eResearch Infrastructure Development and Community Engagement UK eScience

e-Research Infrastructure Development and Community Engagement UK e-Science All Hands Meeting Nottingham, 13. 09. 2007 Alex Voss, alex. voss@ncess. ac. uk

Community Engagement Two related JISC projects, started April’ 07 Funded under the e-Infrastructure programme community engagement strand Aimed at widening uptake of e-Infrastructures Common approach to evidence gathering, similar analytic approaches but different outputs / interventions

Understanding & Widening Uptake Drawing on science and technology studies Early adopters - followers - late adopters (Not character types) Mutual shaping Sociotechnical alignment Path dependencies - lock-in Uneven distribution of costs & benefits User-designer relations Designing interventions Based on understanding of drivers / barriers / enablers / alignment / beaten paths

e-Uptake Enabling Uptake of e-Infrastructure Services

Immediate Aims Consolidate understanding of user needs Identification of gaps in the training & support needed Run training, education and outreach events across disciplines Create a repository of event information, support information and learning material

Longer term Recommendations on how responses to barriers might be sustained and funded in the future Foster ongoing dialogue between service and technology providers, application developers and research communities

Analysis Of barriers to uptake as well as enablers Through document reviews and fieldwork (interviews, surveys or direct observation) Static, linear description is not adequate as there is no one typology of issues Searchable along a number of dimensions (typologies and tags) through a web interface Better ‘recipient design’

Intervention Through Training, Education and Outreach (TOE) Activities Series of workshops and training events in different application areas Development of training and support material for these communities UK ‘one-stop-shop’: event information, support material and support contacts Crucially: federation to community sites (e. g. , NCe. SS, AHe. SSC)

Stakeholder Involvement Support through the communities of service providers, technology developers and users (of various stripes) is essential Review workshops to validate findings Overlap with other activities exists and creates additional requirements but also opportunities Aim is to foster an ongoing discourse that will last longer than the project itself

e-Infrastructure Use Cases and Service Usage Models

Outputs Capturing patterns of use: Transferable Inspiring examples Three different, but related outputs: Experience Reports Use Cases Service Usage Models Key word here is traceability Easily searchable and consumable by stakeholders

Collecting Evidence Gathering experience reports Semi-structured interviews guided by an interview framework. Identifies research area, research tasks, and tools and technologies used Fieldwork and producing short ethnographies of practice E. g. production of video vignettes Resource constraints & practical agenda

Use Cases Engaging stories about e-Infrastructure usage, tied back to more concrete experience reports Generalise over experience reports Make usage patterns more user friendly and transferable

Community Process Important aspect to achieve sustainability OSSwatch consultation explored the idea of forming a community around e. IUS and e-Uptake. Users Contributors Committers

Stakeholder Benefits Potential benefits to Service Providers: Input for their own requirements analysis and user engagement activities More publicity for their services Get at how researchers use a particular service Understanding of how researchers join up services to achieve a particular goal

Stakeholder Benefits (II) Potential benefits for researchers: Learn about ways of using e-Infrastructure Find out what key decisions need to be made Find contacts: peers, support, training Tell service providers about their ways of using e-Infrastructure

Summary / Outlook Understand uptake as a complex social process Enable uptake through more targeted interventions Foster developments within communities rather than just offering technologies to them. Initial review and conceptual work and piloting of fieldwork Now developing strategies for the next stage, evidence gathering Work on technical outputs and planning events Next presentation: e-Social Science ‘ 07 @ Ann Arbor, 7 th-9 th October (http: //ess. si. umich. edu)