New topics for this year

This year P&P will be intertwined with the Labcourse. The advantages are great: the labcourse provides a topic, we have 2 quarters instead of 1, and we can add more topics, usefull for every-day-life of a scientist.
Shortly I'll go to see some posters with a colleague and try to figure out why we like them or not. And then compare our findings with what the books say about it.
Later I will think about laboratory notebooks, and what changed in the world of ELN (electronic laboratory notebook).

different definition of science?

Are we trying to cope differently with the world around us? With our questions and uncertainties?

If http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory is true and we really are not trying to find out why something happens, but limit ourselves to some statistical relation between lots of data, analyzed by fast computers, then ofcourse there is no reason to read long texts http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google any longer and to try to synthesize some meaning.

But asking "why" is -or was- the basic issue in Science, so: has the definition been changed?


thx to Siva Vaidhyanathan http://www.googlizationofeverything.com/ for posting his course materials.

major question

I teach a complicated course, with multiple goals with respect to skills.
Do I present books/articles about the topics?
Allthough I have books about science, doing research, searching, writing and presenting, and I will show them to the students, I don't want them to start reading them.
Doing research is about DOING, not reading about.

So I will just mention the books (and hope they don't grab them from shelve or computer).

final preparations

I think I prepared well!
Made new questions to start the process of thinking about what we are doing when we conduct science and scientific research.
Printed many things to hand out tomorrow. I hope not to forget this blog, and the potentials for feedback for the students, for me.
I would like to create a relaxed atmosphere tomorrow, an inspiring one.

For the courses I take myself I have to make a logbook about what is happening during classes.
This blog will do I hope.

My expectations for tomorrow are: meeting nice, enthousiast people, a little nervous about what's coming (because the course is known).
I hope to get them away from standardized thinking, doing research as a recipe.
Hope to make clear, that research/science (at least in my view....) is a matter of asking questions, deciding how to find an answer, learning from the results and reflecting on the process, and go through a similar cirkel again (and then.... the big issue: when to stop! and wrap up).

I hope that the room works as I expected when I agreed with the selection by the planning people. I still think (23.00 day before) that I make one big table, but then: have to think about how to make notes, public notes, of what people are saying. Thus things depend a little bit on sizes and length of cable and the like.

I reorganizes my questions along the line of coach Henk Procee: actor, process, product, in reverse order, however. So: what do YOU think is science/truth and similar things; next: how to do science well, and then the final one: which characteristics have scientists?

And maybe I give them a task for home: how do you like to learn?
Just in preparation for writing and presenting, to realize that the structures one uses usually are those that the author/presentor prefers for themselves.

things are speeding up

Today I have been thinking about the first meeting.
I use that for discussing the organization of the course.
But the remaining time I like to spend with some philosophical discussions.

I intend to show to the students that there are many questions around things that seem so obvious. I don't know yet which to discuss exactly, but topics might be:
> is there a single truth for us to be discovered, or do we construct our own truth by interpreting the results of our experiments
> what is it that makes a scientist a scientist , what is the difference with a designer (if any) or with a technician
> what can be a topic of scientific study (humans, things, ideas, theories etc)
I don't (we don't) have the time to explore these things well, my purpose is merely to show that questions can be asked.

I visited my coach with these things and he offered me a technique, that might be helpfull to guide the discussions:
> you have an actor, a process and a product, for instance: scientist, conducting scientific research, and a scientific paper/presentation
> what are the qualities of these 3 aspects?
Alternative angle: who should you be to conduct research and how do you present/write it in order to honor your results. Because I assume it is YOUR results, and somebody else would have different results, hopefully similar, but different.

I have to think about how I am going to act next week.

He reminded me of a format I have seen quite often: pose your question, let everybody think for themselves for a few minutes, exchange ideas with a neighbor and then share results in the group.

I also tried to make a feedback form, to be used for the feedback on the search strategies. I intend to give this specific feedback myself, but I was adviced to do it in such a way that I could act as a role model for the students for the later sessions.

preparations under way

I take a course myself, in teaching.
Tomorrow we will discuss the design of a complete course.
For that I collected all the documents I have concerning P&P.
Now I am fully aware which documents need to be updated, and which are more or less missing.
It will keep me occupied next quarter!

I opened an account at YouTube, and found some films around writing and presenting:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0B6A56CC7EC52C8D

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?