Academic discourse in the age of the Internet Carolyn Dowling Australian Catholic University

Currently there is much discussion of the impact of the Internet on university practices in relation to teaching and learning. While not disputing the importance of this focus, other aspects of academic work including research, academic writing and a range of 'management' tasks have also been affected by the widespread adoption of computer based technologies.

In common with many tertiary institutions, Australian Catholic University is devoting considerable resources to facilitating staff access to computing technology, in particular to the Internet. A longitudinal study, currently in its third year, is being undertaken at the University in an attempt to monitor the nature and extent of changes to academic work practices resulting from the widespread adoption of these technologies.

Findings to date suggest that, while we cannot underestimate the value of today's enriched communications environment in supporting and enhancing many aspects of academic work, we should not assume that the new practices are the simple equivalents of the old, nor that it is necessarily most advantageous to replace traditional modes of operation entirely by the newly available modes of communication and interaction. These and other principles are discussed in the paper in the context of examples deriving from the study.

Introduction

Each of these areas is currently undergoing change as a result of the near-universal adoption of Internet technology by tertiary institutions. Academics across the world have embraced with enthusiasm facilities such as email, newsgroups, listservs, realtime 'chat' environments, user friendly search engines and the multimedia capacities of the World Wide Web. Across most disciplines they are engaging in a range of new and often significantly different practices. While some of these might be seen as enabling traditional activities to be undertaken with greater ease and efficiency, others have the potential to undermine some of the foundations upon which our academic endeavours have traditionally been based. These dimensions of computer based academic work are acknowledged in a range of publications including chapters and articles in volumes such as Changes in Scholarly Communication Patterns (Mulvaney & Steele, 1993), The Cultures of Computing (Star, 1995) and Work and Technology in Higher Education: the Social Construction of Academic Computing (Shiels, 1995), in addition to journal articles and conference papers tending recently to be concentrated under the conceptual umbrella of the Virtual University or Campus. This paper considers some of the implications of these issues in the context of a longitudinal study currently being undertaken at Australian Catholic University.

The project

A longitudinal study, currently in its third year, is being undertaken at the University in an attempt to monitor the nature and extent of changes to academic work practices resulting from the widespread adoption of these technologies. Of particular interest to the institution, understandably, is the extent to which the money allocated to these resources should be regarded as 'well spent'.

The research is being conducted through a series of questionnaires and follow-up interview of selected individuals and groups. An initial survey directed to all permanent members of the academic staff of the University was used to identify those who had made use of the Internet over the previous 12 months (1995), and who were willing to participate further in the project. 103 staff participated in the project during 1996 and 1997 through responding to questionnaires and participating in interviews. Interviews are continuing during 1998.

The development of a rationale and methodology for the project was initially influenced by a study undertaken by researchers from the School of Education, Kings College, London (Squires, 1993; Squires, Barry & Funston, 1994; Barry, 1995; Barry & Squires, 1995). This and other studies mentioned earlier related to the nature of academic work, along with a range of writings and research addressing broader aspects of computer mediated interactions, provide a rich theoretical background against which to consider the day to day practices and perceptions of academic staff in relation to their use of computing and communications technologies.

Areas addressed so far within the study include the impact of Internet access on the research practices and outcomes of staff, particularly in relation to identifying and examining possible changes to patterns of collaboration in research and academic writing (Dowling 1997), along with an examination of several related issues including the value of the World Wide Web as a repository of information which might be used for academic purposes, concerns regarding intellectual property and copyright within electronic environments and the respective roles of electronic and hard copy publishing (Dowling 1996a, 1996b).

The use of electronic communication in the day to day running of academic departments and other organisational units within the University is a further area of considerable interest. The institution comprises seven campuses, several quite small in size, distributed across three states and one territory of Australia. While at the highest levels most of the administrative functions of the University are centralised, each administrative area also incorporates a significant number of geographically dispersed staff. While the number of academic staff associated with any one discipline area on a single campus may be extremely small, in some extreme cases consisting of a single individual, these groups are actively encouraged to perceive themselves as colleagues within a single institution, clearly ‘virtual’ in regard to its unity and to a significant extent electronically based, with widely dispersed staff frequently taking joint responsibility for the content and in some cases for the teaching of units and courses. In some areas, national discipline based networks fulfil many of the functions of traditional academic departments in nurturing and developing intellectual content. Collaboration in research activities would appear to be an obvious and highly desirable component of this type of cooperation.

While analysis of the responses to questionnaires is still underway, as are interviews with selected individual and groups, a number of themes are already emerging in relation to changes in patterns of communication within this academic environment.

Communication with colleagues

What types of electronically mediated communication do the group of academics participating in the research project actually engage in? A range of situations are reported which would be familiar to the traditional academic. They include the search for feedback on ideas for research projects or on written reports and papers, exchanges of information concerning sources of funding and possible outlets for publications, information related to conferences, discussion of the relative merits of other academics as potential supervisors, referees or collaborators, lists of resources pertaining to particular areas of interest and of course the collaborative writing of books, reports, conference papers and the like. On a more informal note, 'touching base' with colleagues rates frequent mention, that is, the maintenance of networks of acquaintance and friendship both professional and personal, as distinct from the more instrumental activities listed above. The exchange of jokes and 'curiosities', generally found on the Internet or received as email from other sources, looms large, highlighting the convenience of message forwarding mechanisms as a medium for exchanging what could be regarded as 'gifts' or tokens of friendship. The choice of these items is seen as important in helping define a relationship - and misjudgment in this regard is well recognised as a recipe for potential disaster! In recent discussion a greater awareness has been shown of the potential for 'backlash' in relation to the proliferation of casual messages. With more experience of email as both senders and receivers, academic staff are rapidly becoming sensitive to the disadvantages of being the recipients of a plethora of material, the relevance of which may not be immediately identifiable. Uses of these facilities which were once described by interviewees as 'fun' are now more often being seen as actual or potential irritants in their capacity to interrupt workflow. This is one of a number of indications that the technology, initially used by many as a 'toy', is increasingly being perceived as an intrinsic element of the working environment.

In relation to the search for possible collaborators as mentioned above, it is of interest that several subjects, all younger academics who would not at this stage have had many opportunities for face to face interaction with established researchers in their discipline areas whether in their own country or overseas, allude to making regular and systematic searches of the home pages of other universities in search of details relating to staff working in the same or allied fields. Having located such people, several of the staff interviewed have gone on to make some form of contact electronically, all of them agreeing that this is less intimidating than the prospect of approaching unknown individuals either in person, on the telephone or by conventional mail.

Despite the enthusiasm of staff for these new opportunities, there have been some indications that to entirely replace traditional opportunities for interaction and collaboration with the newly available modes of communications is not necessarily advantageous. Internet based interactions on academic matters, for instance, tend to be purpose-driven. Discussion is focussed on clearly defined topics and has generally been initiated with a specific aim in mind. Participants have been chosen with due regard to their perceived interests and expertise. It has been suggested, however, by several staff members, that chance encounters of the 'coffee dispenser' type mentioned earlier, as distinct from these more purposeful interactions, often have a particularly serendipitous effect on the thinking associated with research activity. One of the advantages of the physical presence of a number of academics in the one location is seen by these respondents as being the opportunity to chat informally with colleagues from a range of specialties. In such situations, new and often productive insights can derive from apparently unlikely sources.

A further point of interest which has been noted in interviews with the staff at Australian Catholic University with regard to communication is the speed with which the cyberspace within which these interactions take place becomes genuinely divorced from geographical space. While a number of participants in the early interviews expressed special excitement at their new ability to communicate with colleagues overseas, in interviews which occurred only six months later these same academics discussed their interactions, primarily through email, in terms which did not discriminate between the local and the geographically distant. Colleagues at other local campuses, even in offices within the same building, clearly occupied the same notional 'space' as contacts on the other side of the world. This is in keeping with earlier findings (Dowling 1987) in which the implementation of electronic mail in office buildings of large, dispersed organisations, led to electronic communication taking place indiscriminately between physically distant locations, between adjoining offices, and even between adjoining desks. It is particularly interesting in this context in relation to the conscious goal of the University that it should be both perceived externally and experienced internally as a single, integrated institution. (Other initiatives supporting this aim include extensive use of video conferencing for small group teaching and seminars, and the beginnings of Internet based course offerings between campuses as well as for external students.)

Academic writing and publishing

Along with research itself, academic writing and publication are fundamental to the academic enterprise. They are the 'official' face of academic communication. The well established benefits of word processing for writers together with the communications facilities of the Internet, have combined to create an enormously enhanced environment for both collaborative writing and for publication. At the same time, a number of issues related to the ownership, distribution and validation of electronically based materials must be considered, particularly in academic contexts

The very ease with which electronically based material can be assembled and seamlessly integrated into a single document may raise generalised doubts concerning the source, the originality and the uniqueness of a particular piece of work or of its component parts. The possibilities for involuntary 'collaboration' are exacerbated by the extent to which current developments in communications technology, particularly those related to the Internet, facilitate the uncontrolled dissemination of material previously subject to processes of distribution which enabled the source to be acknowledged and validated. For the academic community, dependent as it has traditionally been on the notion of the authoritative text for which an identifiable individual author or authors may be held responsible, such developments create understandable concern. Traditional understandings of the legitimacy of academic knowledge depend heavily on processes of validation relating to the source of material, and on the credentials of the author or authors responsible. In the case of electronic publishing, the provenance of information is often much less apparent

The problem of plagiarism is exacerbated by the degree to which the sheer volume of information available on the Internet decreases the likelihood of detection. Few academics can now claim intimate knowledge of all, or even most of the texts available in their field. Indeed in both the King’s College (Barry & Squires, 1995) and the Australian Catholic University studies, researchers have expressed an ongoing need for training in techniques of information retrieval in order to cope with the ever increasing amount of material available electronically.

At a more formal level, copyright is another obvious concern, as correctly identified by many of the ACU academics. In addition to difficulties created by the intangible and malleable form of electronically based products, the 'international' nature of the Internet creates special challenges with regard to difference in the legal status of ownership between nations. Not all cultures, indeed not all groups or individuals within our own culture, share the same understandings in relation to the ownership of words and ideas. While the concept of the 'information society' is encouraging a general acceptance of the notion of intangible 'products' constituting tradable commodities, other groups including those with an adherence to ideals such as freedom of information, and very importantly a number of developing nations, hold a somewhat different point of view.

However despite these areas of difficulty, within academic contexts the contrast between the potential for rapid electronic dissemination and the painstaking but often frustratingly slow process of publishing in refereed academic journals has led in many disciplines to a mixture of publishing media becoming legitimised by default, for different purposes. Where speed of dissemination of research findings is seen as important, particularly in the more 'practically' oriented disciplines such many of the sciences, it is now widely accepted that the 'real' exchanges of ideas and results takes place through electronic media, with publication in traditional paper-based journals increasingly becoming a retrospective event, having more to do with the formal recognition of achievements and credentials associated with funding and promotion processes than with the actual business of the creation and dissemination of knowledge. It is interesting to note in this regard the recent burgeoning of electronic 'journals' subject to refereeing processes which compare favourably with those associated with traditional paper based journals endorsed by the academic hierarchies. In some instances both hard copy and electronic versions of the same publication complement one another while fulfilling different needs.

In regard to the actual writing, it is of interest to note that in the main this group of academics does not as yet make use of the full gamut of facilities available to them for the collaborative production of text. While a few extol the benefits of environments such as Lotus Notes for real-time collaborative writing, most restrict their use of the computer facilities to the emailing of successive drafts of jointly composed documents. This is an example of the technology increasing efficiency, rather than precipitating fundamental changes to practice.

Communication between academic staff and 'management'.

On the positive side, a number of the staff make positive reference to enhanced communications with their Heads of Department or School. This is particularly important in multi-campus institutions such as ACU, where academic units most commonly consist of geographically dispersed groups of people. Academic Heads themselves speak appreciatively of both the quality and the quantity of interaction with individuals and within groups of staff which can be achieved through electronic means

Above and beyond these issues is a general concern relating to the increasing dependence of academic staff on the computer networks, for all aspects of their work. What do you do when the network is 'down'? This may be a relatively rare occurrence in some (but not all!) institutions, but its consequences can be devastating. It has become clear in discussion with this group of academics that anxiety about this particular aspect of electronically mediated work results in considerable duplication of work practices. Important documents are both emailed and sent in hard copy, work is printed out and stored in filing cabinets in anticipation of a hard disk 'crashing' or of its contents being inadvertently deleted by an over-zealous computer support person in the context of carrying out some other task, conferencing telephone lines are booked just in case the Internet Relay Chat fails, and so on. Such prudence is unfortunately probably appropriate in many instances, where adoption of the new technology may have outstripped the reliability of the infrastructure and support structures.

Conclusion

References

Barry, C. & Squires, D. (1995). Why the move from traditional information-seeking to the electronic library is not straightforward for academic users: some surprising findings. Online Information 95 (pp. 177-187). London: Meckler Press.

Dowling, C. (1996a). Whose words are they? Some aspects of the ownership of textual material in electronic environments. Proceedings of the Australian Computers in Education Conference. Canberra, April 1996.

Dowling, C. (1996b). Academia Online: the impact of the Internet on academic research practices. Proceedings of the 1996 Annual Conference of the Higher Education and Research Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA). Perth, July 1996. http://www.herdsa.org.au/confs/1996/dowling.html

Dowling, C. (1997). The Impact of the Internet on Academic Research Practices. Proceedings of 'The Virtual Campus', the 1997 Working Conferences of WG 3.6 & WG 3.3. Madrid, November 1997.

Mulvaney, J. & Steele, C. (Eds) (1993). Changes in Scholarly Communication Patterns. Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities, Occasional Paper No. 15.

Rheingold, H. (1994). The Virtual Community. London: Secker & Warburg.

Shiels, M. (ed.) (1995). Work and Technology in Higher Education: The Social Construction of Academic Computing. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Squires, D. (1993). The Use of Information Technology to Support Information Access in Research. In D. Johnson & B. Samways (Eds), Informatics and Changes in Learning (pp. 183-185). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.

Squires, D., Barry, C. & Funston, T. (1994). The Use of IT-Assisted Information Systems in Academic Research. London: British Library Research and Development Department Report No. 6215.

Spender, D. (1995). Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace. North Melbourne: Spinifex Press.

Star, S.L. (ed.) (1995). The Cultures of Computing. Sociological Review Monograph. Oxford: Blackwell.

Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Author: Associate Professor Carolyn Dowling Australian Catholic University 412 Mt Alexander Road Ascot Vale Vic 3032 Phone: (+61 3) 9241 4456 Fax: (+61 3) 9241 4546 c.dowling@mercy.acu.edu.au Please cite as: Dowling, C. (1998). Academic discourse in the age of the Internet. In C. McBeath and R. Atkinson (Eds), Planning for Progress, Partnership and Profit. Proceedings EdTech'98. Perth: Australian Society for Educational Technology. http://www.aset.org.au/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/dowling.html