Melbourne

Right now I should only just be returning from the Global Learn conference in Melbourne. I wrote a "brief conference paper" and registered for this jaunt late last year when I wasn't sure about my teaching vs research future. The paper is a teaching and learning (T&L) paper based on my thoughts about a taxonomy for criterion referenced assessment in mathematics (more on that when I write up the proper journal article...which shouldn't be as crap as the conference paper).

Anyway, given the recent Federal government's decision to essentially scrap the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, and hence the possibility for funding to T&L related projects, I've kind of lost a lot of interest in this sort of work. Not entirely - I'm still keen on improving my and others' teaching practices and I'm also looking to branch out to working with people who are actually experts in education (and who might be able to drag me along to ARC grant success!). So I was really only going to this thing because it was already all paid for and to present my talk on the paper I submitted.

I got down to Melbourne last Sunday afternoon. It was pretty good, no troubles, checked in, dumped my bags, headed out to buy some food supplies - Melbourne of course has great baked and smallgoods...yum. Dropped that back at the "hotel", then headed to an awesome pub called the Local Taphouse (20 beers on tap... good beers) The Local Taphouse. I had good beer! All good so far.

That's was where it went downhill. The short of it is that the hotel was essentially booked out by dodgy people including, I'm pretty sure, two different sex workers. They were fairly noisy! But kindly stopped work around 11pm. The domestic argument going on in the room directly next to me though, went for about two days. My door got kicked at a couple of times by the guy - I guess he figured because I had my light on I must have been interested in them... I was not. The room itself was also pretty crappy - broken fittings, lights, railings...that doesn't really bother me though. The broken heater did - it was cold!

Then I realised that there were bed bugs. I thought - hey I know I'll write about this on tripadvisor... there I found that I was not the first to make the bed bug and sex worker discoveries.

Lesson: when someone else at work (who happens to be really awesome at her job by the way - so no disrespect to her) books your accommodation, make sure you still do the same checks of the place that you would if you booked it yourself!

Urgh...anyway, I managed to get a flight out of there on Tuesday morning... I was so let down and disinterested by mid Monday, that I just had to get out. It's been much better back at home anyway - even if I did spend all day washing all the stuff I left outside the house to make sure the bed bugs didn't get inside! :-)

(Not the) Director of Studies!!!

I almost forgot!! This is a great day!!! I am no longer the Director of Studies of the Faculty of Science and Technology!!!

This job, over the last three years, has involved a wide range of academic admin/leadership activities including course quality assurance, course reporting, running a teaching and learning forum that has grown into an annual 1 day symposium/conference with invited speakers (including this year a keynote who can be seen on ABC TV quite often), providing opportunities for fellow academics to branch out into publishing teaching and learning (rather than scientific) research, acting as the assistant dean and lots of other things too. (Disclaimer: not one of these things did I do alone - always there were great people working with me)

Even though it has been a great learning experience where I got to work with a few amazing people and made new friends, and I got promoted twice in 2 years basically because of the work I was able to do in the job (Scott McCue likes to say that my job description was just the list of promotion selection criteria), I really didn't want to do this anymore. It was no longer as horrible as it originally was (I didn't have to reject unit outline changes made by fellow academics and feel their wrath) but it still had more downs than ups.

Best thing I learnt from this job: even when other people seem like they are your strong, confident and all knowing superiors, underneath they have just as many fears and concerns as you do - just perhaps different ones. This is useful to know... and if necessary exploit. :-)

That's a bit of a nasty way to finish the post...but there you go!

Today!

Today was one of those joyous "working from home" days that seem like they should be easy to find, but eventually turn out to be difficult to schedule. There's always some tool who schedules a meeting for 1/2 and hour or something on your free day that just completely messes it up. Anyway, I managed to hold onto this one somehow, and this is what I did.

- washing
- hanging out washing
- taking washing back in when it started to rain really hard and the washing was completely wet again in about 30 seconds
- drying the washing again
- baking bread
- cooking lunch
- cleaning the floors

Ok ok, true I did that stuff, but that's not at all interesting here I guess. What I did, "work related" included

- read over Louise Manitzky's PhD confirmation of candidature document
- reviewed some literature related to colorectal cancer
- chipped away at some manuscripts I'm working on

Confirmation

If you are not in the know, Confirmation of Candidature is the 1 year milestone in the PhD student journey. It involves presenting a seminar to the department (publicly, but not often do outsiders show up) and also preparing a document to demonstrate a) that you have a project, b) that the project might go somewhere and c) that you have made some progress towards getting to that "somewhere".

I'm on the panel to assess/evaluate Louise's confirmation, so I read the document, attend the seminar and then, along with the rest of the panel, interview/question her afterwards.

I kind of like reading these things. They are written at a stage where (usually) the student is still in the process of figuring out all about the things they are studying, so they aren't horribly overburdened with jargon and complicated things that outsiders would have no chance of following...so I was actually able to follow most of this document in other words. I'm looking forward to the seminar tomorrow too - usually I don't have questions, but the pre-reading of the document means I have a heads up regarding what Louise is going to say. So I've already got questions.

Colorectal cancer

I have been getting behind with knowing the literature for my PhD students' projects, so I'm really working hard at the moment to get myself back up to speed. After all, it's important to know what the hell they are on about! Tris is working on some modelling of colorectal cancer and the host immune response. The story goes that even though the cells involved in colon and rectal cancer do present tumour associated antigen (ie the stuff that the immune system responds to) the immune response is often quite weak - particularly in advanced tumours. We are looking at this situation, and looking to develop a model that goes beyond this to investigate potential immunotherapeutic treatments.

Chipping away

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I'm really having a lot of success with "chipping away" at things. I've got lots of projects on the go at the moment - I counted yesterday and if you include even the most dubious of prospects, I'm currently drafting 16 papers. In all seriousness, probably 8-10 of those will ever go anywhere. Anyway, I find it near on impossible to hold all of these in my head at one time, or to simply sit and work away at one for a long period of time. What I've been doing is "letting go" and just letting the papers sit, but spending short periods (1-2 hours) at a time on lots of different things. So I might actually work on the paper draft for about 4-5 papers in any one day. It's going quite nicely - before you know it, you've got some reasonable writing done at the end of each week.

Sleep

Weirdly, I've started going to bed early since I came back from Europe. Around 9-10pm is when I've been dropping off. Plus, I'm waking up at 5.30 in the morning and doing the breakfast prep thing for the family. It's strange - I'm not feeling tired in the mornings and I'm actually finding it easy to get up at that time. Hopefully this continues into the winter when the cold Ipswich mornings may squash this newfound morning energy! We also haven't been watching TV at all lately - I really like this. Even though I do like some TV shows, I hate the idea of watching TV...it's such a waste. Maybe that is also contributing to the lack of tiredness. Time will tell I guess.

Norway!

This is a little late I know, but that's how it goes I guess.

I went to Norway, Trondheim to be exact, to see Dr Dan (Simpson) who most of you reading this would know, but for the uninformed Dan was a student at QUT a few years ago and is now post-doccing in the far North. Dan and I are working on some Chlamydia modelling. Basically the way I see it is we are exploiting his skills at being able to do funky hard mathematics, dumbing it down to a level that I can understand, and then applying it to biology that I understand. In other words, new better models of Chlamydia infection.

It's great to work with Dan. First off, he's funny as and a genuinely nice person - so it's easy to talk with him, although at times our status as friends gets us a bit distracted (for example the approximately 20 mins spent expanding on the idea of Daryl Somers in black face). But still it's good fun. Second, Dan is great to work with because he knows maths - lots of it - and lots more of it than I know. That's important: always work with people who know more than you. It's like sport - you try to play against people who are better than you because it makes you get better. Same deal here - a) you learn things from them, b) if they can stand working with you, you will end up with better research outputs than you could have come up with yourself or with someone not as "mathy" (or whatever) as you.

Trondheim was quite nice - sunny for the first four days, then snow on the last day that I was there. I got to see a fair bit of the place, including a great pub and some good coffee while I was there too. I'm starting to realise that coffee shops (and I guess probably pubs too) should be classified according to their appropriateness for different types of academic activity. For example, coffee shops with big comfy sofas in dimly lit rooms can be quite good for solo work both on paper and on the laptop and they are also ok for 2-4 person conversations. On the other hand generic, more restauranty coffee shops (think coffee club brisbanites) are much better suited for initial conversations between new collaborators - you can't really get settled in and plug the laptop in anywhere... often people actually look at you strangely when you even go near to this type of behaviour. And of course, there are other classifications in between and off to the side ... perhaps someone could blog this type of thing? Or have restaurant review websites add it as a standard category.

Another interesting thing about Trondheim was the recreational part of the maths department. By which I mean tea room. These guys and girls had the good fortune to have TWO rooms (side by side granted) with a full kitchen, two coffee machines, blackboards and seating for about 50-60 in seminar style! Luxury. There was also a view out to the fjord and over the town itself. I think all departments should have this sort of thing.

Back to the work. We managed to get a good chunk of a paper written during the week and Dan did some coding to get some results produced for our model. I also managed to hook up a contact at QUT who does experiments on guinea pigs, and got some lab books and data from her! This is great - I've never looked at lab books before (more on that in another post). I expect we should be able to submit this one in particular in a few weeks, and begin working on some other soon too. I guess it will be back to skype though for the conversations unfortunately. Norway is a long way away and as much as I love seeing Dan, working with him, hanging out with him and drinking top notch beers with him and his beer geek friends - it might be a while before I trek that way again!

Holiday (think Madonna)

As far as QUT is concerned, I am actually on recreation leave yesterday, today and tomorrow. Although of course the weekends don't count. So I've basically been recreating... wandering around Zurich and Luzern here in Switzerland. It's pretty good and great to spend time with my mum who is accompanying me on the trip, but I really miss the family at home and especially my Dad who is in hospital at the moment. Hope you are doing well Dad, and hopefully a bit less spaced out from the drugs compared with when we talked this morning! :-)

RED conference - summary

So I'm at this RED (rethinking education in the knowledge society) conference at a place called Monte Verita in Switzerland. Essentially this is a technology in education conference. Originally I registered to attend because I thought it was quite relevant to my Director of Studies job in the Science & Technology Faculty - I think this was a good move. Unfortunately, I am coming to the end of my time in that job, so it seems to be no longer of much relevance to me personally. I am learning about various things, incorporating technology in the classroom etc, but without my position as DoS I guess I don't really have the opportunity to spread this too widely. There have been a few talks though that I have found to be relevant to my own teaching - so (of course) perhaps there is scope to have impact by making changes in my own teaching and demonstrating to others how this can be useful to learning.

Something that has really struck me, perhaps because this field is outside that of my traditional research (ie math bio), is that a lot of time, effort and money seems to be spent on studies that (at least to me) have obvious outcomes. I'll oversimplify things to make obvious what I mean: "Are computers useful for learning x in context y". The answer being "well it depends". Clearly explaining what "learning x" means is really important here. Clearly outlining what "useful" means is important. I guess my point is, in a lot of the studies the question is answered prior to the study because the researcher is defining what they mean by these terms in such a way that it reflects their position on the question.

It has however been good to hear people talking about learning outcomes being more important than technology incorporation. That is, talking about what it is that you want students to learn rather than what new gizmo you want to bring into your classroom. Think about what you want people to learn and then if there is scope for some new technology to actually play a role, figure out a way to incorporate it. Otherwise, leave it on the shelf. It's good when people don't forget what's important!

March 5 - on the way to Europe

Today I flew out of Brisbane, heading to Zurich and then to a place called Ascona in the south of Switzerland to attend the RED conference (an education/technology conference). I have no idea what to expect as I've never been to this conference…I don't think there has been one actually. My mum is coming with me to visit Switzerland and later Norway. So far it's good - I think we have really interesting discussions. Today on the flight to Singapore we were mainly talking about my recent trip to the Philippines and my thoughts about inequity/poverty, as well as perspectives of a white guy from a white town visiting places like Manila and Cebu. We also had some good discussions about religion and god…very interesting.

Just read a fb post from Dr Simpson - it's snowing in Trondheim (unless he's exaggerating :P ). Mum said she hasn't seen snow before.

March 4 - at Gardens Point again (briefly)

While you may think you know a lot, most surely you also DO NOT know many things. On the other hand, while you may think you are a small player in a group, quite often the bigger players of the group have just as many small-time interests and petty, unimportant thoughts as anyone else does.

I attended a meeting of the professoriate (and me, as Graeme likes to point out every time the professoriate meets) regarding one of our research groupings (I'll leave it nameless) at work. Topics of discussion were supposed to be things like vision and future of the group, leadership of the group, etc…strategic things I guess you would say. We spent about an hour on the presenters second slide, basically bickering over a name for the group. I think it was me saying "can we suspend this very important discussion for a later date, acknowledging that the name may be an issue, and move onto slide 3" that finally allowed us to move on.

On the "not knowing things" side though… We were discussing the structure of the group itself and how it would be clustered and organised. A thought that has long swum around in my mind is that there should be broad clusters at the top that are flags or tag words, and then under these there should be "research groups" eg "mathematical biology group", "industrial mathematics group", "medical/biostatistics group" and so on. Each with a leader or champion, and various members. This is good, and basically what we settled on, but while I had a good idea I didn't have the understanding of the broader research picture to be able to articulate this as appropriate. Tony (former head of maths Tony) did this beautifully (in my opinion). Essentially as a result of his vast experience in the research sphere I think. He was able to pose this as tagging our work to the Fields of Research classifications of the Australian Research Council. This makes a lot of sense.

RUME Conference - Portland - Day 3 further thoughts

Darryl and I also got talking about a couple of things that came up in one of the talks. In particular:

1. "trimming"
2. "decompression"

when teaching mathematics.

By trimming, I guess we are talking about the instructor, acting as expert/guide, trimming away potentially distracting surplus or unnecessary details when they teach a course.

By decompression, we are talking about taking what is sometimes quite dense and maybe even simplified mathematical results or statements and unpacking them, maybe even making them more complicated (in some sense anyway) to teach them to people. 

Does anyway have any thoughts on these? Particularly if you teach yourself and either actively do these, or (like me) did them without realising what you were doing?

RUME Conference - Portland - Day 3

Here's a thought. If you hold a conference and the last day is a half day only...particularly on a Sunday, people WILL leave early. This should be avoided. a) it's somewhat embarrassing I think, to the organisers, b) it's not pleasant for the speakers, particularly if they are new to the community at the conference/students - they can feel like nobody cares about them. How to avoid it: a) put higher profile speakers on the last day, b) don't have a half day at the end if possible (eg, remove breaks between talks and squeeze the program into a shorter time.

Submarine and Interstate 5 from Full Sail

I watched a couple of talks today about blended instruction/online teaching - these were interesting enough. It was cool to see someone in mathematics employing the Elluminate Live! technology (this is a tack-on to blackboard/LMS sort of a cross between skype, online whiteboard and powerpoint). They used it for teaching a graduate level course to teachers in remote areas (Colorado and Wyoming I think from memory). This is something that I'd like to do myself with my idea for a GradCert in maths for Qld/Aus teachers who are interested in upskilling their mathematics. It seems unpopular though with folks at work...not to worry.

Full Sail Bump in the Night and Mathffiti on the copper table top

Anyway, I feel like I was a good boy for actually going to a few talks on the last half day. But at the end, it was good to head out (even though it was freezing and raining) and wander around town, grab lunch and drink some Full Sail (cask aged Bump in the Night). We also got all cultured and headed to the Portland Art Museum for a couple of hours. Not a lot of artworks that I liked, but some. Some of the African American stuff was powerful - but there was a particularly lame bit which was basically video and bits and pieces made from experiments of cells dividing. Darryl and I are thinking of approaching an artist and giving them some matlab vids of solutions to the diffusion equation. We iz artists.

RUME Conference - Portland - Day 2

[delayed post]

So day 2. Apparently this is a record cold day for Portland - it was about -7C this morning (worse with windchill) - needless to say I didn't go outside and certainly didn't join the conference attendees that were going for a jog - morons. I guess there are all types though - people like me who sleep til 7 then have breakfast, and those who don't but rather strap on their jogging suits and hop around in the freezing cold along a river bank.

I saw another interesting student talk this morning. Grad student this time. She spoke about college maths faculty at research 1 (ie top level research...like our Group of 8 kind of) universities and their efforts and interest in improving their teaching. She had just completed a pilot study and run into problems such as very low response rate etc. But it was interesting nonetheless to think about the fact that we really don't get training in how to teach. Basically you just get the *opportunity* to go in front of the class and you figure it out as you go. I know at QUT we have our tutor training day, but really, compare that with the years of training you need to be a teacher and you start to see what I mean. University students are just as diverse (if not moreso) than school students - it makes you think whether there should really be more training in how to teach. Still - while there are some absolutely shocking lecturers, some people do just fine without any training.

My talk was just before lunch. I think I mentioned yesterday it was almost the same as the CRA talk I gave at QANZIAM last year. Apparently it went well - Darryl said so, and I trust him :-) It was interesting to see the reaction to my (in my opinion friendly and not cynical) explanation of the policies and procedures that we are subject to when teaching at QUT (in particular, with regards to assessment, unit outlines, etc).

So...now to write the full paper.