Post on 24-Feb-2016
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Week 2: Research Interests/Time Management
Informatics 201Prof. Bill Tomlinson
NSF GRFP
• How many students are planning to apply?• End a few minutes early so we can chat.
Pitch ThisCausesThat
• Research Project (Melissa suggested)
Goal of Academia
• Two Key Pieces– Discovering/inventing interesting stuff.– Telling the world about it.
Discovering/Inventing
• Study what’s there?• Make new stuff?• Both? (Can you effectively make new stuff
without studying what’s there’s first?)
Having Bold Thoughts
• Stake drivers and pebble pilers
Research Methods
• Help to understand/create it.
Telling The World
• Cause people to believe/accept it.
Dissemination paths
• Publications• Conference presentations• Demos• Press• Informal interactions
To Help Demonstrate the Value of Appropriate Research Methods…
Counter Example 1
• Thesis: “The smartest people in this class are sitting on the left side of the room.”
• Why is this flawed?• What might my methods have been?• What’s wrong with its methods?• Why wouldn’t people believe it?
Research Methods
• How could we do a better job of solving a problem like this?
Definitions
• How is smart different from tall or old?• Whose left?
Procedures
• How do we identify individuals, measure phenomena?
Presentation
• How would we convince different audiences of a statement of this kind?
Counter Example 2
• Research Question: What are the best parts of this class?
The Wrong Methods
• Quantitative via Likert Scales– Strongly disagree– Disagree– Neither agree nor disagree– Agree– Strongly agree
• Take 10 minutes and write up a 5-10 Likert-scale questionnaire that seeks to address this question.
Compare questionnaires
Audience
• Best to whom? Students? Administration? Faculty? Candid camera?
Methods
• How might you find out?
Counter Example 3
• Research Question:– What is the average blood sugar level in the class?
• Methods:– You may use only personal interviews.
What Methods You Use…
• Are largely determined by what you are trying to figure out, and who you are trying to convince.
More on Methods Throughout the Course
Questions?
Break
Research
• What are your research interests?
• Foner: What are you really trying to do?
• Moshell: Take all your projects and look at the intersection.
“I’m a screenwriter.”
• You are what you publish.
Volunteers to Show CV?
• For the rest of the class: what can we tell about them?
• What are their research interests?• With what disciplines/groups do they affiliate?
Team up, pick ICS prof, analyze CV
• Basic structure of CV• What does an academic career look like?
Questions
• About CVs?
Readings
GWYCF 10, 11
• Go over notes
Why Grad Students Succeed or Fail• More than 30 percent of all graduate students never feel that they have a faculty
mentor.• Two-thirds of graduate students enter Ph.D. programs without any debt,
suggesting that those concerned about expanding the pipeline to graduate education should pay attention to the affordability of undergraduate education.
• Students rate their social interaction with faculty members as high in the engineering, sciences, mathematics and education -- and relatively low in the social sciences and humanities.
• In rating the quality of academic interactions, students in the humanities think highly of their professors while those in the social sciences and math and science are more critical.
• Significant gaps exist in the experiences of minority and female graduate students -- from admissions to getting teaching or research assistant jobs to publishing research while still in graduate school. Generally, these gaps do not favor minority students.
Assignment for next week
• Find one or more people whom you might aspire to be like, professionally.
• Examine their CV/resume/bio/web presence closely.• What is it about them that you would like to
emulate?• Write a future CV of yourself.• Both content and formatting.• Upload to EEE DropBox and bring one copy to class
next week.
Time Management
• Discuss Judy Olson’s plan
Hourly
• Being on time• Not double booking
• Technological support
Daily
• What is your circadian rhythm like?
Weekly
• How will you make steady, incremental progress, without much supervision, on a project that will span for hundreds of weeks?
Monthly
• Integrating with other people’s calendars. • When scheduling my defense, 3 months out,
there was exactly one 3-hour block where my four committee members were all available.
Yearly
• Knowing how to manage a research project at this scale.
• PhDs have been forced to learn how to do this better than most people.
• Good engineers develop the skill of predicting how long something will take.
Decade-ly
• Where do you want to be in 10 years?• What are your life goals?
Centurally
• Hiroshi story. What will your impact be in 200 years?
Questions re: Time Management?
The End (for Today)
• Discuss NSF GRFP.