I'm talking tomorrow on much the same talk as I gave at QANZIAM late last year - that is, student perceptions of criterion referenced assessment in an ODEs class. This is good because I've already written the slides.
Some thoughts for the day:
- Don't be an ass. When you become an important person in your particular field, try not to be a jerk. It's unnecessary. One of the talks I was at today was by an undergraduate student who had done a research project. I thought it was a good talk - not necessarily a really high end piece of research, but certainly good and worthy of presentation at the conference. Anyway, one of the invited speakers was up the back and in the Q&A session, she essentially ripped this guy a new one. I thought it was really uncalled for. She even did the "I don't mean to attack you" etc...but she was.
- Frozen water. Frozen water should be found in two places: 1) refrigerators/freezers, 2) drinks. That's it. Not on footpaths, not on car boots/trunks, not in water features/fountains. NO. That is just not right.
- Theme. Conferences have topics/areas of interest of course. But usually there is also an underlying style or theme that might not be obviously advertised (intentionally or otherwise). Often the community involved in the conf or just the organiser has a particular slanted view of the world. This is definitely the case here. Although, even thought the majority may have a particular style there are enough outsiders (like me) to dampen this a little and make it more inviting/welcoming for other outsiders. This is perfectly illustrated by the three reviews I received for my initial conference paper - two trashed it, barely passing it as acceptable while the third gave it brilliant reviews. Can't please everyone.
One interesting thing to come out of this is that the undergrad student I mentioned above is actually interested in some of the same topics in maths ed that I am. He is also looking for somewhere to do a PhD, so I'm going to drop him an email to discuss - imagine a conference being a useful networking opportunity! Crazy.
I just realised that my own comment "not really a high end piece of research" makes me sound like exactly the kind of ass that I was talking about. Put it down to poor wording due to my intense sinus issues at the time!
ReplyDeleteTo explain what I actually meant: the research project seemed to me to be completely appropriate, interesting and well done. But it wasn't a massive project, worked on by about 10 collaborators across multiple institutions over a long period of time - which is perhaps what the invited speaker is more accustomed to hearing about. My point was that she should get a grip - there are big projects and small projects...all have something to contribute to the field if done well (which this was in my opinion).
1) Portland sits on an axis of amazing microbreweries.
ReplyDelete2) The last workshop I went to was full of people who weren't arses, which was only a downside when one of the invited speakers was really wrong and no one called him on it.
3) But it was very theme-y. On the up side, it was broad enough that there was still range, but there were one or two that didn't 'fit in'. They were still good talks, though.
4) Ice is fucked.
5) Re 'Not really a high end piece of research': Most researchers don't put out hight end pieces of research, so it's not a bad thing to say that something wasn't. Incremental research is both important and often actually useful to someone. So 'not high end' does not really equate to (or should not equate to) 'not well done'.
1) true it does. even the local airline offers free microbrew onboard
ReplyDelete2) that's a good point - I guess "being an arse" should be employed appropriately
4) true that
5) thanks...as long as I'm understood :-) I thought I needed to clarify as I recently facebook-friended the guy and was worried he might read this and get the wrong idea :-)