Colin Smith
Colin Smith

Dr Colin Smith

Associate Professor

Biography

My research addresses ICTs, strategic innovation and organisational change particularly in public sector organisations, and often in relation to ‘e-government’ and ‘e-democracy’.
I am a member of the Centre for Social Informatics http://www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/c/main/site/csi

I also undertake pedagogic research looking at emergent professionalism in computing students and the role played by placement and professional practice in underpinning employability. I am a member of the Centre for Computing Education Research (CCER) where I lead on employability research.

Core areas of interest:
- Role of the Internet for political parties in contemporary democratic practices.
- Digital delivery platforms for public services.
- Use of new technology by parliamentarians.

Journal/Conference Roles:

March 2015 - Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning
Member of the Review Panel for this journal, focusing on the interface between higher education and the workplace.

March 2010 – Dec 2013 Information Polity
Reviews Editor and then member of the Editorial Board (December 2013- ) for this leading journal in the field of critical assessment of information age governance and democracy http://www.iospress.nl/journal/information-polity/

1995 - European Group of Public Administration
Member of Permanent Study Group 1: e-Government

News

Events

Esteem

Advisory panels and expert committees or witness

  • UUK / Department for Education roundtable
  • Member of ISO-WACE Advisory Board

 

Conference Organising Activity

  • Programme Committee Member - BHCI

 

Editorial Activity

  • Member of Reviewers Panel: Higher Education, Skills and Work-based Learning
  • Member of the Editorial Board: Information Polity
  • Reviews Editor: Information Polity

 

External Examining/Validations

  • External Examiner for BSc Information Systems, Heriot-Watt University
  • External Examiner (MBA), Liverpool John Moores University

 

Invited Speaker

  • Grasping a Jellyfish? Some problematic aspects of 'Belonging'
  • Digital Skills for Graduates
  • Employability and Social Mobility Workshop - 'Exploring Barriers'

 

Research Degree External Examining

  • External Examiner (PhD) - Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand
  • External Examiner (PhD) - Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand
  • External Examiner (PhD), University of Derby
  • External Examiner (PhD), University of Udine, Italy

 

Date


81 results

Democratic Participation through Crocheted Memes.

Conference Proceeding
Taylor-Smith, E., Smith, C. F., & Smyth, M. (2018)
Democratic Participation through Crocheted Memes. In SMSociety '18 Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society, (178-186). https://doi.org/10.1145/3217804.3217910
In a UK city, various crocheted protest banners have appeared, containing political statements concerning planned developments in their locations. Photos of these banners are ...

STEM Apprenticeship Degrees: Motivations and aspirations of apprentices

Presentation / Conference
Smith, S., Taylor-Smith, E., Meharg, D., Smith, C., & Varey, A. (2018, June)
STEM Apprenticeship Degrees: Motivations and aspirations of apprentices. Paper presented at Horizons in STEM Higher Education, Hull
Using the Apprenticeship Levy, England piloted Degree Apprenticeships in 2014 and Scotland followed with Graduate Apprenticeships in 2017. In Scotland, the apprenticeships are...

From work-integrated learning to learning-integrated work: motivations and apprehensions of Graduate Apprentices

Conference Proceeding
Smith, S., Taylor-Smith, E., Smith, C., & Varey, A. (2018)
From work-integrated learning to learning-integrated work: motivations and apprehensions of Graduate Apprentices. In Proceedings of the 3rdInternational Research Symposium on Cooperative and Work-Integrated Education, Stuttgart, Germany (199-207
Graduate Apprenticeship (GA) degrees bring new collaborations between universities and employers and new opportunities for apprentices—to gain a university degree, while also ...

Tacit knowledge sharing in online environments: locating ‘Ba’ within a platform for public sector professionals

Journal Article
Buunk, I., Smith, C. F., & Hall, H. (2019)
Tacit knowledge sharing in online environments: locating ‘Ba’ within a platform for public sector professionals. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 51(4), 1134-1145. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000618769982
Presented in this article are some findings from a study which investigates tacit knowledge sharing and social media use. The results reported here derive from a survey comple...

Youth digital participation: Measuring social impact

Journal Article
Pawluczuk, A., Webster, G., Hall, H., & Smith, C. (2020)
Youth digital participation: Measuring social impact. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 52(1), 3-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000618769975
Current scholarly debate around digital participatory youth projects and approaches to their evaluation are examined in this article. The analysis of the literature presented ...

Investigating the online and offline contexts of day-to-day democracy as participation spaces.

Journal Article
Taylor-Smith, E., & Smith, C. F. (2019)
Investigating the online and offline contexts of day-to-day democracy as participation spaces. Information, Communication and Society, 22(13), 1853-1870. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2018.1469656
Citizen-led participation in democracy is explored through studying the online and offline spaces where people work together to influence those in power and improve their comm...

Social impact evaluations of digital youth work: tensions between vision and reality

Presentation / Conference
Pawluczuk, A., Smith, C., Webster, G., & Hall, H. (2018, March)
Social impact evaluations of digital youth work: tensions between vision and reality. Paper presented at Transmedia Literacy International Conference, Barcelona, Spain
Purpose: This paper presents empirical research, which explores the ways digital youth workers perceive, and evaluate, the social impact of their work. There is currently a re...

Placement or practicalities? Barriers and disincentives to work experience, as reported by computing students

Presentation / Conference
Taylor-Smith, E., Smith, S., & Smith, C. (2017, December)
Placement or practicalities? Barriers and disincentives to work experience, as reported by computing students. Paper presented at Society for Research Into Higher Education (SRHE) Annual Conference, Newport, Wales
Having relevant work experience, such as a placement or internship, is valued by employers in the technology sector and can improve employment outcomes for computing graduates...

Towards graduate employment: exploring student identity through a university-wide employability project

Journal Article
Smith, S., Smith, C., Taylor-Smith, E., & Fotheringham, J. (2019)
Towards graduate employment: exploring student identity through a university-wide employability project. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 43(5), 628-640. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877x.2017.1390077
Students have expectations of their university education leading to graduate careers, with universities investing considerable resources in institution-wide initiatives design...

Digital culture co-creation: capturing the social impact of small-scale community projects

Presentation / Conference
Webster, G., Hall, H., & Smith, C. (2017, October)
Digital culture co-creation: capturing the social impact of small-scale community projects. Paper presented at Ways of Being in a Digital Age – A Review Conference
No abstract available

Pre-Napier Funded Projects

  • COST A14 - Government and Democracy in the Information Age

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