All entries for Wednesday 10 August 2011

What is a digital magazine? What role might it have in HE?

On the small table next to my bed there's a copy of Scientific American. It's been there for a few months now. I've read most of it. I haven't yet discarded it. Eventually I'll move it to some dust-gathering position in my library. But even then it will not be forgotten. Next time we are discussing the evolution of the mammoth, I'll retrieve it to reference some interesting point. In terms of time and space, it's actually been quite significant to me - remarkably so considering it's physical form. I think I paid around £3 for it. That's a good deal. Sometimes I buy the Harvard Business Review, another of my favourite occasional magazines. The HBR is considerably more expensive. I did have a subscription. I probably will get a subscription again in the future, when I can get time to organise it. Interestingly, I have free access to all of the HBR's articles online through our institutional subscription. I use that for research purposes. But I don't really read it online in the same way as I do in print. It's an entirely different entity, with a very different phenomenological presence.

Why does this matter? Why is it important for us to reflect upon the magazine format and its role? The Apple iPad has something to do with it. We are starting to see devices that come close to replicating the magazine-reading/owning experience. Developers are just now starting to explore how digital and connected features might enhance the magazine format further. But there's more - I'm starting to hear educators saying that they "want to publish a magazine". Just a fad? Jumping on the iPad bandwagon? Maybe. But if we think more about the magazine format and experience, I argue that it in fact has a much closer fit with what many people are trying to achieve more broadly with their HE teaching. I suspect that for some time there has been an unexpressed desire to work in this format, and that much of what gets published in blogs and browser-tree based info sites (e.g. department web sites) is better suited to the extended digital magazine format. Over the last decade university IT departments have provided sophisticated and well supported tools for publishing in two formats: the info site and the blog. Perhaps there needs to be a third option: the digital magazine.

Let's imagine a scenario that illustrates how the digital magazine format might be used in HE. In many universities it's a real example - but not that common, or easy to do (the point is that it's about to become a lot easier). Consider a university service department whose role includes:

• facilitating academics in improving teaching (choosing the best methods, developing the required skills and resources, optimising practice, being better coordinated etc);
• getting academics to undertake training and development;
  
• promoting teaching quality improvement as a worthwhile, valuable, feasible activity for academics;
• getting academics to take responsibility for improving teaching quality;
• facilitating debate and new thinking about teaching and the institution;
• developing its own provisions to meet the changing needs of the institution.
  

The department publishes a periodical digital magazine to subscribers (anyone can subscribe). When a new edition of the magazine is published, the subscribers are alerted and can download their own copy in their favourite format. Each edition contains a collection of articles written by teachers from the institution and other invited experts (an editor with journalism skills might help with writing the articles). When the reader downloads their copy, they first see the front cover - in true magazine style, giving the edition a unique identity and sense of "newness". The cover image and teasers give a sense of what the edition has to offer - topics covered, themes, people etc. The reader might jump to a specific article, or they might use a simple interactive tool to browse through the pages looking for a starting point. The edition begins with an editorial, summing-up the articles and giving a sense of why they matter (at that particular point in time). Importantly, the articles are related but different, pursuing diverse aspects and perspectives in an interconnected way with a shared methodology or interest - just like a good HE course. The articles have been commissioned by an editorial panel (perhaps some are selected from projects undertaken as part of one of the department's training courses). The selectiveness and finality of the edition format (with a specified number of articles each edition), enhance the value of the content (as opposed to an info site or a blog which can be added to and edited indefinitely). The readers can respond to articles, or the whole edition through the good-old-fashioned Letters to the Editor page - giving guidance to the editorial commissioning, and helping to direct wider development activity - in this case informing the redeveloment of training provision, as well as feeding into key debates (e.g. on interdisciplinarity). Most importantly, the reading experience is enjoyable, quick and flowing, with articles of just the right length and style to maintain the magazine aesthetic. But at the same time, the reader needs to feel that they are getting something significantly important, substantial and trusted. This is the balance that magazines like HBR and Scientific American achieve so well.

If this is all done well enough, the magazine will become an influential, desirable, long-lasting and substantial entity. People will literally love it and what it has to say. They will look forwards to the date of publication. They think back to great articles from past editions. They will let it fill gaps in their day, perhaps set aside time to read an article with more depth, and even use it as a platform to develop their own ideas and views. The articles might suggest things to try out, workshops to attend (perhaps listed in a digest of events and news), people to talk to, books to read. But the impact will be social as well as individual. Articles will get talked about, editions shared (perhaps globally) in a way that rarely if ever happens with the less tangible and more dispersed content that appears in blogs and info sites. That's why people are starting to think about making magazines rather than web sites. That's why we might see the format used innovatively in other HE contexts. For example, what if we present an academic course as a magazine (rather than through a VLE or a department info site)? The articles could introduce topics, themes, issues in an engaging and interesting way, inspiring the students to find out more, to question, challenge etc. And perhaps the students could then contribute articles on their own research - following the example set by the academics? The discursive element of the magazine could provide better feedback from students to academics. It could help the course to evolve and adapt over time, or to make interdisciplinary connections. Like a text book, but more unique, local, special. Maybe this is even a good route to take from being a campus university to being an online distance learning provider? Perhaps its a way of getting to a bigger global audience without losing what is special about the local (glocalizing is what Immelt calls it).

Is it a realistic option? Are we actually being quite naive? After all, few have experience of this kind of publishing. What are the risks? What is the gap between current skills and those needed to do a successful magazine? How might technology help? Technically, the barriers to publishing a digital magazine are disappearing fast. We already have effective systems for collaboratively creating digital content (Sitebuilder, Sharepoint etc). If we can add features that give guidance to the writing process (word counts, media libraries, document templates, publishing workflow), the challenge of writing good content is alleviated - perhaps enough to lower the entry-level sufficiently. And there is already plenty of good stuff to write about. It's a university, it's full of fascinating stories. Two big challenges remain:

1. Visuals - getting access to good quality, relevant, (sufficiently) original, copyright-cleared images is still a challenge. Services like iStockPhoto helps. Having access to a good camera and photographic skills helps. That is becoming easier. Cameras are becoming smaller and more convenient. Having a media library that indicates if and how each item has been used might also help (so that authors can get images that seem fresh and new).
2. Presentation - the magazine format is very different to the kinds of digital publishing that we have become used to - the front cover, the ease with which we can move through the magazine, seamless integration of video and audio, and to make all this work on a variety of devices - that's still not straightforward.

These challenges are predominantly technical in nature, and perhaps worth addressing if we think that the magazine format is as important as blogs and info sites.

More considerations:

Might the digital format work seamlessly with print-on-demand services? So for example, a student could get a hard copy of a course magazine (having something tangible to put on your bookshelf and point to, saying "that's my degree").

Should they be branded as journals or magazines? Or some new type of publication?

To be investigated further!

Robert O'Toole : 10 Aug 2011 12:38 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem