Bryan Alexander and Jean-Claude Bradley: Humanities and Science 2.0

The final two speakers on day one of the NFAIS conference, wrapping up the panel on the “merging culture of the new information order,” were Bryan Alexander, research director at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, and Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley, associate professor of chemistry at Drexel University.  Each described a variety of initiatives to bring a more open, collaborative, participatory approach to communications in their respective disciplines.

Alexander how liberal arts academia, despite the closed technology environments of most course management systems, and Web 2.0’s perceived lack of seriousness, is beginning to adapt some of its models and approaches.  He estimated that 2-4% of liberal arts professors are now using blogs, and described  new media academic takes on old media (e.g. XKCD, “a web comic of romance, sarcasm, math and language”), shared media, distance learning (profcasting), and student media.

Bradley described how both research and teaching in science are evolving from closed to collaborative environments.  He described in detail his own approach to “open notebook science,” publishing all research work in real time to blogs, wikis, Second Life, and other online media.  Noting that finding collaborators has been the most beneficial impact of maximizing transparency in his own research activities, he looked ahead to the day when scientific research includes machine-to-machine collaborations in forming hypotheses, executing experiments, and analyzing the results.

Comments

[Jean-Claude Bradley]

Thanks for the write-up on my session! The recording is now available here:
http://drexel-coas-talks-mp3-podcast.blogspot.com/2008/02/nfais-2008-talk-on-open-notebook.html