Macrogrants/Wiki-Themed Symposium

Objective

I am organising an interdisciplinary academic event called What I Know Is: A Research Symposium on Online Collaborative Knowledge-Building. It is hosted by the Division of Communications, Media and Culture (CMC) on behalf of the School of Arts and Humanities (SAH), at the University of Stirling. We anticipate a delegation of 80 to attend. It takes place on March 19th 2014.

Goals

This symposium is part of the CMC Division's Research Seminar series for the academic session.

It is also an inaugural event for a SAH working group to establish a research network in the Digital Humanities in Scottish Universities.

The event will bring together scholars of international reputation from the central belt of Scotland, as well as from other parts of the UK, who draw from Humanities disciplines: publishing, philosophy, cultural studies, media education, politics and aesthetics.

Invited speakers and respondents will form panels to encourage delegate discussion around central topics associated with the idea of collaborative knowledge building: 'Digital Publishing and Open Access'; 'Extended Cognition and Online Agency'; 'Networked Communities, Media Ecology and Creative Practice'; and 'Wikipedians and the Humanities'.

It ought to be noted that invited speakers include notable Wikipedians (from within WMUK organisation, and outwith) and invited delegates include within their number representatives from regional initiatives associated with WMUK activities. In this respect, the event aims to foster a collaborative relationship between the University and these initiatives more generally.

The event will coincide with a wiki-themed week in the Division of CMC, where a series of workshops for students (and staff) is planned as part of a taught module (Digital Media and Culture) to facilitate an assessment to get students to think about issues associated with open access, creative commons, peer-review and online community behaviour.

Resources

No specialist experience is required for this particular event. Volunteers will be sourced from within the CMC Division. The event will be resourced using a patchwork of funding purses - SAH have agreed to cover the venue hire costs; CMC have agreed to cover speaker travel and accomodation expenses out of the Division research budget.

The purpose of this application is to source funding to facilitate this event. In keeping with the ethos of WMUK, the aim is for this event to be open to all (subject to 80 limited places) and free to access. Therefore it is desirable to not levee a delegate fee to attend. The other reason for this is so that the event is open to students and other interested parties from disadvantaged backgrounds.

More specifically this macrogrant would provide funding to cover the costs of light catering for the whole delegation throughout the day (£1160.20) and also to provide subsistence costs for the speakers (8 speakers at £15 each = £120). Therefore this application for a macrogrant totals £1280.20

All figures and the symposium programme can be made available upon request.

Constraints

No time contraints other than the event forming part of a wiki-themed week within the CMC Division.

No Limitations on key resources.

Outcomes

• Fulfil the CMC remit as a notable event in the academic calender
• Fulfil goal of contributing to launch of Digital Humanities research initiative in SAH as a means to forming a research network in Digital Humanities across Scoottish universities
• To encourage discussion of the various topics covered in the panels (see above) to faciliate a full conference report (published in Commons and/or other suitable OA platform) authored by myself.
• To encourage engagement between wikipedians, scholars interested in open education, researchers interested in online collaborate knowledge-building, and other stakeholders.
• To foster interest in publishing (possibly in OA platform, but also encouraging interest from academic publishers) conference proceedings or edited anthology covering the discussions from the event.

Risks

All apeakers are either within local travelling distance (University of Stirling, other Scottish universities) or have been asked to travel the day before. If I am ill (as Symposium Chair) I will delegate the role to a colleague within CMC.

GregXenon01 (talk) 13:03, 27 November 2013 (UTC)