Friends

For those who missed it: The US Government is currently hosting a "public consultation on Public Access Policy...seeking public input on access to publicly-funded research results, such as those that appear in academic and scholarly journal articles."  It's similar in scope to what's already required for NIH-funded research, but extending it to other agencies and asking for implementation ideas. They have a surprisingly short comment period, especially given the traditional holiday vacation season.

From the link:

OSTP will conduct an interactive, online discussion beginning Thursday, December 10. We will focus on three major areas of interest:
* Implementation (Dec. 10 to 20): Which Federal agencies are good candidates to adopt Public Access policies? What variables (field of science, proportion of research funded by public or private entities, etc.) should affect how public access is implemented at various agencies, including the maximum length of time between publication and public release?
* Features and Technology (Dec. 21 to Dec 31): In what format should the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search and retrieve information, and to make it easy for others to link to it? Are there existing digital standards for archiving and interoperability to maximize public benefit? How are these anticipated to change.
* Management (Jan. 1 to Jan. 7): What are the best mechanisms to ensure compliance? What would be the best metrics of success? What are the best examples of usability in the private sector (both domestic and international)? Should those who access papers be given the opportunity to comment or provide feedback?

The blog postings are here: http://blog.ostp.gov/category/public-access-policy/

First of all, thanks to all who gave such helpful advice regarding my previous post to the community earlier this semester. My reference situation sorted out nicely after considering what y'all had to say.

My new question is this: what happens to a Ph.D. student who has failed comps? Dropped from h/er program? Had h/is assistantship killed, leaving h/im with no income? Is there hope to apply for a new Ph.D. program? If it depends on the discipline, then this is a Ph.D. in literature.

Any ideas/advice/stories of others who have gone through this would be helpful. Thanks!

Dear a_a,

I need to make a slightly tricky choice. I'm a departmental administrator currently working in a medical faculty, but my own background is in humanities (specifically history and literature). I've been in this post for about 9 months. I really like my job and I work with a good team of people. I'm currently leading the team planning a pretty major conference for the middle of 2010.
BUT my dream job, the thing I've said is the next step I want to make in my career, has just appeared on the College website. It would be a more senior position with a bit more responsibility and most importantly it would move me into the history department.
Do I go for it? I'm worried that I haven't been in this post very long and I don't want to leave people in the lurch with the conference, but at the same time this opportunity might not come up again. If I don't get it I will be perfectly happy staying where I am.

Thanks in advance.

In the spirit of end-of-semester procrastination, may I present: "Il Destino di Grant Application, A Tragic Opera in Three Acts." (Please note that I didn't write this; it was apparently written by a Lloyd Fricker. It was sent out on a listserv for grant administrators.)

( Don't click here if you don't like fake Italian )

Not to interrupt the seasonal troll-watching (two of the most appealing features of which have been knut_hamson's increasing disdain and the attempts to lay the blame and/or ferret out the troll's identity), but I do have two questions for the collective wisdom.

First, a student has just complained about having to know and use proper style within a course. She/he dismissively called it "minutiae" and objected to losing points over it. I will take away a point in a 20-point question if proper style is not used (for example, if a student writes "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" instead of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony). Do you grade on style, or do you simply not care? Or does it depend on how many students you have in that semester?

Second, this student made the complaint anonymously, on a Blackboard discussion board set up for my course. I allow students to post anonymously to encourage them to ask questions about the course they might not otherwise ask. Most of the time, the questions are just about the material. Sometimes a student will use it as a forum to kvetch about the course. Do any of you feel strongly for or against using anonymous bulletin boards for your courses? If so, why?

Yes, I am procrastinating from grading right now.

Hi folks,

New member here, and I'm in a bit of a bind actually. I was hoping the fine folk might be able to offer some help.

I'm an Education grad student in the Philippines, and our professor assigned us topics for reporting for after the Christmas break. The topic I've been given is something called Understanding by Design.

I did a thorough search of our school library, and unfortunately, we don't have any books that appear to take up Understanding by Design. I went to the internet, and it seems that I need to pay to have access to in-depth information on Understanding by Design, although Wikipedia has a basic gist of the ideas behind it.

Here's what I found so far:
http://www.ubdexchange.org - Seems to be a website specifically meant to address Understanding By Design. Access needs payment however.
http://www.ascd.org/research_a_topic/Understanding_by_Design.aspx - Some basic resources related to Understanding by Design.

I was wondering if any of you had stronger google-fu or maybe know a free resource regarding Understanding by Design, or might actually be teaching Understanding by Design or using it in your own classrooms. It sounds like an interesting topic to discuss, and I'm actually excited about tackling it and possibly using it in future endeavors, but alas, I don't have any references.

Any assistance would be most appreciated.

-Victor B. :)

EDITED TO ADD: It's Sunday where I live, and I'm going back to my school tomorrow to ask the professor or some of our other professors for leads on where they acquired books on Understanding By Design. Hopefully, they'll be willing to help me out. :)

Hello!

As the title indicates, I need some advice. I'm currently debating with myself and I need perspective on:

1. How to be diplomatic when asking a professor to clarify.
2. If/how to push a partner to focus on the big picture.

( Read more... )

Apropos of some of the other discussions we've had in the last few weeks, the New York Times this morning ran this story about college retention: "College Dropouts Cite Low Money and High Stress." None of the conclusions will be startling to anyone who has worked in Higher Education for the last decade and a half, but the picture it paints of how difficult it is for individuals with little support or from low-income families to complete college, even if they have started it is chilling.

Consider the huge amount of texts that have been scanned by Google and its academic partners, now available for indexing from any Internet-connected computer. Then consider the texts owned by your university's library. Now consider the intersection of these sets. What is stopping your university and Google from being able to fully offer this searchable, digitized library to its students? Clearly, the answer is "the rights of the publishers and authors". But when will this progress, and how will this progress? It seems inevitable to me that that's the direction things will go. It just seems so attractive. Surely something can be worked out such that there can be some fixed number of licenses available for each book. I do this all the time whenever I fire up MATLAB and the software retrieves a license from the school's server.

Basically, I dream of a day when I have a few color, highly-responsive Kindle-like things that'll let me pull up an entire library's worth of information without ever having to leave my desk. The technology has some ways to go from the current generation, no doubt, e.g., the ability to easily take notes on the pages, the adoption of color (however, see the soon-coming PixelQi for advances in these directions), easy document sharing between devices and your computer and the Internet and libraries-- but I'm excited for the direction it'll eventually head and the products which'll soon be out. The padds of Star Trek, anyone?

Sorry, I sort of exploded into nerdiness halfway through this post. But anyone with insight on academic library infrastructure or on publishing or on the recent Google Books settlements-- please inform and please speculate to your heart's content. I'm also curious to people's thoughts on e-books in general. I absolutely abhor reading documents on my computer, but it wasn't until I saw how paper-like the kindle was that I changed my mind on this entirely. I have to imagine that publishers are nervous, though. Suddenly textbooks will be way more amenable to piracy. You can already find almost any academic text (in math, at least) with an easy Google search. But those who do this are likely few in number, given the difficulty in printing it all out or reading it on your laptop. But to download an 8 MB file then to sideload it onto your device...? Crisis.

Also, unimpressed luddites, please come to the table, too. I'm interested in your thoughts.

I'm going to be collecting video data in classrooms, and my advisor/PI has told me that we have money for some new video cameras! Yay! The old ones take little tapes that take forever to copy onto a computer, and I don't even have the software to do so on my computer, only in a lab.

So I've talked him into new cameras that record right onto SD cards, which will both be a lot easier to access and can hold a lot more at once. But we have one major need that most cheapo digital video cameras don't worry much about - we need really good audio. We need to be able to hear kids across the room, possibly with other kids talking. The big advantage of our current cameras is that as you zoom the video in, the microphone "zooms" in as well and picks up the audio from where the camera is focused better.

Does anyone have recommendations or opinions on good cameras for this purpose? Yes, we may also be using individual audio recorders (especially for kids doing group work), but for full-class discussions it would really be nice to have one recording with both video and decent audio.

Two years ago, when I started my doctoral degree, I already had an idea of what I wanted my dissertation to be on. Now that I'm almost done with my coursework and comps, I've begun doing some research on my topic, just to be ahead of the game.

Here is my dilemma: the topic I've chosen has not been extensively written about. This is, in a way, excellent! It means I will be writing a paper on a subject that has not been extensively covered(although it has growing interest in my field), and could therefore lead to some possible publishing (I am not required to have my paper published). The bad is I have very little to go with, and I obviously can't base a dissertation on let's say five articles and a website.

I have a paper advisor, but he cannot meet with me until next semester. I'm just curious as to what the general consensus is about thesis topics and the amount of research already done on said topic. There is no big hurry, I'm just a little worried. Thank you for your help!

If a British student quotes an American-spelled paper, is the protocol to use the American spelling, surreptitiously correct the spelling, use the American spelling followed by a [sic], or correct the spelling and indicate the correction somehow?

What's the protocol in cases of typos and non-typographical errors that slightly obscure the meaning of the sentence, or that are incorrect in a way that doesn't obscure the sentence's meaning?