Operationalising persona : the academic public identity

Academics operate semi-autonomously: On one level they are believed to be independent experts in their field of study and both impart their knowledge to students and to other academics. On another level, they are employees in an elaborate system of higher education where the expectations are constantly there to connect to university strategic plans and to adopt the discourse of their institution in order that they might rise in the ranks and esteem within their microworlds. The contemporary academic identity can resemble what has emerged in the world of entertainment, sport and politics: a career driven by recognition, a sense of trying to draw attention to one’s work, and a constant effort to build reputation. By implication, the university benefits from the success that their academics achieve in reaching for these ends.

Very little research has engaged how academics manage their reputation and their personas in this elaborate higher education prestige economy. Academics work to define their identities as teachers and there are efforts by individual academics to build their teaching persona. Likewise, academics generally try to
produce a research persona that may intersect with their teaching identities, but is constituted quite differently through connection to peers and evaluation by leaders in their fields. They may even try to build a reputation for “service” and administration within their institution that defines a third kind of persona. Overlaying all of this work is the way that reputations can be built has shifted somewhat in the era of online culture and social media. The contemporary academic now must often build a persona through the techniques of connection
and networking that are now privileged in the knowledge economy. With universities imagining that they are operating at the centre of the production of the future of the knowledge economy, academics are now at the forefront of online reputation management - in other words, they need to construct their public persona
online.

This paper reports a study of 15 academics and how they are managing and building their online academic persona. The study operated with a certain pragmatism: it asked academics what they were currently doing online and asked what they would like to do to manage their reputations. Through a longitudinal study of their online engagements, the study looked at how they could alter/improve their management and reputation online. This paper will include commentary from one of the participants in the project and then an open discussion about the contemporary academic persona.

Modelling engineering student academic performance using academic analytics

Internationally, the recruitment, management and retention of students has become a high priority for universities. The use of information technology systems and student data by institutions to understand and improve student academic performance is often referred to as ‘academic analytics’. This paper presents an academic analytics investigation into the modelling of academic performance of engineering students enrolled in a second-year class. The modelling method used was binary logistic regression, and the target predicted variable was ‘success status’—defined as those students from the total originally enrolled group that achieved a final unit grade of pass or better. This paper shows that student data stored in institutional systems can be used to predict student academic performance with reasonable accuracy, and it provides one methodology for achieving this. Importantly, significant predictor variables are identified that offer the ability to develop targeted interventions to improve student success and retention outcomes.

Learning to become an academic

This chapter explores the informal learning dimensions of ‘learning to become an academic’. I explore in detail the process of becoming a scholar with particular emphasis given to the supervisory relationship as a process of apprenticeship and learning community. My Ph.D. focussed on the informal and social learning practices of two groups of activists, so this paper also covers the journey of the research, the methodology and the methods chosen for the research. I outline the early corporeal learning experiences that constituted my own educational experience as a young woman growing up working class, who turned to ideas and theory for a language of resistance to educational discourses about class. This paper has a particular focus on the role of ‘identity’ formation in learning to become an academic. I outline the processes of apprenticeship through supervision and the role of a learning community in the Ph.D., as key in developing ‘mastery’ or a ‘feel for the game’ of academia.

The problem of underachievement in numeracy : using bourdieu and critical theory to interpret academic achievement

The paper considers the achievement gap experienced by Victorian public school students. The paper uses a methodological approach informed by critical theory to interpret achievement levels between students from high and low socio-economic status. It analyses and discusses documented data and in doing this, reflects upon the work of Bourdieu emphasizing the reproductive nature of contemporary schooling.