the physics blogsphere is anything but wasted.
Even those times when I don’t fully understand the highly technical stuff I can often/usually get the gist of what is going on in some specialised research area or problem and at least get the crux of the technical argument and what people are trying to do. Plus the sometimes very heated arguments and debates back and forth. It is essentially what science is all about and what the internet is really all about. (Although sometimes it could be done a bit less rudely by some people).
I do feel blogs are and will continue to be a very powerful and useful tool in physics and science education. Physicists all over the planet can interact and argue and contribute, anonomously if preferred, no matter where they are. Interested laypersons can also learn a lot too and will realize that scientists do all the stuff other “normal people” do too. That is, we are human. It is also a good way to help break the stereotypical image people out there might still have of “a scientist”.
November 19th, 2005 at 1:49 am
It seems universities are selling a stamp that says “this guy is indeed educated and we stake our reputation on him being competent” (forgive the gender bias)
There is no way that over a blog you can convey course material better than in person lecturess (i’m partial to learning by listenting) or do a better job than you could get from buying a copy of your favorite text book and working though it. (from the point of view of a current student)
The one issue that was mentioned, not sure if in this context, is intelectual property rights. If for instance a professor buys some software that comes with source, and then posts detailed information about how it works, this may cause issues. Could also make a case that intelectual property rights are silly, but