Andy Tattersall talk at Spot On 2017 at The Francis Crick Institute

Andy Tattersall gave a short lightning talk on the title: "Isn't it time we had a research equivalent of the learning technologist?" at this year's Spot On Conference at The Francis Crick Institute. The recording of the talk and the questions afterwards can be viewed below with the abstract.




Abstract:

Researchers increasingly need to understand a multitude of topics including digital copyright, impact, altmetrics, communications, social media, research data management and sharing, open access, infographics, video, animation and mobile apps. Yet all too often they have little time, support or encouragement to explore these topics and have they need to make informed judgements on the most appropriate technologies.

For decades skilled professionals have provided researchers with excellent services around collection management, content curation and discovery, critical appraisal and reference management among other services. More recently they have stepped into new areas of support and applied their knowledge around social media, metrics, scholarly communications and research data management. Yet despite this there has been no formal role to step into departments and faculties to address the shortfalls of support at the research coalface. The idea of the research technologist is a professional role who like a Swiss Army Knife is adapt at utilising new tools and technologies to support a modern, fit for purpose, research cycle. The purpose of the workshop would be to discuss this idea and whether the research community believes it is something they would benefit from and what areas they most need frontline support.