Post on 13-Jan-2016
description
e-Research Infrastructure Development and Community Engagement
UK e-Science All Hands Meeting
Nottingham, 13.09.2007
Alex Voss, alex.voss@ncess.ac.uk
Community Engagement
Two related JISC projects, started April’07 Funded under the e-Infrastructure programme
community engagement strand Aimed at widening uptake of
e-Infrastructures Common approach to evidence gathering,
similar analytic approaches but different outputs / interventions
Understanding & Widening Uptake
Drawing on science and technology studies Early adopters - followers - late adopters (Not character types) Mutual shaping Sociotechnical alignment Path dependencies - lock-in Uneven distribution of costs & benefits User-designer relations
Designing interventions Based on understanding of drivers / barriers / enablers /
alignment / beaten paths
e-Uptake
Enabling Uptake of e-Infrastructure Services
Immediate Aims
Consolidate understanding of user needs Identification of gaps in the training &
support needed Run training, education and outreach
events across disciplines Create a repository of event information,
support information and learning material
Longer term
Recommendations on how responses to barriers might be sustained and funded in the future
Foster ongoing dialogue between service and technology providers, application developers and research communities
Analysis
Of barriers to uptake as well as enablers Through document reviews and fieldwork
(interviews, surveys or direct observation) Static, linear description is not adequate as there
is no one typology of issues Searchable along a number of dimensions
(typologies and tags) through a web interface Better ‘recipient design’
Intervention
Through Training, Education and Outreach (TOE) Activities
Series of workshops and training events in different application areas
Development of training and support material for these communities
UK ‘one-stop-shop’: event information, support material and support contacts
Crucially: federation to community sites (e.g., NCeSS, AHeSSC)
Stakeholder Involvement
Support through the communities of service providers, technology developers and users (of various stripes) is essential
Review workshops to validate findings Overlap with other activities exists and creates
additional requirements but also opportunities Aim is to foster an ongoing discourse that will
last longer than the project itself
e-Infrastructure Use Cases and Service Usage Models
Outputs
Capturing patterns of use:Transferable Inspiring examples
Three different, but related outputs:Experience ReportsUse CasesService Usage Models
Key word here is traceability Easily searchable and consumable by stakeholders
Collecting Evidence
Gathering experience reports Semi-structured interviews guided by an
interview framework. Identifies research area, research tasks, and tools
and technologies used
Fieldwork and producing short ethnographies of practiceE.g. production of video vignettesResource constraints & practical agenda
Use Cases
Engaging stories about e-Infrastructure usage, tied back to more concrete experience reports
Generalise over experience reports Make usage patterns more user friendly
and transferable
Use Cases Example
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Community Process
Important aspect to achieve sustainability OSSwatch consultation explored the idea
of forming a community around eIUS and e-Uptake.Users ContributorsCommitters
Stakeholder Benefits
Potential benefits to Service Providers:Input for their own requirements analysis and
user engagement activitiesMore publicity for their servicesGet at how researchers use a particular
serviceUnderstanding of how researchers join up
services to achieve a particular goal
Stakeholder Benefits (II)
Potential benefits for researchers:Learn about ways of using e-InfrastructureFind out what key decisions need to be madeFind contacts: peers, support, trainingTell service providers about their ways of
using e-Infrastructure
Summary / Outlook Understand uptake as a complex social process Enable uptake through more targeted interventions Foster developments within communities rather than just
offering technologies to them. Initial review and conceptual work and piloting of
fieldwork Now developing strategies for the next stage, evidence
gathering Work on technical outputs and planning events Next presentation: e-Social Science ‘07 @ Ann Arbor,
7th-9th October (http://ess.si.umich.edu)