Nick Pearce

University of West London, Institute for Teaching, Innovation and Learning, Faculty Member

Durham University, Foundation Centre, Faculty Member

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I have had a pretty varied academic career. I started life with a BSc in Economics before completing a MSc in Information Management and a PhD in Sociology, all from Lancaster University. I then went on to work in e-science at Lancaster where I managed to combine all these interests to develop a new interest in technology and academic practice.

Eventually I managed to tear myself away from Lancaster and work on a research project for the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University, looking at Digital Scholarship before going to Durham University's Foundation Centre to teach Sociology and Anthropology.

I am currently a Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Teaching, Innovation and Learning at the University of West London where I have overall responsibility for the Foundation Year Provision.

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Michigan State University

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Excelsior University

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Seneca Collage

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Instituto Superior Técnico

António Granado

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

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Julie Delello

Deborah Lupton

The University of New South Wales

K. Hoy

Brian Wansink

Cornell University

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Papers by Nick Pearce

Fostering an ecology of openness: the role of social media in public engagement at the Open University, UK.

by Linda Wilks and Nick Pearce

This chapter illustrates the ways in which The Open University (OU), one of the leading distance ... more This chapter illustrates the ways in which The Open University (OU), one of the leading distance learning universities in the world, uses a range of social media to engage members of the public in learning. The OU has been an early adopter of innovative technologies which enabled public engagement right from its inception, forty years ago, contributing to fulfilling its ethos of social justice. It is this aim, to remove barriers and provide learning materials to a wide audience, including those who may be excluded from other learning institutions, which has been a major strategic driver of recent changes. Today the OU harnesses a range of social media to continue to develop this strategic policy. The OU’s ecology of openness includes a presence on externally developed social media such as YouTube, iTunesU, Facebook and Twitter, which are used as platforms to transfer knowledge and expertise to interested members of the public and encourage academic debate. Alongside these, the OU has also developed its own cutting edge social media platforms, which also allow public engagement. Key OU platforms include OpenLearn, a website which gives free access to a vast range of Open University course materials; and Cloudworks, a site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas, experiences and issues. This chapter explores the achievements of the Open University in using social media to engage with public audiences, as well highlighting the challenges and issues encountered.

Learning beyond the classroom: evaluating the use of Pinterest in learning and teaching in an introductory anthropology class

This paper details a case study of using Pinterest as an educational resource in an introductory ... more This paper details a case study of using Pinterest as an educational resource in an introductory anthropology course. Its use was evaluated through the data provided by the platform itself and focus groups. This evaluation found that Pinterest was a popular and useful tool for developing curated multimedia resources to support students' learning. The focus group findings suggested that online resources were shared by students across a variety of social networks, including but not limited to Pinterest. These resources were shared and used beyond the classroom, both physically in locations outside, but also with friends and family that were not part of the classroom. The opportunities for developing critical thinking through the use of tools such as Pinterest are explored.

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Virtual Learning Environments and the Zombification of Learning and Teaching in British Universities

There has been a sudden and radical transformation in British higher education in recent years. T... more There has been a sudden and radical transformation in British higher education in recent years. There has been a rapid expansion in numbers, the introduction of fees and the wholesale adoption of virtual learning environments (VLEs). Hordes of students have placed a strain on outmoded institutional structures which the VLE can only partially alleviate. These trends are interrelated and can be critically examined and disentangled through the deploying the zombie metaphor and this can highlight the underlying causes for these transformations and possible future scenarios.

Clickolage: Encouraging the Student Bricoleur through Social Media

Since his inception, the ‘bricoleur’ has travelled widely and been used for many purposes. This a... more Since his inception, the ‘bricoleur’ has travelled widely and been used for many purposes. This article explores how the concept of the bricoleur can help understand the ways in which students learn by using, adapting and linking social media in new ways. However using digital resources in this ways goes beyond bricolage in that it is an open-ended, ongoing, collaborative process and so the concept of ‘clickolage’ is introduced to highlight how students can learn from their relationship with multimedia objects, and each other.

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Open education videos in the classroom: exploring the opportunities and barriers to the use of YouTube in teaching introductory sociology

Abstract The use of open education resources has become more commonplace in classroom teaching an... more

Digital Scholarship Considered: How New Technologies Could Transform Academic Work

citeulike.org

New digital and web-based technologies are spurring rapid and radical changes across all media in... more New digital and web-based technologies are spurring rapid and radical changes across all media industries. These newer models take advantage of the infinite reproducibility of digital media at zero marginal cost. There is an argument to be made that the sort of changes we have seen in other industries will be forced upon higher education, either as the result of external economic factors (the need to be more efficient, responsive, etc.) or by a need to stay relevant to the so-called ‘net generation’ of students (Prensky, 2001; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; Tapscott & Williams, 2010).

This article discusses the impact of digital technologies on each of Boyer’s dimensions of scholarship: discovery, integration, application and teaching. In each case the use of new technologies brings with it the possibility of new, more open ways of working, although this is not inevitable. The implications of the adoption of new technologies on scholarship are then discussed

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ONLINE VIDEOS IN THE CLASSROOM

This chapter will discuss the use of online videos in teaching. There is a long history ofusing v... more This chapter will discuss the use of online videos in teaching. There is a long history ofusing video content for educational purposes, but the transition from hard copy formats (such as cine film, VHS and DVD) to online video has brought about a number of dramatic changes in the nature of this material which may impact their pedagogical value (Snelson & Perkins, 2009). There is an overwhelming amount ofvideo content available, and it is as freely available to students as it is to staff.

Technology Use Across a Campus: An Analysis of the Uptake of ICT Across Faculties Within a Single University

4th International Conference on e-Social Science. …, Jan 1, 2008

This paper will discusses the relationship between disciplinary differences and the adoption of a... more This paper will discusses the relationship between disciplinary differences and the adoption of a wide range of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) at a mid-sized, regional university at the end of 2007. Disciplinary differences have been shown to affect the adoption and use of ICTs across higher education, in e-learning, publication and collaborative writing. An analysis of US data from 1999 painted a more mixed picture of the effects of disciplinary differences on the use of e-mail and websites to communicate with students. The data presented here suggests that academic researchers use a wide variety of methods to communicate and collaborate with colleagues and that the choice of method varies significantly across faculty. In addition to this the use of wikis and blogs appears to be strongly related to the faculty in which a researcher is based. This might be due to substantially different cultural norms and values which might favour the adoption of one tool over another. The implications of this for the future adoption of e-infrastructure is discussed.

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Fostering an Ecology of Openness: The Role of Social Media in Public Engagement at the Open University, UK

Teaching Arts and Science with the New …, Jan 1, 2011

Supporting the Uptake of Cyberinfrastructure In the Social Sciences and the Challenges Faced.

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Digital Scholarship Audit Report

This report will describe the audit of digital scholarship practices that was carried out over th... more This report will describe the audit of digital scholarship practices that was carried out over the period between 2nd November 2009 and 31st July 2010 as part of the wider Digital Scholarship project. The original proposal for the project included the intention to “conduct [an] exploration of current academic researchers’ practices in digital scholarship” and this document is the result of that exploration.

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The Benefits of Cloud Based E-Management Technologies Among SMEs

Transport Visions

trg.soton.ac.uk

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A STUDY OF TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION BY RESEARCHERS

Information, Communication and Society, Jan 1, 2010

This paper examines the recent development of an e-research agenda. e-Research is taken as the la... more This paper examines the recent development of an e-research agenda. e-Research is taken as the latest stage of the e-science programme, which–as developed in tandem with web 2.0 tools–has begun to be adopted by researchers. This paper discusses these research infrastructures before current research investigating the relationship between academic researchers and technology is reviewed. The results of a survey undertaken in 2007 within a UK research-led university are presented and analysed in order to answer the questions ...

Fostering an ecology of openness: the role of social media in public engagement at the Open University, UK.

by Linda Wilks and Nick Pearce