MESH Education Communities

 

MESH pathways

MirandaNet is using the EdComms platform as a rallying point for our MESH activities in Creativity and Visual Learning. Members are invited to develop other MESH pathways under the MirandaNet umbrella.

Email christina@mirandanet.ac.uk for further information about how to register a MESH.

Understand more about MESH here.

Summary of uses of the Ed Comms plaform

Academic Staff

The pilot research (2010-2012) involved nearly a thousand academics and their partners from over 100 institutions in more than 20 countries. Examples of the benefits they identified from using EdComms are shown below:

  • project management for research projects which include partners from other institutions
  • collaborating with others on writing research and other reports
  • co-ordinating an edited book
  • managing bid writing with a group of national and international colleagues
  • networking with research users to increase impact of research
  • networking to scale up small scale research. Research engaged professionals might find it helpful to use EdComms to support developing and running research networks connecting practitioners who wish to undertake research or be participants in research with academic researchers.
  • networking with students once they graduate
  • to support working and special interest groups within professional associations
  • building a community of enquiry around a topic
  • working online with people outside the orgnaisation – employers, work placement staff, experts
  • finding specialists and services that cannot easily be found any other way, for example
    • experts for advice, for lectures, for consultancy
    • partners for projects – research, publication, collaboration
    • people with similar interests
    • lecturers from the same area
    • organising conferences with colleagues around the world – pre-conference planning, conference publications and post-conference followup
    • supporting rapid evidence review networks
    • managing events.

While some staff find it easy to adopt these new ways of working, others need support and training to make full use of the opportunities.

Non Academic Staff

A large percentage of staff in educational organisations have similar roles to staff in local authorities – human resources, procurement, estates management, finance and similar benefits to those experienced in local authorities can be expected for those staff in the education sector. Communities can be built which join these groups of people together across organisations to encourage ‘SMART’ working practices.

Read   the  briefing paper  here.

Dr Marilyn Leask, Professor of Educational Knowledge Management

Dr Christina Preston, Professor of Education Innovation

Learning Futures Research Centre
University of Bedfordshire

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