Maria Perifanou

"Presenting and sharing research is, in most cases, a secondary task for a researcher. However, its importance cannot be underestimated, as obtaining research results is not enough – they should be contributed to the society. Social Media can support this process. Nowadays emerging technologies have changed the way that everyone finds, presents and communicates information opening up new forms of undertaking and disseminating research. Researchers have now the possibility to work in collaboration and communicate their research results in a highly efficient way making use of the power of Web 2.0 tools.

It is though important to know which tools you will choose for each purpose, in which way and to what extend, in order to achieve successfully your goals. In fact, there is no single ’right way’ for researchers to use Web 2.0 tools in order to improve the way they work. How you use them will depend on you, your discipline, those around you and the research you are doing. There are though some important and useful “key-actions” that could support this process.
Objectives of the workshop:

The general goals of the proposed workshop is to provide the participants with practical guidelines and alternative perspectives on searching and selecting useful info for their research as well as presenting and sharing their research results. After the workshop, the participants should be able to consider various types of sharing and presenting their research and improve their skills in using them.
More specifically, this workshop aims to:
1. introduce the idea (and its importance) of scientific publishing and sharing research results;
2. give useful advice on how to build a dissemination web strategy;
3. introduce useful social media tools for researchers;
4. give ideas on how to build up a network and how to curate and filter useful networks;
5. show how to manage information overload;
6. give practical tips on creating links between SNSs;
7. show how researchers can measure the impact of their digital footprint and choose the appropriate Web analytics tools
8. show how to maximize the traffic of a site or a blog and create viral effects;
9. give practical tips on how to prepare and where to publish research results.

Brief description: audience & format
The workshop is targeted for students interested in getting to learn about the basic principles of sharing research and the strategies and tools for that. Several ways of sharing and presenting research will be presented to illustrate the basic principles and the variety of the forms. Then, the strategies for using social media and content curation for enhancing research will be presented. The workshop will also include several practical activities.

The workshop will include four major parts (90 min):
a) Brief discussion facilitated by a list of guiding questions (1st part): The organizers will first explain the main reasons of sharing research and the importance of building a dissemination strategy. Then they will propose a list of useful ways/tools that participants could use to disseminate their research and curate the content (20 min).
b) Brief discussion facilitated by a list of guiding questions (2nd part): The organizers will continue with the second round of the discussion. Participants will be invited to discuss about methodologies and tools that can help them prepare and publish (how/where) their research results (20 min).

c) Choose between 2 activities:
-Hands on session (1): Participants will work in groups of four or five. Each group will have the task to design a web strategy guide that could help researchers disseminate their research in the most efficient and creative way (50min: 30 min activity & 20 min group presentations).
-Hands on session (2): The attendees will work again in groups of four or five. They will be invited to explore the tools and find ways to use them in order to prepare and publish their research presentations (50 min: 30 min activity & 20 min group presentations).

Tutors:
Maria Perifanou, Mikhail Fominykh and Ana Loureiro

This collection presents the stories of our contributors’ experiences and insights, in order to demonstrate the enormous potential for openly-licensed and accessible datasets (Open Data) to be used as Open Educational Resources (OER). Open Data is an umbrella term describing openly-licensed, interoperable, and reusable datasets which have been created and made available to the public by national or local governments, academic researchers, or other organisations. These datasets can be accessed, used and shared without restrictions other than attribution of the intellectual property of their creators1.While there are various de2nitions of OER, these are generally understood as openly-licensed digital resources that can be used in teaching and learning.

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