Next-gen PhDs fail to find Web 2.0's 'on-switch'

The Academy is to blame. If you can't cite it APA style (that reminds me: Are there APA have guidelines yet for me to cite something from my Kindle?), then it isn't 'valid", and if the research is new enough to actually be current, then it hasn't undergone the 2-year aging process required for a manuscript to finally appear in a peer-reviewed journal.

PS: As far as I can tell, the Academy doesn't care.

Hardly surprising given a combination of citation issues (above) and a lack of teaching/guidance in this area, the latter in part due to lack of knowledge (or downright mistrust) of new media on behalf of many lecturers (although this is not universal I hasten to add!).
I imagine education is conservative and slow to change in other areas too?

I'd suggest that "generation Y" are not the digital natives we assume them to be. I use blogs with my undergraduates and the vast majority of them had to be told what a blog was! I think we assume too much.
However, when you think about it - I grew up with TV and music constantly available, but that didn't turn me in a TV writer or composer, did it, Just because "Gen Y" have always had the internet in their lives doesn't make them content producers, just consumers...

Just like in any population there are producers and consumers and some of us like to do both. I see undergrads with a wide range of digital Web 2.0 skills. I do find that when they are introduced to the new media tools, then the younger students seem to pick up the new technologies more quickly than my generation. Age is not the only factor in the mix.

Doctoral students born between the years of 1982 and 1994?

How many doctoral students are 15 years old?

Will they continue the longitudinal study until these folks are to the doctorate level, I wonder? I'd argue that really only the latter half (which are not yet or only just entering doctoral studies) would have had constant ready access to the internet for most of their lives--I didn't get a computer until almost high school, and I'm 24 now. I think future data will have different results.

Also, graduate studies are notorious for being intense, giving people little time for a "real life." Keeping up with social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, blogs, the list goes on) requires more attention than a lot of people seem to think. The trust factor is important, too. Peer review of journal articles might have its pitfalls, but Twitter has no fact-checking or content control whatsoever. Although, I guess that depends on the field, eh?

I really want to teach my students and staff how to use these web 2.0 tools and to a certain extent I do. My main problem is that I do not want to endorse and recommend tools that we as a University have no control over, and there are also issues to do with who owns the data and where in the world it is being stored. Personally, I’d like to see JISC take a lead on this and create an international Web 2.0 service that Uni’s could subscribe to. An institutional or national service would not be good enough, we need services that are going to be stable and safe to use and that can also move with our researchers as they move between different institutions.

this has nothing to do with APA style, Jane. if work is scholarly then it can be cited. if it's not scholarly then it has no place in the references of scholarly work. nothing in this short article is alarming to me in any way and i teach technology to teachers. i am not suggesting that we can't gain new information from various web 2.0 tools, but i am suggesting that scholarly standards aren't being achieved on the vast majority of the web 2.0 tools that most of us frequent.

i have noticed a few journals in my field shifting to online or even only available online. the turnaround time has been greatly accelerated and research that is worthy can be published 4 months or so after being submitted. i suspect that more and more journals will make this shift in the near future.

This is very interesting post and I also looked at the pre-liminary research report to get a better grasp regarding the findings.

For me the big question is if Web 2.0 use has anything to do with outcomes that we want to monitor. An example would be if RSS use helps reduce the time needed to finish one's studies.

In fact, some US data about Facebook usage by undergraduates shows a positive correlation with lower grades and less time spent studying. Is this desirable?

We found in our work that the majority of our readers does not want RSS feeds (so did Pew in the US), but in turn these same people may have a good reason to prefer getting the information via email.

http://commetrics.com/articles/why-rss-fails-with-my-readers/

RSS is one of many choices I have to get information on the net but is it the best.... or worse, can we infer that by not using it a Ph.D. student is less Web 2.0 savvy?

It could be that it represents a choice made by some Ph.D.s to focus on getting their work done as fast as possible instead of tweeting.

CONCLUSION
Some PhD students may have decided not to turn on the Web 2.0 switch when it comes to RSS feeds, using the Voice over IP phone for conversations, or surfing the net from their smartphone. However, does this allow us to infer that she is a worse researcher or takes longer to complete her program?

Neither the summary above nor the preliminary report allows us to answer the above question. Accordingly, we still don't know why the Ph.Ds chose not to switch on Web 2.0 tools more often.

What you think?

Regards,

Urs
@ComMetrics