Digital transformation isn’t a switch but an evolutionary, incremental process

In a recent Copyright Clearance Center webinar, Kiren Shoman, Vice President, Editorial at SAGE Publishing, outlined her vision of the evolutionary nature of digital transformation in academic publishing.

Digital transformation isn’t a switch, Shoman observes, but an evolutionary, incremental process – a journey shaped both by strategic goals and customer need and demand. It was precisely customer demand that led SAGE Publishing to develop their SAGE Video series, which is marketed alongside textbooks to support diverse research and learning needs of students and researchers across disciplines, course levels and geographical location.

“We have videos that are tutorials.  They’re very simple.  The faculty member is giving a tutorial, and they’re keeping it short and focused.  And there are slides that they have alongside them, but they’re also speaking to the camera as if to the student,” Shoman explains. “And then we have what we call in practice, where we’re going into the field and where the job of that video is to try and enable a student to understand the environment, which is often a big part of a learning objective.

“Being able to understand how as video is used [or whether it is] resonating particularly well in some subject areas, reinforces what we should be doing in the future,” she tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally.

Kiren Shoman is responsible for SAGE London’s pedagogical publishing, covering textbooks, reference and video. As part of SAGE’s leadership, she is actively involved in SAGE’s Diversity and Inclusion agenda.