Can academics change the world?

Via The Conversation:

Research and creative thinking can change the world. This means that academics have enormous power. But, as academics Asit Biswas and Julian Kirchherr have warned, the overwhelming majority are not shaping today’s public debates.

Instead, their work is largely sitting in academic journals that are read almost exclusively by their peers. Biswas and Kirchherr estimate that an average journal article is “read completely by no more than ten people”. They write:

Up to 1.5 million peer-reviewed articles are published annually. However, many are ignored even within scientific communities – 82% of articles published in humanities [journals] are not even cited once.

This suggests that a lot of great thinking and many potentially world altering ideas are not getting into the public domain. Why, then, are academics not doing more to share their work with the broader public?

The answer appears to be threefold: a narrow idea of what academics should or shouldn’t do; a lack of incentives from universities or governments; and a lack of training in the art of explaining complex concepts to a lay audience.

Are anthropologists more prone at failing to reach outside academia than experts in other disciplines? What can we do better?

I've worked on projects within anthropology that were born of grand popularizing intentions. More often than not, they still ended up mostly catering to academics talking to other academics, via formats that maintained the most traditional academic structure and which still act as academic currency. Since then, I've experimented with (my own) writing in ways to better engage public audiences and make some of the theoretical concepts and ethnographic data less impenetrable without watering down the anthropological quality. It's a skill you have to practice to refine. It most certainly isn't taught in any systematic way in academia, and even if it were, I'm not certain everyone who is good at one can compete in the other. I'd love to be proven wrong. Thoughts?

The second part of this proposition suggests that anthropologists talk to/at their peers too much and at the expense of the wider public. I'd say that as a discipline, we talk within too small a circle of peers interested only in our tiny niche of interests. Both of these things do a disservice to popular(izing) anthropology. Certainly anthropologists can present the big picture concepts to the outside world better if we open up to each other first.

Comment below to share your favorite public-facing or popular anthropology resources.

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Side-by-side search engine comparisons make searching and finding exponentially more fun (and useful, too)

From John Postill's blog:

Wouldn't it be nice to have a free online resource that allowed you to see Britannica and Wikipedia entries side-by-side when researching a topic? A Brikipedia.

In response to this suggestion, I have found a solution worthy of note: meonl.com. The site offers side-by-side search engine comparisons and also offers a Firefox extension (described below). 

This handy tool lets you enter your keyword search string once and returns results from multiple search engines. The results from your chosen sites (as many as you like) then appear in side-by-side panels. Several icons on the UI let you customize which search engines appear and in which order; add additional panels; switch languages; expand or hide panels; and scroll from side to side.

When I first found this tool, it supported quite a few useful search engines, but with the notable exception of Britannica and Scientific Commons (the former making up John’s Brikipedia request, and the latter one of my personal favorites). So here comes the best part. I wrote an email to meonl.com asking for more search engine options. I got a prompt reply from the developer, Jozef, who promptly set to work on my request. Not only did he add the engines I asked for on the same day, but he included additional ones of an academic nature (Wolfram Alpha and Google Scholar). How’s that for customer service?

For web researchers this tool is an all-round winner. Add friendly and efficient customer service and what more can you want?

So, I give you Brikipedia, only better, with a host more options for side-by-side searching. You can browse to meonl.com or add it to your list of Firefox search engines here.

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Open Anthropology Cooperative

Several anthropologists have encouraged the formation of an Open Anthropology Cooperative to engage in anthropological discussion and collaboration away from the restrictions of formal academic management. It looks as if all of the tools which have (relatively) long been at our disposal - wikis, blogs, interactive social networking platforms - will be put to the excellent task of opening up the discipline to students, faculty and non-academics alike. I look forward to the next stage of development which will be the implementation and organization of a web platform upon which the Cooperative can grow.

I'd like to see the OAC become a comfortable channel for discussion which does not intimidate amateurs or first-year undergraduates, yet remains useful for doctoral students, fieldworkers, lecturers and specialists in all fields. Broad is good. I also hope that it will become truly international (and multilingual) and incorporate students and departments thus far not so evident in the anthropology blogosphere and consequently missing out on some outstanding knowledge dissemination. Above all, I'm interested in furthering digital anthropology, which I am pleased will have a strong base in this cooperative effort.

In my opinion, there is no reason for an invented divide that reduces web-based academic content to a second-rate substitute for formal (read: expensive, elaborate, bureaucratic) channels. Why not overlap "open" and "official" academia until they are one and the same? If the technology and demand can sustain it - which I believe they can - making anthropological and ethnographic knowledge freely available should be a priority. This can reflect back heavily upon the academic method itself, both in theory and in practice.

How about an online/offline seminar series, bridging the gap with web-based multimedia, in-person meet-ups, etc? Crossing over from the lecture hall to the web, sharing teaching and learning materials, creating new bodies for peer revision and publication are all possible and positive outcomes. Breaking down the publishing barrier and enabling actual feedback with established anthropologists can only help to aid in the development of better research and analysis.

The key to success, as always, will be participation. Visit the (temporary) forum on Keith Hart's The Memory Bank website to learn more, to follow the progress of the OAC and, of course, to contribute.

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The future looks dim, or are those just the students?

iTunes U Proves Better than Going to Class
Sarah Perez

Skip the lecture, download the podcast. That's probably not what university professors tell their students, but perhaps they should. New psychological research conducted by Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, shows that students who only listened to podcasts of lectures achieved substantially higher exam results than those who attended class in person.

To find out how much students can learn from a podcast, McKinney's team created one for a lecture from an introductory psychology course. The podcast contained both audio and video of the slides used in class.

Half the students (32 of 64) skipped the class and listened to the podcast only. The other half attended in person, where they also received a printed handout. A week later, the students were tested on the material.

Podcast Listeners Did Better
The students who downloaded the podcast alone averaged a C (71 out of 100) but those who attended class averaged a D. And those who listened to the podcast and took notes did even better - their average was 77.

Before university classrooms empty out, it's important to note that this is only preliminary research. McKinney's study involved only a single lecture. Also, motivation may have come into play as well. Her experiment didn't count for class credit, so students were encouraged to participate with iTunes gift cards. The high scorer from each group was awarded a $15 gift certificate for use in the online store.

McKinney now plans to further study podcasts in the classroom over the course of an entire semester, instead of just one class. She wonders if students might find podcasts more useful early on in a class, when the material is still new. Still, McKinney is a big believer in the power of technology and its impact on education. "I do think it's a tool," she says. "I think that these kids are programmed differently than kids 20 years ago."

More facilitation of the dumbing-down of an entire generation masquerading as empirical research. I think the real story here is that after being provided with detailed audio and visual recordings of entire lectures and bribed with iTunes credit, students in this 'study' - who didn't have to take a single note by hand - topped out at a C average. Students who showed up and were given written materials to take away managed a stunningly unimpressive D average.

I'm not even going to ask who McKinney thinks "programmed" "these kids". The answer might be just the catalyst I need to give up hope ... on everything.

Perhaps the fact that the students are referred to as both children and brainless, lifeless entities subject to manipulation is indicative of a toxicity endemic to an education system which needs to employ bribery and trendy gadgetry to achieve barely passing grades. I have no doubt that a good podcast, which, after all, can be listened to/watched, reviewed, paused, saved and shared, can supplement a learning experience to beneficial ends. Taking notes in conjunction with audiovisual input should jump scores even more drastically. Above all, being able to discuss and question (whether in person or via email, chat, webcam, etc) the material with the original author or speaker is also invaluable. Few educators disagree that as many tools of learning as are available should always be used together to enhance the experience for all involved. My impression is that this 'study' started from a position of low expectations to justify already falling standards in higher education. In the end, you only get what you give.

Perhaps a better experiment would be to provide podcasts to students in advance of a lecture or seminar, so that the time in contact with the lecturer can be better spent engaged in discussion and debate, rather than the recounting of a PowerPoint presentation. However, this would require that all students read/listen to the material in advance, make notes, willingly participate, think independently, and accept their lecturers and tutors as guides on the academic journey, rather than glorified notetakers. There's always a catch!

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