Course of 2012

Paper and Presentation teaches Academic Skills in the program Nanotechnology (Twente University).
The program comprises the following topics:

• developing research questions
• searching relevant (scientific) information
• writing a (scientific) paper
• peer feedback in academic setting
• making a poster
• presenting scientific results

Students are required to write a paper, make a poster, and give a presentation and participate in feedback sessions on draft paper and presentation rehearsel.
This year the intertwining with the Lab course is removed. The lab course hands in a general topic, the paper will be something like the introduction to that topic.
From what I saw so far, the first activity will be to develop a "how to" topic (lab technique) to a "why" topic.

Originally I had something like "what is science" "what is a scientist" as a topic for the introductionary lecture. I am not sure now whether to keep it in.

Interesting new book

Digitally present, check catalog.
Explaining research, Dennis Meredith

first change already there...

The students don't have a topic yet, so we changed their 5 minutes presentations with the lecture on searching.
The session with the 5 minutes presentations can then be used to discuss quality of both non-academic as well as academic publications.
There will be plenty of time, we have only 6 students.

New season, new chances

I haven't been very loyal to this blog lately.....

We will stick to the same schedule as we had last year:
short presentation about the topic, searching for information, feedback on search strategy, what is a lab notebook, writing a scientific paper, making a poster, what is peer feedback, feedback on concept posters, peer feedback on concept papers, final poster, final paper, presenting scientific work, practicing, and final session with talks + posters + conference book.

start feb 2, final session june 22th

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