scholarly journals Implementing a Social Knowledge Creation Environment

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Hiebert ◽  
William R. Bowen ◽  
Raymond Siemens
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Web Based ◽  
The Public ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Scholarly Production ◽  
The University ◽  
Critical Intervention

“Social knowledge creation,” an emergent area of research interest for digital humanists, promotes experimental critical interventions into more traditional knowledge production processes. The Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at the University of Victoria with Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (University of Toronto Scarborough) have iteratively prototyped a Web-based platform for social knowledge creation called Iter Community. This article discusses the platform’s implementation as a critical intervention in scholarly production and publication, specifically how it provides new opportunities for research and serves as a model to allow for greater involvement of scholars and the public in knowledge creation.

scholarly journals Foundations for On-Campus Open Social Scholarship Activities

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Randa El Khatib ◽  
Alyssa Arbuckle ◽  
Ray Siemens
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Research Output ◽  
Annotated Bibliography ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Digital Medium ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The University

Social knowledge creation, citizen scholarship, interdisciplinary collaborations, and university-community partnerships have become more common and more visible in contemporary academia. The Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) currently focuses on how to engage with such transformations in knowledge creation. In this paper we survey the intellectual foundation of social knowledge creation and major initiatives undertaken to pursue and enact this research in the ETCL. “Social Knowledge Creation: Three Annotated Bibliographies” (Arbuckle, Belojevic, Hiebert, Siemens, et al. 2014), and an updated iteration, “An Annotated Bibliography on Social Knowledge Creation,” (Arbuckle, El Hajj, El Khatib, Seatter, Siemens, et al, 2017), explore how academics collaborate to create knowledge, and how social knowledge creation can bridge the real or perceived gap between the academy and the public. This knowledgebase lays the foundation for the “Open Social Scholarship Annotated Bibliography” (El Hajj, El Khatib, Leibel, Seatter, et al. 2019), which draws on research that adopts and propagates social knowledge creation ideals and explores trends such as accessible research development and dissemination. Using these annotated bibliographies as a theoretical foundation for action, the ETCL began test-driving open social scholarship initiatives with the launch of the Open Knowledge Practicum (OKP). The OKP invites members of the community and the university to pursue their own research in the ETCL. Research output is published in open, public venues. Overall, we aim to acknowledge the expanding, social nature of knowledge production, and to detail how the ETCL utilizes in-person interaction and the digital medium to facilitate open social scholarship.

scholarly journals Intersections Between Social Knowledge Creation and Critical Making

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Arbuckle ◽  
Alex Christie ◽  
ETCL Research Group ◽  
INKE Research Group ◽  
MVP Research Group
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Communication Practice ◽  
Research Production ◽  
Critical Making ◽  
Scholarly Production

This article outlines the practices of digital scholarly communication (moving research production and dissemination online), critical making (producing theoretical insights by transforming digitized heritage materials), and social knowledge creation (collaborating in online environments to produce shared knowledge products). In addition to exploring these practices and their principles, this article argues for a combination of these activities in order to engender knowledge production chains that connect multiple institutions and communities. Highlighting the relevance of critical making theory for scholarly communication practice, this article provides examples of theoretical research that offer tangible products for expanding and enriching scholarly production.

scholarly journals Invisible Roots of Knowledge Production and their Role in Resistance to the Marketisation of Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-140
Author(s):  
Heather McKnight
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Public Institution ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Pension Scheme ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The University

Recent, highly visible, struggles in Higher Education in the UK, such as the pensions strike, have aimed to recast such protests as part of a bigger struggle to maintain the public university. Viewing the shared pension scheme as one of the last defining features of a public institution. However, Federici in her recent book Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons warns us if we wish to change the university in line with the public construction of a ‘knowledge commons’ that there is a need to question “the material conditions of the production of the university, its history and its relation to the surrounding communities” (Federici, 2019) and not just the academics within it. There is a need to consider how debate on knowledge production is insulated from the invisible work that sustains academic life including cleaners, cafeteria workers and groundkeepers, as well as to consider the potential colonisation of land institutions are built upon (Federici, 2019). Narratives of resistance to marketisation in Higher Education, while well meaning, still create disproportionate invisibility on the grounds of gender, race and socio-economic status, ignoring the material and intellectual value of such contributions. This paper considers how Federici’s approach to the politics of the commons discredit, deconstruct and potentially transform approaches to resistance to marketisation in education. It argues that struggles against marketisation, or for academic freedom, should be seen in the broader scope of access to education for all, and a continuum of co-dependant knowledge production. It will consider how different structures of privilege and oppression structure what is represented, resisted and fought for within and by the institution. Issues that are seen as marginal or controversial can be avoided in increasingly legislated upon, and therefore risk averse, students’ unions and trade unions. Which in turn reproduces a student and staff body that similarly continue to propagate such damaging structures both within and out with the institution. A rethinking around who the knowledge producers are, can help us restructure the university as a commons that resists the violence of capitalist logic, rather than one that upholds it. Thus problematising and reconstructing how we view the idea of a future university commons, in a way that recognises intersectional oppression and a misuse of certain bodies as a commons in and off themselves.

Thomas Aquinas's Quodlibetal Questions

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Public University ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The University

Thomas Aquinas was one of the most significant Christian thinkers of the middle ages and ranks among the greatest philosophers and theologians of all time. In the mid-thirteenth century, as a teacher at the University of Paris, Aquinas presided over public university-wide debates on questions that could be put forward by anyone about anything. The Quodlibetal Questions are Aquinas’s edited records of these debates. Unlike his other disputed questions, which are limited to a few specific topics such as evil or divine power, Aquinas’s Quodlibetal Questions contain his treatment of hundreds of questions on a wide range of topics—from ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion to dogmatic theology, sacramental theology, moral theology, eschatology, and much more. And, unlike his other disputed questions, none of the questions treated in his Quodlibetal Questions were of Aquinas’s own choosing—they were all posed for him to answer by those who attended the public debates. As such, this volume provides a window onto the concerns of students, teachers, and other interested parties in and around the university at that time. For the same reason it contains some of Aquinas’s fullest, and in certain cases his only, treatments of philosophical and theological questions that have maintained their interest throughout the centuries.

Fisher’s Early Years

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Louis R. Caplan
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Academic Performance ◽  
School System ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
The Public ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Rural Town ◽  
The University

Abstract: This chapter describes Fisher’s early life; his family; his upbringing in a rural town in Ontario, Canada; and his characteristics as a child and young boy. Fisher was born on December 5, 1913, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He was one of nine siblings. He attended the public school system in Waterloo through high school. Although he spent little serious time as a student and did little homework until age 15 or 16 years, he was awarded a scholarship to the University of Toronto in recognition of his academic performance during high school. Only a small minority of students from his high school went on to college.

Interdisciplinary research and academic sustainability: managing knowledge in an age of accountability

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT FRODEMAN
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Research University ◽  
Century Model ◽  
The Past ◽  
Age Of Accountability ◽  
Research And Education ◽  
The University

SUMMARYFor the past 125 years the university has been the home of knowledge production. The 20th century research university combined a Kantian belief in disciplinarity, a Humboldtian commitment to linking research and education and upholding academic autonomy, and a Cartesian allegiance to infinite knowledge production. This approach to knowledge creation was seen as sufficient, for knowledge products themselves were understood as automatically relevant to society, and no one imagined a problem with endless knowledge production. The 20th century model of knowledge production is now under pressure from a number of sources: information technologies, neoliberal assumptions and demands for greater accountability. ‘Interdisciplinarity’ has become the term of art for addressing this crisis. But interdisciplinarity is no panacea to the challenges facing knowledge production today. In addition to knowledge on sustainability, knowledge production itself must now be made sustainable. This requires clearly connecting knowledge production and use, and ending the bad infinity of knowledge production.

scholarly journals TEACHING AN ADVANCED ENGINEERING MOOC: LESSONS LEARNED

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Harris ◽  
William Heikoop ◽  
Allison Van Beek ◽  
James S. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Online Courses ◽  
Wind Waves ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Massive Open Online Courses ◽  
Massive Open Online ◽  
The Public ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Internet Connection ◽  
The World ◽  
The University

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) allow anyone in the public to learn from professors at universities across the world. An internet connection is the only requirement to participate in a MOOC. In engineering, the majority of MOOCs are targeted at self-learners, and consequently most courses are based on introductory undergraduate courses. The University of Toronto offered its first advanced engineering MOOC entitled, “Wind, Waves & Tides” based on a mixed fourth-year undergraduate and graduate level course. A total of 11,723 students registered in the course, and 617 students completed the course in its entirety. The following paper describes the experience of teaching a niche interest MOOC and the lessons learned throughout the endeavour.

scholarly journals An Ethical-Legal Analysis of Medical Assistance in Dying for Those with Mental Illness

2018 ◽  
pp. 149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Tanner
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Medical Assistance ◽  
The Public ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Medical Assistance In Dying ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
Canadian Culture ◽  
The University

This article considers sources of opposition to allowing access to medical assistance in dying for individuals with mental illness. It originated with an observation by members of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics that in mainstream Canadian culture — as well as in political, academic, and professional circles — such opposition remains widespread (and often reflexive). This opposition exists even in light of broad support for access to assisted dying for individuals with illness manifesting in physical suffering. Most Canadians treat the prospect of assisted dying for those with mental illness with suspicion, and it is worth exploring why this opposition persists, what arguments can be leveled to support it, and whether those arguments can be sustained. To that end, I identify five objections to assisted dying for the mentally ill that seem to characterize the public debate, and argue that none are sustainable. They either rely on false premises or otherwise fail to secure the conclusion that assisted dying should be off limits to people suffering from mental illness, even when such mental illness is their sole underlying condition.

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