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Web Science

University Digital Day!

While the thought of returning to a lecture theatre during our summer break would fill most students with dread, the moods of Thomas Rowledge and I were quite the opposite as we travelled up to Southampton from Poole on Thursday. This is because we'd been invited to cover the University of Southampton's Digital Day, hosted by the Web Science Institute and Public Policy unit at Southampton. Continue reading →

Learning in the Network Age: Round 2

Our Learning in the Network Age MOOC with FutureLearn is running again for two weeks from 24th July. You can sign up here. The web is having a significant impact on the way we learn. Learning today is much more than just attending lectures and classes. It involves interacting with a powerful online and offline network of people, technology, services and information in ways, places and times of our choosing. Continue reading →

Web Science goes Down Under

Melbourne - RMIT University We arrived in Melbourne on Saturday evening. On Sunday a few of us visited the lively streets of Melbourne to get some sun, street arts, and diverse food to overcome the jet-lag. We refuged in coffee shops to benefit from the countless flow of coffee and decent Wi-Fi. On Monday, we headed to RMIT where Professor Susan Halford was presenting her work, “Speaking Sociologically with Big Data: Symphonic social science and the future for big data research”. Continue reading →

WSI Lunch Seminar: Data Literacy

Last week at our regular WSI lunch event, two of the guest editors of the Journal of Community of Informatics Special Issue on Data Literacy, Johanna Walker and Mark Frank, presented an overview of the journal and talked about some of their own adventures in data literacy that had brought them to the subject. In the first part of the talk they discussed approaches to defining data literacy. Continue reading →

Web Science students interview Vice Chancellor

Web Science undergraduates and Student Digital Champions Tom Davidson and Tom Rowledge, together with Education PhD students Sharifa Al'Adawi and Abdulsalam Almanthari, recently interviewed the Vice Chancellor Professor Sir Christopher Snowden. The objective was to raise awareness of the Researching Assessment Practices (RAP) strategy and encourage more students to participate in the project. https://www.youtube. Continue reading →

Report from the Web Summit in Lisbon

The Web Summit, dubbed the largest technology marketplace event in Europe, is a renowned meeting place for Web innovators and start-up companies. Web Science Institute directors Susan Halford and Leslie Carr attended to discover what the business community have planned for the future of the Web. Paddy Cosgrave certainly knows how to put on a show. His first Web Summit, held in a hotel outside Dublin in 2009, attracted fewer than 400 participants. Continue reading →