Blogging is not completely new to me. In fact, I have been blogging for approximately 8 years, on and off, in two different blogs. This is, however, my first blog post within the scope of the ”open networked learning” international pedagogical course for higher education teachers. The topic we are focusing on this week is digital literacy – our pwn and that of our students.

I recently listened to an interesting higher education podcast, shared kindly by one of my course mates on the abovementioned course. The topic of the podcast was FlipGrid, a tool for online learning. The tool as such seems interesting, but what mainly coaught my attention was the discussion about ”dumbing down” vs. explaining research in an interesting manner to non-experts, say, for example, an 8-year-old. Namely, this is one of the main challenges that I have faced with on-line residence as a researcher:

I am not particularly shy. I would call myself pretty much an extrovert, though I don’t really like such binary classifications. As a researcher though, I am used to constatnly being peer-reviewed, and to having to stand up for, and give references for my statements. However, this type of writing, where everything is explained in technical detail, safeguarding for any possible questioning and critique from peers is seldom catchy, let alone easy to follow by an non-expert. At best, such writing is dry and formal, at worst it is simpy incomprehensible.

So how do we researchers maintain the integrity that we have pretty much internalised though our academic roles, and how do we navigate between trying to write catchy texts for non-experts and the fear of being negatively judged by academic peers? How do we simplify to the extent that our research can be understood by and give rise to curiosity in an 8-year-old while at the same time not miscommunicating the science?

I think there questions are essential for us researchers to contemplate on, if scinece is to be effectively communicated to society, and come to use. Thus, I can wamly recommend the podcast ”how do we support and amplify those more quiet voices” for any academic who is interested in developing their digital residence side.