Teaching
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Homework
I sent out homework today. I’ve been working on the pre-consultation worksheet that will guide the mandatory consultation I have with all the students in my grant writing course. Last year I was involved in this course, but as a last minute instructor and the dates available had to be worked out on the side, making the session optional. This year, I am a embedded instructor and as such, I am taking full opportunity to act as one. I had my lecture a few weeks ago about different resources, tools, and methods for searching. The students are required to write the specific aims, background, research methodology, and rationale for an…
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Day in review Jan 19, 2016
I still haven’t gotten used to typing 2016 yet. I’m keep catching myself and having to correct. As predicted, the year started out running. I just had my first instruction session today. This course is part of COM, which has been hard to get traction from. But I was remembered and included this semester. This is a grant writing course that runs grad students through the process of writing for NIH. I am listed as an instructor rather than a guest lecturer, so I took advantage of that by assigning students out of class work. We’ll be having one consultation to make sure they are on track for finding literature.…
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Curriculum goals
Today I was asked to lead on a data management curriculum initiative. This was something that I had intended to do already, but this was also a goal of our data management group. I will be officially in charge of getting it completed. I have a few reservations on creating a curriculum by committee. Mostly it has to do with making the overall product bland. What I am thinking of now, is that it would be a good time to get in touch with a few of my former instructors for some advice and insider tips. I had been meaning to but didn’t know how to approach it. There’s a…
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End of the week
I’m exhausted. Today was back to back teaching, administering a pre-survey for a research project, and a meeting for reviewing data on another research project. Next week doesn’t look much better. Overall, I;m kind of in a work hole. I have it piled up all around me and I need to dig my way out. I’m going to get myself a chicken sandwich, go home, and probably watch a movie. I’ll have to get some work done tomorrow, but it doesn’t happen that often. I probably won’t get truly dug out for a while. I need to keep chipping away at it. Enough for now.
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First orientation with data managment done
Today is the first of a series of orientations. My colleges are in session and classes start on Monday. I have spend some serious time since RDAP thinking of how to incorporate an introduction to data managment into their sessions. Conceptually I thought this was important because I wanted the seed of these practices, and the ways we could support them in this effort to be there in the begining. The harder part was figuring out what to cut. I already have a full plate with a basic orientation to accessing materials, and I usually hit PubMed pretty hard since that is their main database. Typical session send them thorugh a…
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Day in Review May 27, 2015
Today was the first day of my Divvy riding. I successfully, and enjoyably, rode from Union station a half mile west to my library. I don’t think it saved me any time, but I think it will save me some money and give me some exercise at the same time. I went to the gym and at least I feel like I’ve had a full workout. I figure that if I use Divvy three times a week to work, that’s saved me minimum $24 per month. Four times is $32. At that price, if I bike for two months, I break even. I don’t mention riding back from work, because…
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Adaptation in practice
I had done some revision to my lesson plan for today. The last three classes I had taught were workshops and the attendees were self selected and therefore (presumably) had a reason to be there. For today’s class, this was a assigned class period. In terms of teaching, this was a luxury. I had a full two hours and it was written into the syllabus. The ambitious part came when I decided to roll some orientation concepts into a full Pubmed orientation. I had a series of six exercises each building on the previous concept. We covered known vs unknown searching, using boolean to construct, filters, and intro to MeSH,…
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Adaptation
Tonight was the third of three classes. I tried to get a little more attendance from posting informal flyers around the library with reminder sticky notes attached to them. The tactic was successful in the sense that two people dropped in due to them. The third was already registered. One other contacted me about missing the class. He was also registered, but mentioned the notes that he saw. I’m following up to see if he is willing to attend another group or make an appointment. So far the marketing that I am using is either generating more attendance or other consults. So overall, postitive results. I;m tracking them to get…