Skip to main content

Bournemouth University

BU Research Blog

Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University

  • Home
  • RDS Team
    • Faculty-Facing Staff
    • Funding Development Team
    • Project Delivery and Research Governance Teams
    • Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team
    • Research Excellence Team
  • Clinical Governance @ BU
  • Research Ethics @ BU
  • Post-REF 2021
    • BU REF 2021 Code of Practice
    • Declaration of Staff Circumstances
    • BU’s Unit of Assessment Teams
    • REF FAQs
    • Archive – REF 2014
      • BU REF 2014 Code of Practice
      • REF 2014 Frequently Asked Questions
        • REF 2014 Overview
        • Staff eligibility
        • Mock REF 2014 (REF preparation) exercises at BU
        • REF 2014 Assessment of outputs
        • REF 2014 Staff selection
        • REF 2014 Equality and diversity
  • Impact
    • Partnerships & collaborations
    • Working with businesses
      • Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF)
    • Communicating your research
    • Influencing policy makers
    • Public engagement
      • Quick guide to public engagement
    • Student engagement
      • Stages of engagement
      • Case study: Sean Beer
      • Case study: James Gavin
      • Case study: Anna Feigenbaum
  • Research Toolkit
  • Research Lifecycle
  • Policy
  • PGR
    • The Doctoral College Team

July 4, 2021

Unsatisfactory conference attendance?

BU research, conferences, COVID-19, Events, Global engagement, international, Research communication, Research news, Training, Uncategorized Edwin van Teijlingen

Over the 15 months many academics have learnt to use online tools to communicate with colleagues, students, the media, politicians and the general public. The COVID-19 pandemics forced us to introduce (more) virtual classrooms, internet-based tutorials, online marking, Zoom and Teams meetings (and other platforms!) as well as online conferences and workshops, albeit each with their own limitations. In general, we often marvel about the internet and online conference technology as well as value the reduction of our carbon foot print, reaching global audiences and so on.

The past three weeks I attended three international conferences in three countries without leaving my living room, including the postponed 2020 ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) conference.  Perhaps there is an element of online-working fatigue, but I am beginning to see more and more disadvantages of online conferences.  First, the contact with fellow presenters, chairs and the audience is more superficial than at a physical conference.  At a conference held in person you meet people over lunch or coffee or people simply stop you in the corridors of the conference centre to discuss or challenge your paper or express their ideas for future studies.

Secondly, many conferences seem to use two online systems and have different ways of running online conferences, at one of the recent conferences the presenters and the audience were in different cyber spaces, so as a presenter you had no idea how many people attended or how the audience reacted to what you have just said.  Moreover, in one conference any questions people in the audience had written in the chat box were invisible to the speakers.  These questions had to be read out by the chair, who was tasked with linking the two cyber spaces, that of speakers and that of the audience.  At another conference the chair largely let the speakers deal with questions in the chat without any direction or guidance, as a consequence I was still answering questions in the chat long after the next speaker had started.

Thirdly, because I was not physically away I didn’t attend as many of the sessions at any of the three recent conferences as I would have liked to.  This issue is similar in nature as the ‘old’ problem of attending a face-to-face conference at your own institution.  Since you are not away your students, colleagues, etc. manage to find you and expect you to do something else instead of attending the conference.  Fourthly, you don’t meet up in person with international colleagues, therefore, you don’t get a chance to discuss long-term ideas, plans, problems over a meal and a beer.

I am still positive about online conferences, but perhaps not as enthusiastic as I was in a BU Research Blog in April last year!   In this blog I pointed out that Donald Nicolson in his book Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities raised the question about return of investment of a conference [1-2] not just for the conference organisers (and funders) but also for individual academics.  Internet-based conferences are cheaper than face-to-face conferences although often not free, two of my three international conferences had a registration fee, moreover there is the opportunity cost for the academic in attending a conference, especially if one does not receive the traditional benefits of meeting like-minded people in person.

Some thought for Sunday morning.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

References:

  1. Nicolson. D.J. (2017) Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities,  Palgrave Macmillan.
  2. Nicolson. D.J. (2018) Guest post by Donald Nicolson: The problem of thinking about conferences and Return on Investment (ROI) 

Tags: BU research CMMPH collaboration collaborative research Conference Attendance conference paper conference presentation conferences Edwin-blog-post Health international conference midwifery Nepal Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen public engagement research social sciences

Related Posts

  • COVID-19 and the rise of Virtual ConferencesApril 12, 2020
  • Online COVID-19 Conference Assam, IndiaJune 17, 2020
  • University lockdown: An internationalisation opportunity?November 25, 2020
  • FHSS PhD student’s poster at prestigious GLOW conferenceSeptember 10, 2020

BU staff can login below:

Other services

Research Digest

Subscriptions to the BU Research Digest email are currently unavailable.

We hope to have them back online soon. In the meantime, you can sign up or unsubscribe by emailing research@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Recent posts

BU research Funding opportunities EU
  • HealthBus to present at Community Voices webinar Wednesday April 12th 12-1pmMarch 23, 2023
  • Online public lecture from BU academics this evening: Pioneering women at the BBCMarch 23, 2023
  • Giving PGRs a voice…participate in a PhD study exploring research cultureMarch 22, 2023
  • Updated Intention to Bid form – March 2023March 22, 2023
  • Association between Traumatic Injuries and Heart Rate Variability- Systematic Review Published in PloS One by an MSPH PhD StudentMarch 21, 2023
  • BU Research Funding Panels 23 – Call for Chair & Deputy Chairs, Reopening CallMarch 21, 2023
  • GoodBye JeS, Hello TFSMarch 23, 2023
  • Updated Intention to Bid form – March 2023March 22, 2023
  • UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships Round 8 – Internal Process LaunchedFebruary 23, 2023
  • Save the Date – 26 April 2023 – UKRO Annual Meeting with BU AcademicsFebruary 16, 2023
  • BA/Leverhulme Small Grants 7th June 2023February 13, 2023
  • COST Information and Networking EventFebruary 13, 2023
  • European research project to promote local food purchasing and reduce food wasteMarch 9, 2023
  • HE Policy update for the w/e 27th February 2023February 27, 2023
  • Save the Date – 26 April 2023 – UKRO Annual Meeting with BU AcademicsFebruary 16, 2023
  • COST Information and Networking EventFebruary 13, 2023
  • Horizon Europe Update – January 2023January 16, 2023
  • Horizon Europe ResourcesJanuary 5, 2023

Search by Category

Search by popular post topics

AHRC Brexit BRIAN BU research clinical research CMMPH collaboration collaborative research conference congratulations Dr. Pramod Regmi Edwin-blog-post ESRC EU Europe event Events funding funding opportunities Fusion Fusion Investment Fund Health horizon 2020 HSC impact innovation knowledge exchange media midwifery Nepal nhs NIHR open access Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen publication public engagement publishing ref research Research Councils research professional RKE development framework social sciences training widening participation

RSS Research Information Network

  • Physical Sciences Case studies: information use and discovery
  • Information handling in collaborative research: an exploration of five case studies
  • Information literacy monitoring and evaluation
  • Data centres: their use, value and impact
  • Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications

RSS UKRI

Browse all our categories
  • Awarded & submitted bids
  • BRIAN
  • BU Challenges
  • BU research
  • BU2025
  • Business Engagement
  • Centre for Excellence in Learning
  • Clinical Governance
  • Coffee Morning
  • conferences
  • COVID-19
  • data management
  • Delicious links
  • Doctoral College
  • ECR Network
  • EPSRC
  • ESRC
  • EU
  • Events
  • Featured
  • Featured academics
  • Festival of Learning
  • Friday profile
  • Funding opportunities
  • Fusion
  • Fusion Investment Fund
  • Fusion themes
  • Global engagement
  • Grants Academy
  • Guidance
  • hate crime
  • HE-BCI
  • HEIF
  • HSS Our 9 Research Entities
  • humanities
  • Impact
  • Industry collaboration
  • Info Days
  • innovation
  • international
  • Knowledge Exchange
  • Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team
  • Knowledge Transfer
  • Knowledge Transfer Partnership
  • News from the PVC
  • nhs
  • NHS
  • open accecss
  • open access
  • parliament
  • Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
  • PG research
  • policy
  • Post-award
  • Postgraduate Research
  • pre-award
  • Public engagement
  • Publishing
  • R & KE Operations
  • REF Subjects
  • Research assessment
  • Research Centres
  • Research communication
  • Research Concordat
  • Research Ethics
  • Research Integritiy
  • research integrity
  • research methods
  • Research news
  • research opportunities
  • research staff
  • Research Supervision
  • Research themes
  • Research Training
  • RKE development framework
  • staff profile pages
  • Strategic Investment Areas
  • Student Engagement
  • student research
  • the conversation
  • Training
  • UKRI
  • Uncategorized
  • Vitae
  • Women's Academic Network
  • writing
  • Twitter

© Bournemouth University 2023. All rights reserved.

  • Charitable status
  • Website privacy & cookies
  • Copyright and terms of use