By Julia Strand and Jonathan Peelle
4.9
2323 ratings
The podcast currently has 49 episodes available.
It's really tempting to count things like credit hours, publications, or grants. Julia and Jonathan talk about some of the disadvantages of counting, including missing out on "hard-to-count" activities that may be important to us, and how to push the needle in our own thinking or evaluations to fight against easy answers. How do we consider the important aspects of helping students in our offices, deep thinking, or playing with Legos?
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Back after a year (!) away, Julia and Jonathan cover what’s been going on for the last year, and new things they are doing. Perhaps depressingly, they agree that being older or more advanced in one’s career doesn’t prevent the need for some degree of “starting over” when new challenges present themselves. Plus, Julia shares a strong book recommendation!
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Jonathan has a career announcement and Julia is excited about graduation. Jonathan’s world didn’t fall apart when he checked his email less. And the main topic: what makes a good hobby? Do Jonathan or Julia have any hobbies?
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Julia and Jonathan revisit the issue of how we manage our time and our commitments so that we can keep some sense of sanity, instead of feeling like butter being scraped over too much bread. In brief, when there’s too much stuff in the closet, you need to lean harder into your pile of no’s, because you probably only have about 4000 weeks to work with. How do we decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze (as it were)? Maybe we should start giving awards for thinking long and hard about a topic.
Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers
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After some long-overdue Halloween follow-up and Jonathan horrifying Julia with his new strategy for (not) dealing with email, your hosts tackle the topic of exam questions, and in particular, how to handle the prospect of open-book exams in classes where we would still like students to study. Should exams be timed? Multiple-choice? How do we incentivize students to spend time outside of class and support our learning goals while also being appropriately flexible? There are no easy answers but Julia and Jonathan offer some ideas.
Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers
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For many of us, collaborating with other researchers is one of our favorites part of an academic career. In this episode Julia and Jonathan talk about different kinds of collaborations and what to think about when you’re starting a collaboration. And, some potential downsides of collaborations and how hopefully avoid the worst of these.
Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers
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Like all of life academia is social. Julia and Jonathan talk about different strategies for telling our colleagues about our work, including “advertising” our papers, talks, and the importance of having a website (you don’t have one? Get one!). These things are important at any career stage and you can start doing them wherever you’re at.
Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers
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There's a lot about the last year and a half we are happy to get rid of, but are there any things we'd like to keep? Julia and Jonathan talk about the advantages of online meetings and talks, flexibility in classes, and (if we're lucky) discovering we can say "no" to things and it's OK.
Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers
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After an unplanned summer hiatus Julia and Jonathan are back to talk about errors in research, and specifically how we can make fewer of them. Julia talks about her Error Tight project for implementing some culture changes, including standardization, how to cultivate a sense of shared responsibility in a research lab. Research mistakes reflect a failure of systems rather than a failure of people—so let’s improve our systems!
Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers
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Wrapping up our mini-series on teaching, Julia and Jonathan talk about readings, grading, and how to fairly offer flexibility to students in our classes. In-class activities, quizzes, how many grades to drop, how to handle late assignments, how to get feedback from students, and more.
Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers
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The podcast currently has 49 episodes available.