M101:Digital Portfolio/Case Study/Academic

Digital Portfolios for Academics

online can help demonstrate your authority, expertise and research interests. The internet has become the starting point for all searches, so you want to make sure that people are finding authorized biographical and contact information about you. This is especially important when you're starting your academic career. Chances are that your department has a profile page about you, but these may be updated infrequently and buried on university websites. There are a number of social networking sites that you can use to take direct control of your scholarly profile.

The use of digital portfolios in academia has been growing since the growth of electronic journals and books. The reach of ....

Decisions to develop a academic digital portfolio include:

• Academic Impact
• External Impact
• Community Building
• Marketing

Academic Impact

The scholarly information life cycle has traditionally focused on the published article or book as the key output of the process. However, the growth of social media and networked technologies has altered the cycle to include methods of dialogue and output such as blogs, podcasts, open education resources and networking sites that expands the reach of a scholars ideas in new and interactive ways.

The intersection between a scholarly profile and traditional scholarly lifecycle activities has created a space where digital portfolios ....

External Impact

Academic research often illustrates it's impact in the form of the number of citations the original work has in other publications. The conversation of the research will reach the academic field; however, the work is often siloed in this space and the ability to bridge outward is complicated by publisher paywalls and restricted access.

External impact of academic research is the research of the work outside of higher education. This occurs through, "..consultancies, think tanks, the media, and other organization bodies that aggregate, distill and re-package trends in academic research." This "re-packaging" of academic work allows for research to have an impact on the practices of institutions. The creation of an academic profile that highlights research, publishing, and presentations allows for the opportunity of academic work to positively affect change in the world.

For example, Peter Mathews from Heriot Watt University, uses his social policy blog "Urbanity...History" to reach a braoder audience with his research. His digital portfolio space allows him to reach policy networks that should be reading his work as his work can impact their practice. Mathews states,

"It seems that journalists and policy-makers are ‘googling’ when looking for expert advice and academic analysis. I was gobsmacked to receive an email from Scottish Television’s local Edinburgh news team, who had found me through my blog, during the height of the Edinburgh Trams fiasco for a comment on what was happening."