Buying the future of research …

There’s been quite a to-do on librarian sites recently about the acquisition of RefMe, an academic citation tool by Chegg, a purveyor of online textbooks and tutors (and more). Before you click past this, let’s have a little look and think about this business model…

The citation engine issue

In the opinion of my peers – CiteThisForMe is an inferior product to its precursor RefMe. To be technical about this –
  • it doesn’t allow for importing .ris files from databases (a common standard)
  • you can’t create folders for citations
  • user interface is poor
  • numerous popup boxes for editing
  • no google SSO
  • no easy import function from existing products
  • it’s not terribly good or accurate
  • etc.

So far it seems one librarian wrote about the take-over with foreboding  but again, more from a technical point of view. It’s just not a very good product. As he pointed out – none of the “quick and dirty” products are very good. For non pure-academic sites (i.e. paid databases) It boils down to whether some back-end programmer has bothered to capture much (if any) meta-data on author, date, title etc. And I’m afraid to say that’s exactly the type of site most of our students cut their researching teeth on. Think of it as the crack-cocaine of citation. You add a chrome extension, you go to a website / youtube video / online newspaper and click the extension and like magic your citation is generated. But not quite. At worst it’ll just pick up the URL, at best perhaps a title and author. And I’m afraid to say most teachers grading “research” are long happy that even that’s been included in a bibliography or works cited or reference list.

From boring citation to sexy ‘critical moments’

But actually none of that really matters. Well it does, sort of, eventually to the people who matter who care. What is somewhat more concerning is this.
The first time RefMe came into the (financial) news in a serious way was in 2015 when GEMs Education threw some money at it. Educational companies don’t throw money at citation tools unless there’s something in it for them:

But it isn’t just students who are showing an interest in the platform, RefME has received £2.7 million backing from GEMs Education, the largest private education company in the world. They want to encourage more schoolchildren to use the app, as pupils are now increasingly having to reference too.

‘We’ve identified 150-200 million kids around the world who cite,’ said Hatton.
The platform also does more than create references – RefME collects information about what people cite, making a map of the data. This means it can give you recommendations based on what other people who used that same citation went on to find, something Hatton calls ‘removing the search from research’.

Then the Chegg acquisition 2 years later, and one of the first things you see when you open their site is side by side in the news is the financial results and the tie in between this “academic” provider and a “global media agency”
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Bait and switch tactics …
and when you read the terms and conditions you find out:
The Services may collect “Personal Information” (which is information that can be used to identify or contact a specific individual, such as your name and email address), account information (such as a password or other information that helps us confirm that it is you accessing your account) and demographic or other information (such as your school, gender, age or birthdate and zip code and information about your interests and preferences).

And you thought FaceBook was bad …

 

“When you submit, post, upload, embed, display, communicate, link to, email or otherwise distribute or publish any review, problem, suggestion, idea, solution, question, answer, class notes, course outline bibliographic and citation information comment, testimonial, feedback, message, image, video, text, profile data or other material (“User Content”) to Chegg, any Chegg employee or contractor, or a Chegg Website, you grant Chegg and our affiliates, licensees, distributors, agents, representatives and other entities or individuals authorized by Chegg, a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully sublicensable (through multiple tiers) and fully transferable right to exercise any and all copyright, trademark, publicity, and database rights you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future, and to make, use, reproduce, copy, display, publish, exhibit, distribute, modify, sell, offer for sale, create derivative works based upon and otherwise use the User Content.
Note that we may create, facilitate or display social advertisements, whereby your name, profile and photo may be used to advertise products and services to your network based on your use of the Services and your interactions with Chegg. You agree that Chegg may use your name and profile picture in connection with social ads to advertise products and services to your network based on your use of the Services and your interactions with Chegg and third parties through the Services.
You further agree that Chegg is free to use any ideas or concepts contained in any User Content for any purposes whatsoever, including, without limitation, developing, manufacturing and marketing products and services; and creating informational articles, without any payment of any kind to you. You authorize Chegg to publish your User Content in a searchable format that may be accessed by users of the Services and the Internet. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you waive any moral rights you may have in any User Content you submit, even if such User Content is altered or changed in a manner not agreeable to you.” (Privacy Policy)
Well actually FaceBook is bad – the worst possible place to put all that information exchange and community knowledge and knowhow, (I’m looking at you my lovely library networks on Facebook), but we kind of know it’s bad and we live with it for all kinds of reasons, and most of us (I hope) extract the useful stuff and put it elsewhere like Evernote or GoogleDrive or … (oops who owns it then!?).
When Chegg bought Easybib, this is what the press release had to say:
“In the last 12 months, Imagine Easy’s bibliography and research tools powered about 240 million sessions and EasyBib alone saw more than 7 million unique users in March 2016, Chegg tells me. In total, all of these services together have helped students from mangling more than 1.4 billion bibliography entries.”
Bear in mind, nothing you do in their services is actually yours, not even the services you may have paid for:
Service Modifications
Chegg reserves the right, in our sole discretion, to make changes to or discontinue any of the Services at any time. Any description of the Services provided by Chegg is not a representation that the Services are working or will always work in that manner, as Chegg is continuously updating the Services, and these updates may not always be reflected in the Terms of Use.
Now this is one thing if you’re a Grade 5 student and with much blood sweat, tears and encouragement from your teachers, librarian and parents you’ve managed to come up with a bibliography of 3-5 items that say more that “wikipedia” or youtube.com. It’s quite another if you’re a serious researcher at say doctorate or post-doctorate level and have a few thousand articles referenced, with abstracts and perhaps attached documents or pdfs. Or if your 4,000 word extended essay is due in a few weeks time to finish off your IB, and the RefMe plug is pulled with practically no sensible communication from the company from the announcement at the end of January to about a week before the pulling of the plug on the 28th February (the Facebook trail of increasing panic and despair is awful – and that was just the librarians) – twitter showed some upset students but not as many as one would expect – perhaps the RefMe user base wasn’t that big or serious about social media – or they were too busy scrambling to migrate their data to an alternative platform.
So what is Chegg buying (by the way, the numbers are still relatively small potatoes in investment speak, but they’ve got ambition!)
If you have a look at last year’s financial report, this bit, where they refer to the acquisition of EasyBib is relevant:
With education representing a trillion-dollar opportunity in the U.S. alone, we believe that the number of students who will leverage online tools, use the services we have, and then benefit from new services that we plan to offer will increase dramatically over the next decade. That is why we continue to make strategic investments to take advantage of this growing opportunity. At the core of our success is reaching more students than anyone else, knowing more about them than anyone else, and leveraging that data to improve our products and services, acquire customers for less, and increase their customer satisfaction. That is the essence of what the Student Graph does, and we have been consistent in our product and business development strategies by investing in services that can both leverage and contribute to the Student Graph which accelerates our growth. That was the driving force behind our acquisition of Imagine Easy which has been one of the quickest and most successful integrations into the company. With 30 million annual unique visitors according to comScore, we continue to be confident that this acquisition is an enormous opportunity for students, for Chegg, and for our shareholders. There have been over 1.5 billion citations created to date with more than 400 million new ones added in 2016 alone. Already we are exceeding the expectations we have for the business and it is quickly becoming a core part of the Chegg Services platform.
The financial results are quite phenomenal actually – they’re making money, real money off a digital platform. They’ve got current students by the short and curlies and a pipeline of 200 million school kids to add to their existing user-base in the coming years. Lure them in with solving the citation hassle and then move them up the feeding chain to online textbook hire and tutors and test prep. As a former finance person I must say this is smart. I’m also wondering how much of their revenue is from selling their customer data on to media companies and all the social media / off-line entertainment type tie-ins?
So, that’s that for what’s going on in the otherwise boring old citation world… and now the next thing – online paraphrasing anyone?  Soon all you’ll have to do is get into a university (another service offered by Chegg) and the just physically sit out (or party through) your 3 or 4 years while the digital tools take care of all the messy bits of assignments and hand ins.
(ps. if you want to know what I recommend for what it’s worth? NoodleTools for K-12 students, and Zotero thereafter. And no, I don’t get a commission from either of them, and yes I pay for both for the premium service).

Open, social and Participatory Media in Education

In this week’s module we were posed the following questions:

  • How would curriculum change if our priority approach was on critical, creative, and collaborative thinking?
  • What does the reality of the modern age of information– this age of Google –suggest that we “teach”?
  • Can we simply “update” things as we go, or is it time for rethinking of our collective practice?

I was forwarded this very provocative article from the Atlantic by my boss this week = “The deconstruction of the K-12 teacher” It ties in quite nicely with the theme of this module, but it also turns the questions on their heads.

  • how would the curriculum change if they were in the hands of learners and not educators?
  • What does the reality of the modern age of information suggest as to who should be teaching?
  • Will “updating things as we go” enhance or delay the obsolescence of the current collective practice?

Or at least these could be the questions IF and only IF all the glory day assumptions on technology and education were true. As so many of my cohort have pointed out, the reality on the ground is very different from the theory and assumptions made up in ivory or silicon towers.  There are brilliant teachers who don’t touch technology and will never need to and their students are not any the poorer for it.  There are physical tools that are just as effective or more so than technological tools (see this great blog by Buffy Hamilton on writeable tables). There are pathetic teachers who wow and woo with their technical powess, and there are self-absorbed  #SoMe educators who p*** the hell out of their colleagues and students. There are teachers who are genuinely passionate and engaged with their students AND technology and how the combination can optimise learning and reach students in ways that traditional teaching may not be able to. There are those who have experimented and been rewarded and feel empowered to continue and those who have tried and failed or tried had had their fingers smacked by threatened superiors or administrators or frightened parents.

There are children who are naturally curious and respond to any and every stimulus be it text or video, paper or screen and dive right into everything and those who hang back, those who are scared of failing. Those who’ve seen it all, can do it all and more and those that need a lot of help.  A LOT OF HELP. Will technology be the panacea?

I’m not sure that education has ever moved forward by revolution (and it is usually at the behest of entrenched power structures that it does so). Rather it seems to have fits and starts and intermittant warfare (remember the reading/phonics wars?)

The question I think is really, in whose interest is it that education changes, and do they have the power and control to institute those changes?  And this is where it gets interesting. Coming back to the Atlantic article – it would appear to make economic sense to only have “super teachers” and to gain economies of scale, so that would benefit local / state governments wanting to save money. It may even be attractive to those wanting to pay less tax. It’s certainly interesting for commercial educational interests (Pearson etal. the most hated kid on the block it seems) to support this.

Who is driving this bus? I get the feeling that many educators are feeling like passengers, some willingly paid for the ride, some were forced to embark, some think they’re the conductor or the ticket collector,  But who has set the itinerary, and is there a driver or is it a unmanned ground or cloud vehicle?

I see the changes benefiting students as they can delve deeper and go further than the curriculum would allow. Go beyond the geographical and age limitations set by traditional classrooms.  I also see some of them them drowning in content without being able to absorb, internalise or think about it before moving on. I see them learning to use fabulous tools and I see them being sucked into a time-blackhole where the tool and the look of the product becomes more important than the content, the analysis, the thinking or the learning.

I don’t have answers, I just have observations and thoughts and questions right now.

 

Open, Social and Participatory? Who’s driving the bus?

In this week’s module we were posed the following questions:
  • How would curriculum change if our priority approach was on critical, creative, and collaborative thinking?
  • What does the reality of the modern age of information– this age of Google –suggest that we “teach”?
  • Can we simply “update” things as we go, or is it time for rethinking of our collective practice?

I was forwarded this very provocative article from the Atlantic by my boss this week = “The deconstruction of the K-12 teacher” It ties in quite nicely with the theme of this module, but it also turns the questions on their heads… 

Who is driving this bus? I get the feeling that many educators are feeling like passengers, some willingly paid for the ride, some were forced to embark, some think they’re the conductor or the ticket collector,  But who has set the itinerary, and is there a driver or is it a unmanned ground or cloud vehicle?

(Read more)

Module 5: OLJ assignment – Social media Marketing Strategy

Task

Read Brown, AL. (2009). Developing an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy, in Salt Lake City Social Media Examiner (30 July), then 

Examine

Josh Bernoff & Charlene Li’s post Social Technographics: Conversationalists get onto the ladder (19 January, 2010). In particular explore the different behaviours of social networkers articulated in their ladder.
Consider applying market analysis to analyse your market’s (client base) social technology behaviour.
Also view Bernoff’s recent update on the statistics for their ladder ‘The Global Social Takeover’ (4 January, 2012)
Based on your understanding of your library or information agency’s, and your exposure to concepts and strategies presented in this section of Module 4, outline (in 400 words) how you can apply these ideas to develop a draft marketing strategy for your organisation.
 
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Brown (2009) itemised 7 points for an effective social media marketing strategy.  These included:
  • written plan
  • how much time
  • friend / following policy
  • target market
  • budget
  • which products / services
  • which sites used
On the other hand, Harpointer (2012) and Freud (2010) point out the pitfalls involved in engaging in social media, including when companies fail to plan adequately and don’t understand the terrain of social media, fail to see it as part of a longer term strategy, don’t engage people in dialogue but instead use it as a sales pitch or follow the wrong people.
Freud (2010) provides some interesting examples in the video below, and Carroll (2010) tells the story of United Airlines and his guitar as an example in the power of social media.  Bernoff (2012) has created a ladder categorising the differing (and  overlapping) behaviours of social networkers.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
What does this all mean for a library trying to to develop a marketing strategy? Considering the library where I work, there are three key groups of users.  The teaching staff, the students and the parents.  Our product offering, the way in which we’d like to engage each group and therefore our marketing to each is subtly different.  Between the groups and within the groups there is also a difference in how social media is interpreted and used.  Further, each group needs a different type of “coaching” in the use of the library.
 
Since the school has grown rapidly in the last few years (500 to 1500 pupils and 50-150 teachers in 3 years), not all teachers are aware of what the library can offer them.  The one-on-one laptop program in the secondary school has enthusiastic supporters in the students and teachers, but meets with quite a bit of opposition and lack of understanding amongst the parent body.
 
The social media tools at our disposal are:
Twitter, blog, website, school newsletter (ebrief) google+, google sites, pinterest, LibGuides.
 
Needs analysis:
Teachers:  Libguides, book ordering, journals, teaching, coaching, use of technology and tools for self and in the classroom
Students: Books, libguides, journals, use of technology and tools, research skills
Parents: understanding learning and research process in digital age, books and resources, “on our side”
 
Who uses what?
Parents – predominently email & facebook – (we don’t have a facebook presence) some linkedin, some twitter, pinterest
Students – moving away from facebook to snapchat and instagram, use a lot of skype chat, 
Teachers – most are very digitally literate – use most of the google tools, twitter, facebook, instagram, linkedin, pinterest etc.

We’ve started to put more information about the library in the school newsletter ebrief, and whenever we have something new, the librarian posts it on google+ to the teachers.  I’d like to see the bulk of our marketing efforts geared towards the parent body this year. 
 
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References:
Bernoff, J. (2012). The Global Social Takeover. Empowered. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2012/01/the-global-social-takeover.html
Brown, A. (2009). Developing an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy. Examiner.com. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.examiner.com/article/developing-an-effective-social-media-marketing-strategy
Carroll, D. (2010). Lessons from “United Breaks Guitars” [YouTube]. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hd8XI42i2M
Freud, A. (2010). Brand Success and Failures in Social Media [YouTube]. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G_CblR8jSQ
Harpointer, T. (2012). 10 Killer Social Media Pitfalls Businesses Must Avoid. AIS Media. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.aismedia.com/press/10-killer-social-media-pitfalls-businesses-must-avoid/
Siddiqui, A. (2013). SEO depends on Social Media and just what are Social Media Signals! AGUA Entrepreneurial Solutions. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.aguaesolutions.com/blog/seo-depends-on-social-media-and-just-what-are-social-media-signals/

Social Media Frenzy (1)

I’m busy looking into various social media tools for International School Librarians for my next assignment.  And at the same time, I’m trying to resolve for myself what works and what doesn’t to manage my own ever-increasing flow of information.  Over the next few posts I’ll introduce each new tools I’ve found and give a link to what I’ve done with it.

I’ll start with what I consider to be the most successful result – using paper.li to curate information flow from Twitter.  Now I must admit, that prior to doing my research I was pretty agnostic about Twitter.  I didn’t really “get” it.  I didn’t want a constant flow of information and my weekly updates were exhausting to look through, even if it was only 140 characters a post.  And, I think Brain Pickings tweets too much so I had a ton of stuff from them.

Then, I saw, according to the social savvy librarians in my survey, that Twitter was the highest ranked social media for professional use, and in the explanations, I was led to the hashtag #TLChat.  But then when I went to Twitter, I couldn’t find a way to follow #TLChat.  So, Joyce Valenza to the rescue, as always.  She had a blogpost on how to feed twitter tags into a curated newspaper using paper.li – it’s already 2 years old, but it still works perfectly – just goes to show how badly I didn’t get Twitter.

Anyway, it works a treat, and here is the newspaper I made combining the hashtags for #TLChat, #EdChat and some other bits and pieces.  Now I need to make it all mobile and download onto my ipad.

Livin’ and learnin’

 

Reading and Weeding social media

It’s terribly addictive, I’ve just spent an hour hopping from blog to blog to Pinterest to Facebook entry and back again.  And added a couple of pretty good blogs to my Blogfeed (The Daring Librarian, and DaveCaleb).  It wasn’t all for nothing.  I had a good lesson on infographics from Library Grits, along with some concrete hints on how to get started and what to use.  Katie, our school librarian, has put down the tricks and secrets of getting stuff out of the catalogue into social media in her The Librarian Edge blog and I found a good book to pin for getting adolescents to read (Book Love) and found a cute poster on the rights of readers for my daughter.

I also decided that anyone who hasn’t posted for 2 years doesn’t deserve to be in my feed, no matter if he’s on the CSU recommended reading list or not … 2 years is a century in social media.  But on the other hand, here is a provocative new book (Writing on the Wall by Tom Standage) on the fact that social media has always been with us it just keeps changing clothes.