I’ve been somewhat pre-occupied this week with producing a presentation that will form the basis for a submission to ASCILITE’2007.
The submission, going under the working title “The teleological reason why ICT limits choice for university learners and learning”, will appear on my website later tomorrow – eventually including video.
The paper seeks to directly address the conference theme, the explanation of which suggests that “the informed use of ICT by institutions and their teachers supports flexibility and choice in what is to be learned, how it is learned, when it is learned and how it will be assessed”.
The paper will argue that, due to the characteristics of the design process used by universities to implement ICTs the exact opposite is the most likely outcome. Choice and flexibility will be reduced.
But that’s not what this is about.
One of the reasons we’re working on the paper is that it’s been suggested that it would be good for the unit if “we’re seen at ASCILITE”. The suggestion is that it will raise our profile within the profession through publication.
The problem I’m grappling with at the moment is that there is only so much research and publication the unit can produce. With the advent of the RQF it is increasingly important that we target the “good” outlets. So what are the good outlets?
Journal Rankings
My original discipline is information systems. As a field IS has shown quite an interest in ranking journals as is seen by a Google search.
It doesn’t appear that the education related fields have the same history. My understanding of the RQF that such tiered ranking of publication outputs is one of the metrics being used.
The closest I’ve been able to find are some rankings for computer education at Monash. I believe the University of Newcastle may have a project looking at developing rankings.
I couldn’t find anything via Google. So I wonder what the progress is.
Moving beyond
RQF will making journal rankings important. But it is far from the only measure. Some of it comes back to the community. Even with my limited coverage of this field I’m aware of the following communities: HERDSA, ASCILITE, ODLAA, CADAD, ACODE, Educause.
What are the most effective communities for raising your profile within the educational technology and/or learning design etc communities?
