How will COVID-19 impact student research projects?
Around the world, higher education faculty and students have been grappling with the mammoth task of flipping from face-to-face teaching to online learning, practically overnight. As teaching faculty scramble to figure out how to use Zoom for online learning and the debate continues as to whether universities should cancel exams or switch to home-based open book or open Google exams, it’s becoming clear that the impact of COVID-19 on academic research could be just as profound as the impact on teaching. In-person lab experiments, face-to-face interviews, focus groups, fieldwork and other data collection may be impossible for much of 2020. Where possible, researchers will switch modes from face-to-face to virtual or telephone data collection, and where that’s not possible or desirable for practical or methodological reasons, university research offices and funders are issuing guidance for academics who need to delay their data collection or fieldwork.
Credit where credit is due: The startups, products and organizations giving academics credit for more of their work
It’s all about incentives. The current academic ecosystem incentivises publication in high impact factor journals and grant capture above all else, but there is more to being an academic than producing journal articles and winning grants. Luckily there are an increasing number of initiatives that are helping academics get credit for more of the work they do and increase their broader impact. This post rounds up some of the most interesting efforts.
It’s good to share! Encouraging the sharing, reuse, and citation of teaching materials in computational social science
The beginning of term is nearing. You’re teaching a new module on Computational Social Science (CSS). The field is developing rapidly and so are best practices around teaching the theory, methods and techniques to students.
Where do you start when you’re putting together your teaching materials? Do you visit the websites and blogs of academics who are experienced in teaching CSS to look for resources? Do you search online for syllabi, reading lists and tutorials? Maybe you scour YouTube for videos to include in your slides?
Together with a group of UK academics, the SAGE Ocean team have been digging into where academics go to find teaching materials and what the barriers are for academics who want to share, reuse and give and get credit for the materials they produce for teaching. This post includes thoughts from the group on what’s needed to promote a stronger culture of sharing teaching materials in CSS. And we’ve curated a list of our favorite resources for you too!
Experimenting with data visualization in virtual reality
To learn more about the potential for VR to transform data visualization, Katie Metzler worked with SAGE colleagues, Diana Aleman and Andrew Boney and the team at Datavized, a startup based in New York City, on a project to turn data from one of SAGE’s data products, SAGE Stats, into a 3D VR experience.
Big data rich and big data poor
Data is being created faster than ever before however without access to these data-sets or the expertise to analyse them, research is confronted with a replication crisis and is vulnerable to commercial motivations. The problem is growing as Katie Metzler points out, "Firstly, because replication is the engine of science, and irreproducible research slows progress... secondly the motivations of industry researchers and social scientists may differ in ways that may really matter."
Putting big data to good use
"Big data and mathematical models aren’t inherently bad... it depends on the way it’s used, by whom, and in service of what outcomes." says Katie Metzler. Against backdrop of media stories warning us about big data and its dangers, SAGE Publishing hosted a panel debate as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science panel entitled “Putting big data to good use” at the British Academy in London where Katie Metzler leads the discussion.