Following a short informal meeting with my supervisor today, I thought about the fact that he knows all about my social media involvement. Apparently, people pay attention online and do talk about it. He told me that according to another, I am very visible online.
I've only just gotten involved heavily over the last few months, but I already can see the benefits. If someone who is not actively on the internet can still hear about someone's web presence, that's a good thing. I think that this is the way academia should go. Over the time of getting involved on twitter and starting this blog, I'm expanded my network extensively.
This has also had an impact on my PhD thesis. I'm using varied approaches and looking at things through the perspective of other disciplines, aided along by the people whom I follow and regularly interact with. This has increased my potential for multidisciplinarity and will boost my professional development. This impacts grants (as there is a large push towards collaboration in many fields), my teaching capabilities and my communication skills.
I encourage others to really get involved. I travel a lot and it's made me feel grounded within the academic community and has really opened my mind... And it really does get noticed. Who knows what it could lead to!
What field is your dissertation in and what fields have you expanded into? One of my sisters is a speech pathologist, another in in HR, and another does science education. Whenever I spoke about my research (collaborative writing), it was interesting to see the overlap in their fields, but also the different perspective each could give me.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree, Marie Christine. I am also in the final year (or should I say... final 6 months... hopefully!) and recently did the same thing. I have started a blog and there I created a platform for my academic life. I am also "investing" more time on twitter, google scholar, academia.edu etc. I do think that for our generation the "online presence" is as important as (if not more important) going to conferences! Cheers
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