KAPTUR conference, London, March 2013
Posted: March 7, 2013 Filed under: events | Tags: CKAN, EPrints, jiscmrd, RDM policies, technical analysis, ukdcc Leave a commentKAPTUR – one month to go…
Posted: March 2, 2013 Filed under: monthly reports, project posts | Tags: CKAN, EPrints, jiscmrd, RDM policies, ukdcc Leave a commentThis is our update for KAPTUR for February with one month of the project left to run!
WP1: Project Management
- The project team had meetings on 31st January and 28th February in order to both report and monitor progress of outstanding tasks.
- The Project Manager has begun final reporting procedures for JISC.
WP3: Technical Infrastructure
- The Technical Manager has completed a case study on the technical aspects of the project which will be presented at the KAPTUR conference on 6th March.
- The Project Officers have uploaded visual arts research data to the EPrints pilot repository.
- The Technical Manager has resolved issues with the CKAN pilot repository and will be completing development work on this soon.
WP4: Modelling
- The fourth and final RDM policy was approved by The Glasgow School of Art’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee on 13th February.
- The four policies will be made available through DCC in due course and will also be linked to from the KAPTUR Outputs page.
- This work package is now closed.
WP5: Training and Support
- The Glasgow School of Art training workshop took place on 31st January with the assistance of Laura Molloy, JISCMRD Evidence Gatherer. The presentations are available here: http://www.slideshare.net/kaptur_mrd/tag/gsardmtraining
- The fourth and final training workshop took place on 22nd February at Goldsmiths, University of London with assistance from Kerry Miller of the Digital Curation Centre. The presentations are available here: http://www.slideshare.net/kaptur_mrd/tag/goldrdmtraining
- The first draft of the KAPTUR toolkits has been completed using Xerte Online Toolkits. They will be completed by the close of the project and made available both online and through JORUM for use and re-use.
WP6: Evaluation and Sustainability
- The four case studies from the Project Officers as well as the additional fifth case study from the Technical Manager have been completed and are being edited for online publication.
- A template for the KAPTUR Business, Financial and Sustainability Plans was circulated to the Project Officers for use in their institutions.
- The Glasgow School of Art have already completed a good draft of their Business Plan using the template.
- The Project Manager is awaiting feedback from the final workshop, the conference, and another short survey before completing the Benefits’ reporting.
WP7: Dissemination
- The Project Director attended the Reskilling for RDM workshop at University of the West of England on 29th January
- The Technical Manager attended the CKAN workshop in London on 18th February – a blog post is available: https://kaptur.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/ckan4rdm-workshop/
- The Technical Manager also attended the Research Data Management Storage Requirements Workshop in London on 25th February: http://rdm-storage.eventbrite.co.uk/ This was hosted by JISC, DCC and JANET.
- On Monday 4th March, Lynda Agili, Head of Research Office, and Andrew Gray, the KAPTUR Project Officer, both from Goldsmiths, University of London will present at an ARMA event.
- The KAPTUR end-of-project conference will take place on Wednesday 6th March. It is fully booked: http://kapturmrd.eventbrite.co.uk/
KAPTUR thirteen months into the project – (13/18)
Posted: November 29, 2012 Filed under: monthly reports, project posts | Tags: CKAN, DataCite, jiscmrd, Orbital, RDM policies, rdmf9, ukdcc Leave a commentThis is our update for the end of the thirteenth month of KAPTUR.
WP1: Project Management
- The whole Project team met on the 13th November at The Glasgow School of Art.
- Over the last month we have been managing the challenge of two of the four Project Officers resigning from the project. John Murtagh was part-time at University of the Arts London (UAL) and has successfully applied for a full-time role at the University of East London working on their RDM training project (starting on 26th November). Tahani Nadim has been awarded her PhD and has accepted a post-doc position at another institution which will begin in the New Year; interviews with internal candidates are scheduled for December.
- On 14th November the Project Manager met with colleagues at the UAL, including John’s replacement, Sarah Mahurter, Manager of the University Archives and Special Collections Centre. Betty Woessner, Research Systems and Data Manager, will work with the DCC on the Institutional Engagement project.
WP3: Technical Infrastructure
- The Technical Manager attended the JISCMRD programme event, 24th-25th October 2012, Nottingham. It was an opportunity to share the technical work that we have been piloting and also to learn from other projects. Following a presentation from Richard Jones, representing the DataFlow project, and a practical hands-on workshop, there was no resolution to the fact that DataStage is unable to connect with EPrints.
- The Technical Manager has created a test instance of CKAN as this appears to be a way forward with a stronger case for long term sustainability as well as building on the work of University of Lincoln’s Orbital project.
WP4: Modelling
- University of the Arts London have reported that their policy does not need to be approved by the Academic Board, so this completes their delivery of WP4: http://www.arts.ac.uk/research/data-management/
- University for the Creative Arts and Goldsmiths, University of London have had their draft policies approved at the same level as UAL, however these now need to go on to their Academic Boards in January for final approval.
- The Glasgow School of Art have revised their timescale for the policy due to the recruitment of two key staff who they want to feed into the policy; this is now expected to be approved at their Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee meeting in February. Academic Board approval is not required.
- The four policies will be made available through DCC in due course (UAL’s policy is already available via the link above).
WP5: Training and Support
- The first KAPTUR training workshop was held at UAL on Monday 19th November, with support from Marieke Guy and Joy Davidson from the DCC (due to the Institutional Engagement work). Further details and a list of attendees is available here: http://ualrdm-eorg.eventbrite.co.uk/ Presentations are available online here: http://slidesha.re/QTrHcs http://slidesha.re/SnzvBL http://slidesha.re/QnwQIq
- The further three KAPTUR training workshops are scheduled as follows: 27th November (Goldsmiths) with follow-up in January; 30th November (GSA) with follow-up in January; 16th January (UCA).
- Feedback is being gathered from participants to each workshop as well as from the Project Officers themselves, this will then lead to refinements of the KAPTUR training plan.
- The materials used as well as the training plan will be reviewed, re-purposed and re-packaged for use in common Virtual Learning Environments and also for deposit to JORUM. This will form the KAPTUR toolkits.
WP6: Evaluation and Sustainability
- Two of the four case studies have been completed to very good draft stage. The UAL and Goldsmiths Project Officers were asked to focus on this aspect of the project ahead of schedule in order to capture their knowledge before they leave. Their successors will make any adjustments required.
- The new UAL Project Officer and the Project Manager are attending the JISCMRD Benefits programme event in Bristol, 29th-30th November.
WP7: Dissemination
- Both the IDCC13 paper and poster proposals were successful.
- The Technical Manager presented at the JISCMRD programme event on 24th October, Nottingham (Carlos’ presentation). The Project Manager also presented a poster (available with audio explanation here) and was part of the Selecting and Appraising Research Data session on 25th October (blog post).
- Jacqueline Cooke attended the RDM Training workshop on 26th October (blog post).
- Anne Spalding attended the DataCite workshop ‘Managing Sensitive Data’ on 29th October (blog post).
- Carlos Silva attended the RDM Forum ‘Shaping the infrastructure’, 14th-15th November (blog post).
KAPTUR one year on – (2/3)
Posted: October 22, 2012 Filed under: monthly reports, project posts | Tags: case studies, DataCite, DataStage, EPrints, jiscmrd, RDM policies, The British Library, toolkits, training plan Leave a commentThis is our update for the end of the twelfth month of KAPTUR; we are just past the two-thirds mark! For an overview of the past year, please visit the KAPTUR Prezi.
WP1: Project Management
- The Project team have been in contact by telephone and email; four colleagues will be attending the JISCMRD Programme meeting this week in Nottingham.
WP3: Technical Infrastructure
- The Technical Manager has written a blog post with more detail here: Working in Stages with DataStage and Figshare
- The project partners have provided feedback on KAPTUR’s DataStage pilot site.
WP4: Modelling
- The four policies are going through several rounds of committees and are to schedule; this has been the focus of the past month.
- In addition the University of the Arts London’s draft policy is available online: http://www.arts.ac.uk/research/data-management/
WP5: Training and Support
- The KAPTUR training plan is now publicly available.
- The Pinterest links have been linked to via UAL’s RDM pages and DCC’s Marieke Guy’s excellent blog post on The value of video in getting the RDM message across
- The GSA Project Officer taught MRes students about research terminology covering research data and promoting the KAPTUR project; this will feed into our training materials. Blog post about this: Getting to grips with research terminology
- The Project Officers have been in contact with their Research Offices to arrange a half-day training session for Research Office staff and Librarians in order to pilot the KAPTUR training materials.
WP6: Evaluation and Sustainability
- The Project Officers have received a short Word document and model costings template (Excel) and will be piloting this within their own institutions.
- Detailed case study templates have been created and shared with the Project Officers. The case studies will be presented at the end-of-project conference on Wednesday 6th March 2013.
WP7: Dissemination
- The Project Director and Project Manager met with DataCite at The British Library to discuss the licence and other aspects of using DataCite.
- The UAL Project Officer’s presentation to Library staff is available on SlideShare.
Getting to grips with research terminology (MRes Creative Practices)
Posted: October 22, 2012 Filed under: training | Tags: jiscmrd, RDM policies, The Glasgow School of Art 2 CommentsWith thanks to Dr Robin Burgess, KAPTUR Project Officer, The Glasgow School of Art, for this blog post.
On the 4th and 5th of October I taught 10 MRes students a session titled ‘Getting to grips with research terminology’, this was to present methods and methodologies to prepare them for their Masters research projects.
The first day comprised of a lecture about different aspects of research, terminology that the students might be faced with and the decisions they might have to make when managing research data. The second day comprised of a workshop enabling the students to put into practice the information they had learnt the day before and apply this to actual research situations.
The aim was to provide an overview of aspects related to research terminology that students studying within an Arts context might encounter; quantitative, qualitative and mixed method terms were explored alongside approaches to data capture and analysis terms. I drew examples from the social sciences and mathematical sciences, discussing how these could be applied in the context of arts based research.
Three principle areas were covered:
- Philosophical worldviews: Investigating the concepts of postpositivism, constructivism, advocacy/participatory, and pragmatism
- Selected strategies of inquiry: Quantitative, qualitative and Mixed methods
- Research methods: The actual approaches that could be used for gathering and analysing information
A fundamental area considered was the criteria which might influence the research design being undertaken, such as understanding the research problem, the effects of personal experience, positionality, and the actual audience for the research. This proved to be very topical and raised many questions from the students.
As part of this area, the following quotes were discussed:
“I don’t have to concern myself with how I’m going to analyse my survey data until after I’ve collected my data. I’ll leave thinking about it until then, because it doesn’t impinge on how I collect my data”
“every research tool or procedure is inextricably embedded in commitments to particular versions of the world. To use a questionnaire, to use an attitude scale, to take the role of participant observer, to select a random sample, to measure rates of population growth, and so on, is to be involved in conceptions of the world which allow these instruments to be used for the purpose conceived”
Dissemination and presentation of information was commented on, highlighting the need for good communication of data and the importance of data management during research projects. This is where I discussed the work of KAPTUR and the need for data management policies.
The workshop session consisted of three tasks that were undertaken individually and in groups. Firstly I wanted the students to think about the research plans they had and apply the information they had learnt so far to this research proposal, thinking about the data they might collect, how it might be stored and analysed, determining the audience for the work and what worldview they might look at adopting. The students then reported back to the rest of the group and I gave suggestions and advice for further considerations. As a class we then looked at art work by two unknown artists (myself and a friend of mine) to determine the merits of the work and try and understand what could be deduced from the work. Looking at what analysis could be applied, such as the type of art – conventional and digital – and the colours used etc. This proved insightful as the students really began to delve into the art and explore the meaning of the pieces, looking below the surface. We then looked at works by established artists – Rothko and Magritte – and reviewed them in the same way. The final task was looking at two poems written by Wendy Cope. I wanted the students to critically review these, to determine the nature of the poems, look at the wording and language used, think about the audience and the message being conveyed. This task proved to be very enjoyable and highlighted much debate with regard to the audience for the pieces and who had potentially written them. Conflicting ideas were expressed and argued with sound evidence on both sides, illustrating how written text can be interpreted differently. It was great to really see the students engaging with the task.
All in all the two sessions (lecture and workshop) were successful and the students provided positive feedback.