Once you have read some of the background research on creating an impact with social and open tools and you have looked at alternative metrics, consider these questions:
- What are the possible issues with using an altmetrics approach to measure impact?
- If you wanted to increase the impact of an online resource you had created, how could you do this?
Luckily I am a single mum, and work part-time, so I no longer feel I have to spend large amounts of time establishing a prestigious international career through continuing to write up my PhD chapters as widely circulated articles. (Although I was excited to find that some of the papers I wrote a long time ago have actually been cited
(At least I have help with the cooking.)
I would like to get acknowledgement for the teaching material I share and the work I do to promote this. In order to achieve this, I will have to do some writing about it, maybe on one of the social media that I am on, or more probably in our Associate Lecturer newsletter.
Meanwhile, I share my ideas about teaching by writing about them on specific module Tutor Forums (if they have been developed for that module), on this blog and on Yammer. I sometimes share blogposts on Yammer if they are of more interest to a university specific audience, and via Twitter if I think they have got value beyond the university. I also lobbied for Associate Lecturers to have the chance to present from our work to AL Staff Development Events. When we were given the opportunity I applied to run workshops about my teaching interests. (Those will serve a double purpose, not just spreading my own work among this small specific audience, also collecting further data about it from them.)
I am finding this a successful, if modest (perhaps because modest), strategy. At this point in time, I am aiming for a small select audience, and I am reaching some of them already.