I’m trying to work a bit less and play more, so today I was delighted to take a break from writing academic paper-writing to attend an event based on my colleagues’ (Alicja Pawluczuk and John Morrison) PhD research. This post is my tweets, hopefully in chronological order, with minimal editing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for all of the round-table discussion, but it would have been bad practice to tweet from that anyway.

John is ‪@digiethnography. My less relevant tweets are in block-quotes.

Preamble

And in the folders at ‪#digiimpact are

I’ve always been really impressed by ‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk‘s visual creativity. Here’s some examples from ‪#digiimpact:

Temptations supplied by ‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk at #digiimpact. Being vegan and type 1 diabetic says no! Bah!

Alicja’s presentation

‪#digiimpact is about evaluation of evaluation and sharing of best practice.

Why are we at ‪#digiimpact? To learn about evaluation of digital projects. All of a sudden, we are online – but does it work? How do we measure success, asks ‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk. Counting the number of people reached on Facebook is no longer enough – surely there must be a better way. Hence her PhD.

‘What is the experience of evaluation for youth workers and youth?’, asks ‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk. ‪#digiimpact is about giving back to this community. This morning, ‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk will present, then
‪@digiethnography, then lunch, then sessions that we (the audience) want.

‘Why research digital youth work?’, asks ‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk at ‪#digiimpact. Because digital is getting into youth work, e.g. cyberbullying, youth use of digital. Research gap is that we don’t know about evaluation: how do we experience it? Is it like an exam? Is it interactive?

Here’s what ‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk‘s audience think ‘social impact’ is, at ‪#digiimpact:

and what the audience thinks ‘social impact evaluation’ means, at ‪#digiimpact:

Themes arising in ‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk‘s research, and her research questions, at ‪#digiimpact

‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk now talking about her research results at ‪#digiimpact
RQ1: Youth workers say it has to be positive, but youth say it can be positive and negative, and it’s managed by adults (it doesn’t belong to us)

‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk now talking about her research results at ‪#digiimpact
RQ1: Youth workers say ‘we love digital but… we are insecure, we need appropriate support, we need to be positive about it to get funding

@AlicjaPawluczuk now talking about her research results at ‪#digiimpact
RQ1: big question: ‘digital impact – what are we looking for?’

@AlicjaPawluczuk now talking about her research results at ‪#digiimpact
RQ2: audience answers to ‘what are evaluation tools?’, and ‘favourite evaluation tools’

gizmo is like surveymonkey, says an audience-member at ‪#digiimpact

and our ‘least favourite tools’, and ‘those we have to use, even if we don’t like them’:

@AlicjaPawluczuk says at ‪#digiimpact that young people generally don’t like surveys. It’s hard to make them participatory. People like observations and conversations (story-telling is powerful). Also liked are creative and participatory tools. Youth say ‘the man’ likes numbers.

@AlicjaPawluczuk talking about her results ‪#digiimpact.
RQ3 results.

@Twitter Why are many of my tweets not appearing in my ‘Tweets’ view???

@AlicjaPawluczuk says at ‪#digiimpact that there is often a need to chase positive stories.

@AlicjaPawluczuk talking about her results ‪#digiimpact
RQ3 results. Often people have to say ‘everything is great’, and ‘we are all great’. So ‘evaluation = disempowerment’, she suggests.
and there is tie-in with other research.

@Twitter They appear in ‘Tweets and replies’. I’m using Safari on MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6

 

Oops – got a bit distracted by the lacunae in the Twitter web interface, at ‪#digiimpact. Will try to catch up…

The unenviable (IMHO) task for educators. There is concern that we are trying to force people to conform their work to pre-established numerical goals – and this tends to stifle innovation and creativity, @AlicjaPawluczuk says (second photo in this tweet).

@AlicjaPawluczuk also says we have to perform roles.

@AlicjaPawluczuk says at ‪#digiimpact that people feel forbidden from providing negative evaluation, even if they hate something! She says evaluation should help young people become critical thinkers.

@AlicjaPawluczuk now talking about RQ4 results at ‪#digiimpact. This is what digital impact should be. But so often evaluation forces participants to score things highly. Personally, I am horrified that such things aren’t anonymised.

@AlicjaPawluczuk now talking about RQ4 results at ‪#digiimpact. It’s important to know that evaluation will be used to generate real impact, but that participants’ data will be protected. Again, I’m horrified that it’s not!

@AlicjaPawluczuk now concluding at ‪#digiimpact. Sorry, my typing speed has dropped to that of an arthritic snail.

@AliStoddart1 I’m strongly reminded of your dislike of ‘fill in a Word form, then email it’ and your attempts to bring in creative digital tools to @ScotParl work by what @AlicjaPawluczuk is saying at ‪#digiimpact. Hence this Twintroduction!

‪@digiethnography says that @ComputingNapier is using much better module assessment tools than surveys, cos students have survey fatigue, at ‪#digiimpact.
‘Is there ever an ‘official’ evaluation that goes to funder, but then a real one’, someone asks. @AlicjaPawluczuk says she hasn’t seen this.

John’s presentation

‪@digiethnography now starting off at ‪#digiimpact. He’s asking the audience what they do. We have youth workers, funders, young people.

‪@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that his background is in photography, with themes around fiction/truth. He is now working on image-making, and affordances of image-making, and how computational images lead to new ways of evaluation.

‘How is digital media changing the experience of participation?’,
‪@digiethnography asks. Second photo is what he’s going to do today.

What and why? It should be about ‘needs, not deeds’. There are questions about ‘how to reach the hard-to-reach’? There is a difference between how universities talk about such people and ‪@digiethnography‘s experiences.

Only about 5% of people who have experienced care enter Higher Ed in Scotland, but there is over-representation of care-experienced people in mental health, prison and healthcare.

Hence ‪@digiethnography‘s thoughts:

Aarrgghh I must use hashtags: the last few tweets were about ‪@digiethnography at ‪#digiimpact

‪@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that we survive if we are adaptable. We have married lenses with microprocessors. And there is Moore’s law: cameras changing so quickly that we they have exceeded our capacity to comprehend them. For example, phone is now a photo-editor!

‪@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that a book he has brought is a ‘manifesto’ for the MIT media lab. Steve Jobs didn’t predict that iPhones etc would lead to Arab Spring. The book below was given to ‪@digiethnography in Denmark.

‪@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that we should think about ‘values in action’. He gives an example from Al Jazeera. Most coverage/footage of Arab Spring is from people’s own phones. SocMed is where people could communicate as part of making the Arab Spring

‪@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that this was the first example of such reportage. He then quotes Marshall McLuhan, then says that the camera can be an agent (second photo). He then says ‘all boundaries are conventions’ (again McLuhan)

‪@digiethnography at ‪#digiimpact now moving on to ‘compass over map’. What the compass points to may change over time. Hi is talking about ‘failing forwards’ and Chef Massimo Bottura: ‘Oops I dropped the lemon tart’

‪@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that it should be about researching with people, not on them. Power is not possessed, but exercised. (Sounds very Marxist to me: a loaf of bread is not a loaf of bread unless it is being eaten.)

‪@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that there was a crisis of representation in social anthropology: how can outsiders truly represent real experiences? Hence ‪@digiethnography is interested in Jean Rouch.

@digiethnography shows this slide at ‪#digiimpact about Jean Rouch. JR said that his ethnography wasn’t quite real when written, but his camera got more real results. Hence ethnographic-fiction (second photo)

@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that there is often a data pipeline in research. Also, what happens if we introduce multiple photos to get multiple views of cultural experiences?

@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that we can problematise things, and talks about the agency of the audience.

@digiethnography now digging into play at ‪#digiimpact. (Bloody hell, the question in the first photo hits hard!) Second photo is a vignette of technology, showing depth.

@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that he invited people to play with images and models.

@digiethnography says at ‪#digiimpact that other people are using testimonies, namely The Verbatim Formula.

@digiethnography takes us off to play at ‪#digiimpact, so live tweeting will pause now.

And here is ‪‪@AlicjaPawluczuk in reality and as a wireframe at ‪#digiimpact!

Now on round table discussion, so no live-tweeting. Here are some final photos of Alicja’s findings:

And unfortunately that’s where I had to leave.