Hi, One of the discussion points at the ADA LEF is the role of Institutions/Organisational Capacities and Benchmarks. This intersects an international discussion under the topic 'New Criteria for New Media'. To assist framing the Friday workshop, below is a thread of the discussion.
FORWARDED MESSAGE: Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 13:09:40 -0400 From: Jon Ippolito <[email protected]> Subject: New criteria for new media academics To: [email protected] _SUMMARY_ I know some folks on this list have already requested these guidelines privately, but now that Leonardo has published them you can refer your peer committee to their Winter 2009 issue. Kudos to Roger Malina and co. for nudging academia into the 21st century! Leonardo publishes "New Criteria for New Media" Academia's goal may be the free exchange of ideas, but up to now many universities have been wary--if not downright dismissive--of their professors using the Internet and other digital media to supercharge that exchange, especially in the arts and humanities. Peer review committees are supposed to assess a researcher's standing in the field, but to date most have ignored reputations established by blogging, publishing DVDs, or contributing to email lists. In a signal that some universities are warming to digital scholarship, however, the winter 2009 issue of MIT's Leonardo magazine--itself a traditional peer review journal, though known for experimenting with networked media--has published a feature on the changing criteria for excellence in the Internet age. To make its point as concretely as possible, the feature includes the recently approved promotion and tenure guidelines of the University of Maine's New Media Department, together with an argument for expanding recognition entitled "New Criteria for New Media." Rather than throw time-honored benchmarks for excellence out the window, "New Criteria for New Media" tries to extend them into the 21st century. To supplement the "closed" peer review process familiar from traditional journals, U-Me's criteria recognize the value of the "open peer review" employed in recognition metrics such as ThoughtMesh and The Pool. As the name suggests, open peer review allows contributions from any community member rather than a group of experts, and all reviews are public; when combined with an appropriate recognition metric, the result is much faster evaluations than possible via the customary approach. "New Criteria for New Media" also urges academic reviews to reward collaboration in new media research; valuable roles include conceptual architect, designer, engineer, or even matchmaker (e.g., introducing two other researchers whose collaboration results in a publication). Because the University of Maine hopes other institutions will adopt these criteria and adapt them to their own needs, it is releasing them under a Creative Commons (CC-by) license. (Due to a misprint by MIT Press, the Leonardo article highlights the authors' copyrights rather than the CC license; it's surprisingly hard to give things away in a print economy!) The new criteria have already been sought after by individual tenure candidates and cited in the Chronicle of Higher Education. You can find them in Leonardo's winter 2009 issue (vol. 42 no. 1) or online at these links: "New Criteria for New Media" (white paper) http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html "Promotion and Tenure Guidelines" (sample redefined criteria) http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/promotion_tenure_redefinitions.html For more information, please email me or the Still Water lab at the University of Maine http://newmedia.umaine.edu/stillwater/ COMMENTS: Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 From: Simon Biggs <[email protected]> Subject: New criteria for new media academics The peer reviewers are, to some extent, right. In the UK the assessment of staff research performance is ultimately achivied through the research assessment exercise (every several years), which is not run by the institution but by the Higher Education Funding Council, the QANGO responsible for the entire university sector in the UK. Staff teaching performance is assessed similarly, although at more regular intervals. Institutions do of course have their own internal monitoring and evaluation schema, but in a context where external oversight is so strong these internal systems are light touch. HEFCEs evaluations underpin how institutions perceive their staff, effecting promotion and job security (there is no automatic promotion here, nor tenure). Where the US system is decentralised and devolved the UKs is highly centralised. Given that all but one university in the UK are public institutions (the University of Buckingham is the only private university in the UK licensed to accredit its own degrees) this level of centralisation is not surprising. Expenditure of public money gained through the tax system has to be assured publicly. However, there are elements of the U-Maine guidelines that we in the UK can learn from. In particular, we could benefit from a broader definition of what constitutes research and what constitutes a valid research output. That said, my impression is that UK already uses a broader definition of these things, with the RAE assessing creative practice as research and HEFCE having a funding council in part dedicated to supporting practice-led research. We also have well developed doctoral study programmes in the creative arts. This broad undertsanding of what can be research has been reflected in what the RAE can consider a research output (an exhibition, for example, or an artefact). However, proposed changes to this process would seem to be moving in the other direction, with a renewed emphasis on more traditional measures of research quality (so-called metrics), where journals will be ranked according to importance and research council funding given more prominence in measuring success. This approach will function to penalise research that is disseminated outside more narrowly defined and recognised platforms. We will see where we are in 2013, when the next assessment exercise will be but I think in retrospect we will regard, with nostalgia, the period of 1996-2008 as a golden age for creative arts funding in UK higher education. I hope I am wrong... Regards Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art [email protected] www.eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ <http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/> From: roger malina <[email protected]> Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:22:47 +0200 Subject: New criteria for new media academics Jon I have to mention that as you know your article was peer reviewed before publication= and received several negative peer reviews which I over ruled !!! One of the concerns raised by one peer reviewer was that the U Maine Approach was very specific to a US american university and that they were maybe inapplicable in non usa educational systems. Roger END FWD Best Ian M Clothier Faculty of Art, Commerce and Technology Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki www.witt.ac.nz 0064 6 757 3100 x 8895 intercreate.org ianclothier.com This communication - including any attachments - may contain legally privileged information, and is confidential to the addressee. 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