Comment on Week 8: Final Project by karen76zoom

That sounds great. Open access is important. Researchers having the ability to publish is really important, also. I often hear that accounting researchers have a hard time publishing. I find it baffling when people who do research struggle to get it published as so many individuals depend on new concepts generated from the research. Why keep the faucet cranked down so tightly on how much gets published? University professors desperately need to publish to develop their careers within their universities. Why not allow more articles, in general, to be published in the journals? It is confusing. Is it just old school thought that it has always been hard to get published in accounting journals, so it must continue to be very difficult?
The open access idea is food for thought. As consumers of articles, we might not get to use the type of material we need in our research of published papers. However, money to operate the journals needs to be raised, so everything cannot be free.
I hope your project goes well!

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Comment on Multitasking does not exist by kgculbertson

It is discouraging, Sara, when you feel that your values and energies are not appreciated within a culture – particularly in a workplace. It feels so much more like a ‘job’ than a vocation, right?
I will still argue that there is no such thing as multi-tasking, and there is scientific evidence to support that our brains are not capable of attending to two ‘things’ at one time. What we’re doing is switching back and forth from one to the other, not holding them in the same space/time. But, there is definitely a benefit to be able to manage (juggle) multiple projects and priorities within a given span of time. And that is possible, so long as one doesn’t’ try to multi-task (which is impossible) rather than plan their time effectively and maintain a manageable portfolio of priorities that can be attended to in succession throughout a day, week, month, year, etc.
I’m not sure if you are a parent, or intend to be, but I will warn you that it becomes increasingly difficult to juggle when you bring a child into the world and try to continue working at the pace you did prior to becoming one.
Perhaps you’ll be part of the ‘next generation’ of women who work ‘smart’ and not ‘hard’, and who is well-educated enough to know the difference between multi-tasking (which is impossible) and effectively managing one’s time.
Keep me posted!

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Comment on Student Surveys and Teaching Evaluations by hlc3fd

I agree that faculty evaluations and surveys can be subjective in determining whether students are learning and if faculty are teaching material in a way that promotes learning. I too wonder if there is much value in these evaluations, especially if schools do not have policies against administering evaluations as extra credit. Likert scale responses do not provide the most thoughtful feedback and faculty should take time to do a mid-semester check-in with students.

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Comment on Do you understand my research? by Carlos F Mantilla P

Yes definitely, tax dollars because of the current bill, but absolutely it goes beyond that. I believe everyone should pay more attention to what is going on in the world, research and not-research. The problem of sometimes not understanding, or not caring to understand, is that we can wash our hands when something wrong happens and say that we had nothing to do with it, but without caring about it, we are already part of whatever ends up happening…. think went off a little bit on a tangent, but at the end we should try to reach out to everyone

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Comment on Do you understand my research? by dowlingm

Since that Communicating Science workshop we did, I’ve been wondering if the reason why we’re so terrible at it is similar to the reasons why promoting open access is difficult right now: certain venues for presenting your research are considered more prestigious than others. For example, presenting your research at a conference in your field or publishing at a journal (even open access) in your field is generally considered “better” than giving a public talk about your research. The reason for it is that you can communicate your ideas directly to the scientific community that will be immediately affected by the new research. However, this does perpetuate a situation where we aren’t talking to other scientists in different fields, let alone laypeople. Thus, we get no practice at doing it, and many don’t see the point in trying. After all, if you can describe your research to the people who care about it most, why do you NEED to be able to describe it to anyone else?

The reason that we should be able to communicate our ideas outside our fields are all the reasons you stated and then some. We need to be able to connect with each other and scientists and researchers. In so doing, we can form unique collaborations and do some really cool research. We also need to be able to explain to people why our research matters so that they understand what it is we do and how it affects them. I think this matters to the general public even beyond their taxpayer dollars.

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Comment on Self-adapted Evaluation System by Deb McGlynn

Academia is entirely driven by one’s numbers. To get to grad school you need good grades. Once in grad school, you need to keep good grades and publish papers in high ranked journals. It is unfortunate because there are people that are more intelligent than many people I have met in grad school but have worse grades. Our entire society is built on conforming to one standard when we all learn in different ways. I like the idea of the new academic publication tracking system. It provides more information than the h-index and provides a larger story to the individual researcher. Thanks for your post.

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Comment on My Action Items for Diversity by Chen

This is very interesting. It seems that when a culture is very dominant (meaning the population is not culturally diverse), denial of and judgement on anything/anyone that’s different can increase exponentially. According to a theory I heard on NPR the other day, tradition and morality formation gives humans an evolutionary advantage in the following way. Naturally, fear is the most effective modifier of human behavior: you can’t be too risky otherwise you might die in trying new things, which is how fear protects you. However, sometimes fear is not that effective in the sense that you might miss the opportunities to try out new things such as going out with a new date or trying out new food, environment. Therefore, there’s a fine line between being too bold and being a wimp in regarding new things, which is (part of) the basis of tradition/morality. For a culture that has less diverse population, it’s not surprising that, as a whole, the attitude on people behave differently is less welcoming and more judgemental.

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