Using social media to support my research

My colleague (and supervisor) Jen Ross invited me to talk to staff and students here at Edinburgh University about how I use social media to support my research. These are the slides from the session, which took place earlier today:

I began my presentation by offering a rationale for using social media in my research, before going on to talk about some of the benefits and challenges I have experienced though the use of this blog and Twitter. More generally, I put across the following points:

• sharing research and other content through social media can enhance more conventional ways of sharing work (such as presenting at conferences, speaking to people, writing for publication and so on), without being seen as an attempt to replace them.
• thinking about 'best practice' around social media might not be helpful when the nature of research and potential audiences can vary across disciplines. 
• hitting 'publish' on a blog post is not the same as achieving 'impact': there's a different between getting work 'out there' and it necessarily reaching the intended audience or positively affecting research in some other way.

With thanks to Jen Ross and Judy Robertson from the Centre for Research in Digital Education for inviting me to share my experiences.