It covers everything from the history of scicomm to press releases, #SocialMedia, #science shows, risk communication, engaging with policy makers, language, you name it... Highly recommended!
A conversation on another site reminded me of something fun that happened on one of my exams last fall.
If class attendance gets low enough, I'll walk off camera and/or turn off the mic to give the attending students the answer to a bonus question on the exam. The question is a fill-in-the-blank question with the prompt something like "What did I draw on the board on October 15?"
On one of the exams, about 3x as many people had the correct answer as had actually attended. I realized I wasn't rewarding those who attended so much as rewarding those who had a friend who attended.
My horror at this realization was offset by my amusement at another realization. There was at least one student who refused to provide the correct answer -- there was a sizable number of students (about 2x as many as had attended) who all had the same incorrect answer.
When we teach WW1 history and show photographs of men in the trenches, and no one knows if they are real or midjourney fake then we are in deep trouble. Or teach scientific principles through research papers and don't know if the text is authentic human created or response engine output, we are in deep trouble. Imagine a hundred other contexts and you understand why gen ai is such a massive problem.
Bad weather- classes suck.
Good weather- classes suck.
56 F/13 C and overcast with mist but not actual rain - classes are great (but if you miss this window you’re screwed). #academia#academicchatter#academicmastodon
I finally did it: I went to the top of MBS like a proper tourist.
I spent so many good times at GBTB.
Especially at the beginning, when I was still staying at hotels in SG's Central area, I spent many a first date strolling through the gardens or around Marina Bay at night.
My colleague and I went flying his kite on Marina Barrage. When my parents visited, they posed for pics in front of MBS and we saw a drone show in the gardens.
My best friend and I went to the flower dome together, and to the GBTB Christmas Market.
The supergrove trees are a popular location for visiting geocachers to host their Singapore events, so I've experienced the Garden Rhapsody many times, also at special occasions like LNY.
One of the things I'm going to miss most is all the lush green here in SG. It's beautiful and always cheers me up. I'm sad every time a tree gets taken down by a thunderstorm. I had an amazing view of all that green from the top of MBS.
Question: in your professional life, I'm assuming that you have some people in mind who you respect and admire, and whose behaviours you try to emulate?
I'm curious if those are mostly fellow academics, or mostly people outside of academia, or a pretty even mix? Does the set of people whose behaviours you try to emulate vary much over time?
I’m sitting on a PATH Train and half the ads are for universities and the other half are for online gambling sites. No wonder students feel like education is just another commodity which they can consume. #academia#academicchatter#academicmastodon
Are there any #medical#scientists or #researchers or #neurologists doing any current studies on human #brain & #memory retention - specifically on maximum capacities of human brain memory storage & if there's a limit to how much we can store in our brains?
Like, if we build up many new memories, do we reach a point where some past memories are removed from our memory storage or is there no maximum limits to human memory storage?
These are things I wonder about & don't know enough about.
Ok, writing fam, I have to reorganize my office for my next projects (I swear this is NOT procrastination), but this first means culling the books in the second library (some might call it the family room but in these parts it’s second library) which means cleaning a part of the garage for a staging area to give some of this stuff to charity. I’m already exhausted. #academia#academicchatter#academicmastodon
Just finished two classes worth of midterm papers, and, my God, it’s a bloodbath even by my standards. I feel like the Jerome Powell of grade inflation. Something is very, very wrong. #academia#academicchatter#academicmastodon
Grading a couple of #chatgpt generated papers.
Controversial opinion: I prefer that the students use it over old school plagiarism. Because old school, the papers were good and you would have to prove the plagiarism in an ever escalating Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Now, you can’t prove anything but the papers are shit and you can just grade on the (lack of) quality. #academia#academicmastodon#academicchatter
We are not meeting in class today so the students can work on their papers (due at midnight). And for whatever reason, they can’t handle this change in routine. You’d think I had run over a puppy. #academia#academicchatter#academicmastodon
The hardest part of this semester was trying to urge #students, amid the available #technologies, to really #read. Most friends worldwide are on mobile phones, preferring short posts, and not easily accessing links. I can therefore be thankful for the global readership of my #publications in these #research#repositories:
Japan's ResearchMap (和英), where I have filled in #Japanese as well as English information about publications (6,600+ downloads): https://researchmap.jp/waoe