ELI Web Seminar, June 8, 2009 1:00 p.m. ET (12:00 p.m. CT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 10:00 a.m. PT); runs one hour

Guiding the E-Researcher

Special Guest

Janet Salmons
Professor
Capella University

Janet Salmons is an e-learning scholar-practitioner. She is on the graduate faculty of the Capella University School of Business and Technology, where she develops online courses and teaches leadership and team leadership for the MBA and PhD programs. Her consulting practice, Vision2Lead, works with educational institutions, business, and nonprofit organizations on e-learning curriculum and faculty development.

Salmons co-edited the Handbook of Research on Electronic Collaboration and Organizational Synergy, which explores structure, organization, technology tools, and leadership practices that characterize successful collaboration in and across the fields of education, public policy, and business. Forthcoming is a book on electronic methods in scholarly research, Online Interviews in Real Time. She also contributed a chapter to Student Plagiarism in an Online World: Problems and Solutions.

Salmons completed her doctoral studies at the Union Institute and University with research in collaborative e-learning in leadership studies. She earned an MA in social policy studies from Empire State College, a distance-learning institution in the State University of New York, and a BS in adult education from Cornell University's College of Human Ecology.

Summary

Julie Little, EDUCAUSE director of teaching, learning, and professional development, will moderate this web seminar with Janet Salmons, who will take participants inside the design of meaningful e-research for students.

Today's tech-savvy students are accustomed to social interaction on the Internet, in immersive virtual environments, and over mobile devices. When they think about interacting with research, participants should not be surprised when they propose to do so online. Students may know how to use the tools, but do they know how to use them for research? While social conversation and research interviews share some characteristics, the purpose, protocol, and context are quite different.

This web seminar will explore the design of credible, ethical online research interviews. We will look at e-research from a faculty perspective. The content is relevant for instructors or mentors who teach classes or chair committees.

Additional Resources

• "Guiding the E-Researcher" notes and references handout
• Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Method. Edited by Annette N. Markham and Nancy K. Baym. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2009.
• Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Edited by Christine Hine. Oxford: Berg, 2005.