Metrics for Understanding Personal and Institutional Use of the Social Web

Tomorrow I am giving an invited presentation on “Metrics for Understanding Personal and Institutional Use of the Social Web” at a workshop 0n “Digital Impacts: How to Measure and Understand the Usage and Impact of Digital Content” which is being organised by the Oxford Internet Institute.

The abstract for the event summarises the need to measure usage and impact of electronic content in order to able to demonstrate a return on the investment in providing such services:

The question of how we can measure and understand the usage and impact of digital content within the education sector is becoming increasingly important. Substantial investment goes into the creation of digital resources for research, teaching and learning and, in the current economic climate, both content creators, publishers as well as funding bodies are being asked to provide evidence of the value of the resources they’ve invested in.

But how do we go about defining value and impact? Which metrics should we adopt to understand usage? When is a digital resource a well used resource?

My contribution to the event will be to explore how Social Media channels can be used to enhance access to not only content – whether digital, physical or less tangible, such as ideas – and ways in which metrics can be used to understand the ways in which the channels are being used and inform the development of appropriate best practices as well as provide indicators of usage and impact.

The slides for the talk are available on Slideshare and are also embedded below.