Marvellous Mapping: Reflecting on online identities and practices using Visitors and Residents Mapping - Workshop, NUIG 13 March 2015

Guest post by David White, Head of Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of the Arts London & Donna Lanclos, Associate Professor for Anthropological Research in the J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte. Dave is the originator of the Visitors and Residents concept, and both he and Donna are on the research team which has developed the related JISC infoKit

On the 13th March, at the invitation of Catherine Cronin  and with the support of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning, the two of us will be running a ‘Visitors & Residents’ mapping workshop at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Visitors and Residents is an idea we and other colleagues have been developing as a simple way of describing the broad range of ways in which individuals use the Web. It’s based on motivations to engage rather than age or technical skill.

The mapping process has been refined over the last couple of years and is one of the outputs from an ongoing longitudinal study into how learners engage online. The strength of the process is the way in which it helps individuals to reify and visualise the various ways they engage online. This is especially because most of us do have a sense of the ‘geography’ of the various sites and services we use online but it’s not easy to express.

Most individuals also have a well developed model of who is in each network they are members of in Resident modes and the character of the dialogue they will be in across those networks. For example, we understand the modes of engagement in work email and how they differ from being active within a Facebook group of a personal interest but it’s unlikely they we will have mapped these engagements side-by-side even if they, at times, influence each other.

1st Year Health & Social Care Student

3rd Year PhD Student

More recently we have been working on a detailed guide for the mapping workshop. The process has evolved as we have run the mapping workshop with various groups from a variety of academic disciplines and a range of higher education institutions, and via feedback from others who have run workshops for themselves. During this time we have also created a suite of mapping related resources including a pool of the maps from participants which act as examples of specific styles of online engagement. The guide gives a suggested structure for the workshop and collated these resources. Significantly the guide also highlights recurrent themes that have emerged from discussions around maps and offers constructive ways to explore those themes with groups.

The Marvellous Mapping session in Galway will be our first chance to pilot the format we have suggested in the guide. As such we see it as an important stage in the evolution and application of the Visitors and Residents idea. If you can, do come along to the workshop or take a look at the guide to see if you could run a mapping session at your institution.

Marvellous Mapping: Reflecting on online identities and practices using Visitors and Residents mapping will take place at NUIG on Friday, 13 March 2015 from 11:00 to 15:00. For booking information for this free event see here .
If you cannot make the event the main section of the workshop will be live streamed. The event will be live tweeted using the Visitors and Residents hashtag #vandr