Exploring the (missed) connections between digital scholarship and faculty development: a conceptual analysis

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between two research topics: digital scholarship and faculty development. The former topic drives attention on academics' new practices in digital, open and networked contexts; the second is focused on the requirements and strategies to promote academics' professional learning and career advancement. The research question addressing this study is: are faculty development strategies hindered by the lack of a cohesive view in the research on digital scholarship? The main assumption guiding this research question is that clear conceptual frameworks and models of professional practice lead to effective faculty development strategies. Through a wide overview of the evolution of both digital scholarship and faculty development, followed by a conceptual analysis of the intersections between fields, the paper attempts to show the extent on which the situation in one area (digital scholarship) might encompass criticalities for the other (faculty development) in terms of research and practices. Furthermore, three scenarios based on the several perspectives of digital scholarship are built in order to explore the research question in depth. We conclude that at the current state of art the relationship between these two topics is weak. Moreover, the dialogue between digital scholarship and faculty development could put the basis to forge effective professional learning contexts and instruments, with the ultimate goal of supporting academics to become digital scholars towards a more open and democratic vision of scholarship.

Open scholarship in Australia: A review of needs, barriers, and opportunities

“…Funding agencies communicate with deputy vice chancellors of research rather than directly with leaders of repositories and researchers. Barriers for faculty leaders (Gross and Ryan, 2015;Peekhaus and Proferes, 2015;Pinfield, 2015;McKiernan, 2017;Raffaghelli, 2017;Narayan et al, 2018) Open scholarship practices, especially those that fall outside traditionally rewarded research, can hurt their faculty evaluation. University evaluation systems/staff promotion continues to focus on citations in prestigious journals.…”

“…Thus in practice faculty leaders would benefit if they encouraged staff to use open access platforms to increase the visibility of their research and to reach a wider audience, yet they continue to be hampered by institutional ranking systems against which their faculty will be assessed. Further challenges confronted by faculty leaders include lack of awareness about future prospects of open scholarship; concern over their staff's career advancement; the influence on the faculty's allocation of research funds based on ERA; problems of authority and trust regarding the scholarly nature of open access journals and digital platforms; lack of funds to train staff and students in the use of new tools and to support the development of open digital resources; reluctance to include images, or information that may require legal agreements and software licenses to be shared via public platforms; deep-seated incentives toward prestigious academic publishing houses; and limited awareness of and familiarity with advanced digital applications (Rodriguez, 2014;Gross and Ryan, 2015;Raffaghelli, 2017;Narayan et al, 2018).…”

«Datificación» y Educación Superior: Hacia la construcción de un marco para la alfabetización en datos del profesorado universitario

“…El constructo principal subyacente es el de desarrollo de competencia digital en el profesorado, vinculado a las prácticas abiertas, en red y digitales llevadas a cabo por académicos en sus actividades profesionales. Este concepto, ha sido tratado de varias maneras y con distintos enfoques pero recientemente se ha caracterizado como «Digital Scholarship», que podemos traducir como «trabajo académico digital» (Li, Greenhow, y Askari, 2016; Manca y Ranieri, 2017; Pearce, Weller, Scanlon, y Kinsley, 2010; Raffaghelli, 2017b;. Como ha sido puesto en evidencia en la revisión de la literatura, las discusiones sobre qué aspectos deben ser considerados como parte de la «Digital Scholarship» están bastante diversificados entre didáctica e investigación, lo que complejiza el escenario ( Raffaghelli, Cucchiara, Manganello y Persico, 2016;Raffaghelli, 2017b).…”

“…Este concepto, ha sido tratado de varias maneras y con distintos enfoques pero recientemente se ha caracterizado como «Digital Scholarship», que podemos traducir como «trabajo académico digital» (Li, Greenhow, y Askari, 2016; Manca y Ranieri, 2017; Pearce, Weller, Scanlon, y Kinsley, 2010; Raffaghelli, 2017b;. Como ha sido puesto en evidencia en la revisión de la literatura, las discusiones sobre qué aspectos deben ser considerados como parte de la «Digital Scholarship» están bastante diversificados entre didáctica e investigación, lo que complejiza el escenario ( Raffaghelli, Cucchiara, Manganello y Persico, 2016;Raffaghelli, 2017b). Resulta claro que mientras existe en el profesorado universitario un área de competencia ligada a la investigación, que muy frecuentemente puede ser tratada con los mismos parámetros de «data literacy» aplicados a la ciencia de datos en su cruce con los criterios de ciencia abierta («Open Science»), la alfabetización de datos para la didáctica tiene coincidencias con otros ámbitos de la educación, si bien posee sus aspectos característicos.…”

Digital Scholarship – rethinking educational scholarship in the digital world

“…Over the last few years, there has been increasing awareness of how engagement and demonstration of scholarly educational research and teaching activities have been transformed by a variety of new technologies (Raffaghelli et Goh P, Sandars J MedEdPublish https://doi.org/10.15694/mep.2019.000085.1 Page | 2 al., 2016; Raffaghelli, 2017). There are three main areas in which technologies have led transformation:…”