busy with preparations

I've started the preparations for the course of 2009.
We have a nice room at our disposal, where we can experiment with various formats for communicating science.

I'm doing a course myself, to become an official university teacher. I use it to improve my materials, handout, presentations and the lot. It's great fun. My issue is that P&P as it was previously is marvelous to do, both for me as for the students, but I cannot handle it for large groups. Thus I'm thinking about new formats. So far I think about introducing peer reviewing and peer feedback.

I designed a schedule yesterday including a feedback session. I still have some questions, I 'll consult my tutors.
Now I need to write a manual, basically for all the separate sessions since they are all different and serve a different purpose. I'll start with some obvious elements, and then try to work out the part about peer feedback (works also for my own port folio). Next week I'll attend a meeting on designing a complete course, I might discuss my schedule for P&P. And then it can also be put into my port folio, after assessment by my peers and tutors.

I already defined the deliverables and their weight in the grading: small talk, search strategy, paper, peer feedback, presentation.

Today I worked on finding books to serve as back ground information during P&P. We have nice books on searching, writing and presenting. Found some e-books, and go to check the physical library to see the quality and value of some printed books.

relevant book?

I think I might have found a good book to work from:
http://opc4.utsp.utwente.nl/DB=1/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=7&SRT=YOP&TRM=0-471-65733-6

video's as educational tool

Today I went to a demonstration of a video-recording system. The purpose is that the university develops a collection of taped lectures.
It is a trial about the equipment.

I might want to do different things: make short tapes about the various interactions and presentations formats we're using in P&P, and then store them , maybe including voice-over comments.

I got the advice to see what Joke Oosterhuis had done previously. I knew her as a person, but not her site.
Here it is: http://iwp.cs.utwente.nl/Introductie/introductie.html

Writing scientific papers

Some questions to think about before you even start writing:

• Who are your readers? What are their objectives? Fit yours with theirs?
• What is your message, which question do you want to answer?
• What is your conclusion? What do you want to prove?
• What was the world you found? Acknowledge the works of other people you used for building on.
• What do you add to our knowledge? Did you perform -thought- experiments? How?
• Can you guide me from the world you found, through your own results, to your conclusions? Logically, consistently?
• Have you got somebody to read your manuscript for consistency, clearity, grammar etc?
• Have you got a publisher? Provided a format for your manuscript?

possibilities greatly enlarged

Today I had my STN-software renewed.
I kind of lost it while ill and changing machines.
But I have the most recent version now, including datamining and visualization tools.
I think I am going to advertize that I can search many more databases now, with much nicer tools. For me that will be part of the campaigne when we/they move to the new building.
"guys, there are so many more questions you may ask and I like to answer"

how to search patents

I found an interesting piece on patent searching, hidden on the pages of Espacenet:

http://ep.espacenet.com/?locale=en_EP&view=seven

database selection

As a university we have a lot of databases for searching, particularly for searching articles.
A well considered choice could avoid a frustrating pile of rubbish or no results what so ever.

Databases have been designed with various objectives in mind.

Some try to disclose a discipline, such as Chemical Abstracts, Compendex, Inspec, Medline. These databases will usually include abstracts from all kind of sources.
Others are basically the platforms from the publishers where they present their content.
Using those platforms for finding information (which is different from locating a specific article) creates an enormous bias in your results, seductive as the platforms can be with nice tools and a suggestion of completeness.
And then we have databases build for all kind of other purposes, resulting in a specific choice of sources or document types.

Choosing a database in a different discipline or with a focus different from your view, might end up in a useless effort. Learn to recognize unfruitfull searches. Which is not similar to searches with no results.

document/information type

In these years of Google, we all tend to type anything somewhere and then are disappointed that we don't find what we need.
Especially scientific information is stored into purposive databases, for instance according to document type. Therefore it is wise to start thinking beforehand and consider the options.

Most people tend to start searching for articles, without considering other types of information.

Compared with books, articles can be much more recent, generally have shorter production times and therefore can be very much more current. But, books summarize piles of articles, and put them into one story, an integration there for you to enjoy.

Moreover, data provided in books, such as handbooks, have been evaluated and compiled, saving you a lot of time searching all the individual experiments described in articles.

Depending on the discipline, proceedings and conferences can be very important. Some disciplines can be very formal and the only way for scientists to gain status is by publishing in highly regarded journals such as Science or Nature. But other disciplines , for instance computer science, are much more informal and rely strongly on personal contacts. Then, conferences play an important role and proceedings can be a fast way of communicating. A conference is a good place to present work-in-progress and see how your peers react. Therefore, papers presented at conferences are usually not the final conclusions of a particular research.

Patents are not scientific documents in the narrow sense of the word. Patents are legal documents, providing protection against abuse of intellectual property, in exchange for disclosure. Patents describe industrial research, usually strongly application oriented. The language of a patent tends to be vague. Experimental descriptions may lack detail to copy procedures. On the other hand, most patents contain pictures showing the invention which is described. Patenting is part of a company’s business policy: sometimes it is wiser NOT to apply for a patent and just be silent about a particular part of an appliance.

searching information in a scientific environment

Being a scientist by heart, I try to place searching for information in the context of scientific research. So beyond mere operating the systems.
My way of presenting searching and retrieving (scientific) information is by asking questions, which combined will create a search strategy:

1. What is the topic you need information about? Which question do you want to answer?
2. What kind of information are you looking for? Which document type? Introductory, numerical, bibliographic, design, patent, specialist, encyclopedic, book,,,, etc?
3. Where are you going to do your search? Which database, search engine and why?
4. Which terms are you going to use, depending on your information type and your database specifics.
5. Which tools -general or specialist- are you using? Depending on the system: fields and operators.
6. What is your exact query? Interpretation depends on the system, thus precision is recommended, for later referral.
7. What is the reliability of the information found? Can it meet the requirements in an academic environment?
8. Evaluate your own behavior. Did you find sufficient information; did you answer your questions? Did you change the question? Did you learn new terms? Did you do double work, find duplicate results, used the right databases? Had to dig through huge piles of irrelevant results? Could you have done everything smarter?
9. Document your results, because you will be accountable in an academic environment.

searching

i'm sorry , i should have been more active and give a summary about searching here.
i've been buzy with a dutch version of the handout.
and now i'm working on P&P writing for next friday.
it will come,
soon in this theatre!!!!