WPA 2008 Roundtable: Steve Wilhoit
Wilhoit
WPA 2008
Roundtable: How can we better document, preserve, protect, and share our learning?
Roundtable participants will introduce several available resources (including The Research Exchange, CompPile, CompFAQs, WAC Clearinghouse ), explore how and why these tools are currently underused, and invite the audience to explore ways to promote more effective uses of these tools to “better document, preserve, protect, and share our learning” . . . .
Our goal for this session is to begin to identify and make visible in a systematic way the various challenges preventing “change,” and to explore possible solutions.
2008 WPA Roundtable Proposal
As the roundtable proposal and these panelists make clear, the venues available to scholars for sharing their work and the tools available for researchers to find it seem to be expanding as quickly as technology makes possible. Why, then, are these sites and tools underused? Why aren’t they overwhelmed with submissions and hits? Though no account can be comprehensive, I’d like to offer 17 possibilities we might discuss.
Unfamiliarity
- Scholars and researchers simply do not know about the sites or tools. They may not even know that such resources exist.
Accessibility
- Scholars and researchers have heard about the sites or tools, but do not know how to access them. They don’t know where to find them online.
Usability
- Once they find the site or locate the tool, they don’t know how to use them. The site or tool is too confusing or intimidating.
Insecurity
- Scholars and researchers are simply scared of or uncomfortable with technology. If resources are not available in paper, they are unlikely to use them.
Confusion
- A rapid proliferation of sties and tools has caused confusion. Sites and tools—many sharing similar names—seem overlapping and redundant.
Volume
- There is simply too much information to sift through effectively. Even a cursory search of a topic or perusal of a site can be overwhelming.
Definition
- The purpose of a site or tool is not immediately transparent. Scholars and researchers can’t determine the site’s aim or purpose.
Focus
- Sites or tools may not focus on the type of work that interests particular scholars and researchers. For example, a site or tool focusing on the scholarship of discovery may not attract those interested in the scholarship of application.
Interest
- The material covered on the site simply does not interest particular scholars and researchers. How large and varied an audience can a single site serve?
Utility
- Scholars and researchers believe the sites or tools have nothing to offer them. They do not see what the site or tool has to do with their professional lives.
Tradition
- Change does not come easily in any field. Tradition (“that’s not the way it’s been done”) is a powerful counterforce to change.
Habit
- Every scholar and researcher has established habits of practice. These habits often do not include the use of these sites or tools.
Training and Education
- Scholars and researchers may not have been trained in the use of sites and tools like these during graduate school and have not participated in professional development programs or educated themselves in their use.
Effort
- It is simply easier not to post material to a web site and not to spend time searching them. The more effort required to use them, the less they will be used.
Tenure/Promotion
- Scholars and researchers may fear that they will somehow be penalized when it comes to tenure and/or promotion decisions if they have posted material online.
Audience
- Scholars and researchers may feel that certain sites or tools were not designed or intended for them. How a site or tool defines “scholarship” or “research” will influence the audience it invokes.
Philosophical Orientation
- Some may simply reject any notion of scholarship and research as a collaborative activity—they are not interested in sharing their work in these venues.
Or they are terrified to have their work available in public — fear of being exposed. I’ve never understood that, but I’ve heard it many times from people.