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

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!!!!