New Technologies and 21st Century Skills

ACADEMIA.EDU

Tool Category/ies: Feedback Reflection Social Networking

License Type: Free

Overall Rating

4/5

Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share and follow research. Academics upload their papers to share them with other academics in over 100,000 research areas. They can also follow other academics, and see new papers and other research updates from those academics in their News Feeds.

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Rating: 4/5

Reviewed by: Kye on 04/10/2013

You wouldn't want to join the academia.edu if you do not have particular research interests with an academic status.

You may follow work of someone whose research interests you.Since the academia.edu offers an unusual opportunity for students to follow prominent researchers' work in real time, the use of the site would be more appropriate for graduate courses or senior level undergraduate research seminar courses. For example, when I teach a course on mathematics computations in fluid dynamics, I can provide a list of possible research projects or areas to ask for students. Then, the assignments for students would be to find and follow researchers in that field in Academia.edu. This rare encounter with real researchers in the course that students are taking would spark their motivation for future research. Another use of this site in a teaching environment could be a project in a senior level mathematics course that asks students to find out a list of particular mathematicians whose research areas are the topics for the course. For example, students in Real Analysis might look for analysts in the Academia.edu and create a report on what their recent research activities are.

What are the advantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?
The biggest advantage is students' exposure to research community in real time. Finding out what real researchers are doing on students' own interest areas would be invaluable for their motivation for further study.

What are the disadvantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?
The success of this site would depend on whether it has most research members in each research interest area. Otherwise, it may lose its value in a teaching environment.

Rating: 4/5

Reviewed by: Caley Satterfield on 04/10/2013

Description
Academia.edu is a feedback tool for academic researchers in virtually any field. Researchers can upload papers for feedback from other researchers in their field. Also, you can follow other researchers in your area of interest or groups of researchers in your area of interest to read papers they have uploaded. You can also post questions to your profile and other researchers can respond. Another neat feature of Academia.edu is the analytics tool. The analytics tool allows you to monitor who is following your profile and reading your papers on Academia.edu.

I would recommend Academia.edu to other beginning researchers/graduate students as I think it could be a very valuable tool for receiving feedback on research papers or answers to big picture questions posed. Academia.edu also has the potential to be an excellent networking site if users participate in discussions and provide feedback for others.

Things to know before using Academia.edu
Before you use Academia.edu you will need a basic familiarity with how social media sites work. The Academia.edu interface is much like Facebook.

Resources required to use Academia.edu
To use this tool you will need a computer or other device that will connect with the internet.

How to use Academia.edu in a teaching environment
I would use Academia.edu as a tool for students to post their research papers and provide feedback to one another. I would also encourage students to seek out other researchers in their area of interest and solicit feedback on their papers. Another option for using Academia.edu is for students to pose questions to the Academia.edu community about their area of interest and participate in a discussion with other researchers who respond.

Advantages of using Academia.edu
Easy to use, lots of information, papers, and networking opportunities

Disadvantages of using Academia.edu
Lots of informationhave to be careful about what is useful and what is not useful, opportunity for others to plagiarize your work, students may be nervous to post questions to more senior researchers.

Examples and External Resources

uploaded on 02/14/2013

A tour of Academia.edu by Elizabeth Pelezo uploaded on 02/14/2013