1. They are male (in my class of 24 I have 3 men)
2. They are technologically incompetent, so I have to keep resetting things in blackboard for them
3. They are whiners who CONSTANTLY complain about every little thing, even the truly unimportant things

In the past when I was handing back homework each class I would get to know their names.  By this point in the semester I pretty much had it down.

Not this semester.  I not only don’t know them yet, I can’t imagine how I will learn them.  The repetition isn’t there.

Attendance, the iphone app, has a feature that allows you to take a picture and attach it to the name.  However 1st generation ipads don’t HAVE cameras and I don’t have an iphone.  I could take the pictures on my android phone, but then linking them up would be difficult.

I did find a few references to ways to learn names, some of which had a LOT of different ideas.  I’m going to put them here both for your reference and mine.  I need to come back to this before next semester.

• Learning Student Names (27 different suggestions)
• Successful Academic chimed in with 18, some repeats
• 14 more from the University of Virginia
• 15 more from the TEFL folks
• 23 more from University of Nebraska – Lincoln

I may eventually put this into a single doc and see which ones appear most often and which ones are unique, but that should be enough to get started.

I have 2 big issues with some of these ideas so far, however.  First, many are not paperless, thereby defeating the point.  Second, many are VERY time-consuming as far as class time.  For example, many of the UNL suggestions will teach the STUDENTS each others names as well as teaching them to you.  At the cost of probably an entire class period.  That would definitely require some pre-planning.

From a pedagogical/andragogical perspective, your course must have some learning objectives.  These may be provided if the course is a standard offering, or you may need to determine what they are.  Regardless, your first step should always be to define what you want your students to come away from the course knowing and.or able to do.  From there you can begin to ask yourself some key questions that will define what the rest of the course will look like.  Questions like:

1. How many students are you going to have in this class?  You can spend a lot more time grading assignments from a class of 10 than from a class of 100.  Discussions flow differently in larger classrooms and you might need to incorporate technology like clickers or Poll Everywhere to make the class interactive.
2. Will the course have a lab or discussion sections?  Large courses often use discussion sections for more interactivity, while labs are designed to be hands on.  Even if you don’t have a separate time, you may find integrating those types of structures into a course useful, assuming it supports your learning objectives.
3. How many courses are you teaching?  Multiple sections of the same courses or all different courses?  Teaching multiple sections of the same course can be easier, in that you will have less to prepare.  However I’ve found my own thinking enhanced by teaching different courses at the same time, resulting in better descriptions and examples for both.  Regardless, you need to plan your time accordingly.
4. Will you have teaching assistants?  TAs are NOT slave labor.  It is part of your job to teach them how to teach.  So while you can ask them to do a lot of the “drudge” work of teaching, such as grading papers and tests, you will need to teach them what to look for and spot check their work throughout the semester.  Plan to spend quite a bit of time overseeing their work and helping them do a good job.
5. Are there materials already created that you can use or will everything need to be created from scratch?  For example most textbooks will come with a slide pack, but the slides are often ugly and don’t explain the material well.  I found for both of my classes that I had to create my own materials that included more multimedia, more visuals and more interactive examples.  Don’t be afraid to search the internet for good ideas on exercises you can use with your students.  (Don’t forget to give the original author credit.)
6. Is there a single book that meets most of your learning objectives?  If not, can you meet the objectives with a couple of less-expensive books?  What about using e-reserves from your library to either supplement or, in the case of grad seminars, replace a textbook?  (Keep in mind what constitutes fair use if you use this approach.  You are usually safe if you are using a single chapter from a particular book for teaching purposes, but you should check with your department and library on whether there are any limitations in place at your institution.)  If you are teaching at a community college, are there open source textbooks that can be used to save the students some money?
7. How may tests do you plan to give?  Undergraduate students prefer more assessment opportunities covering smaller chunks of material, while graduate students prefer a few bigger (deeper) assignments.  How heavily weighted in the course grade will those tests be?  Are they the primary means of assessment or just one of many?  I give 5 tests in my stats class.  I give them on paper and grade them by hand because I am better able to provide feedback to the students that way.  But those tests are worth only 40% of the total class grade.  I have other assignments that make up the rest of the course grade.
8. How many assignments (homework, papers, lab activities) do you plan to give and how will you manage reviewing them?  I have been actively working to reduce this part of my work load.  Homework is done using an online system,  and lab answers will be typed into web-forms rather than handed in on paper.  This lets the computer grade some of the questions and I only have to worry about the short answer questions.  Papers are still manual, but I am working on implementing an electronic feedback process that I’ll detail later this summer.
9. How much lecturing do you plan to do?  How are you going to organize that time, keep the students’ attention and ensure that they are understanding what you said?  I do a lot of lecture in my stats class because the students find the book confusing, but I do it with lots of breaks for questions, partial problem exercises, and bad jokes to find out who is still listening.  I use Powerpoint as a projector operating system by which I put up videos, animations and visual aids to help the students understand the words coming out of my mouth.  Lecturing isn’t necessarily bad, but you do need to plan for it and make it more interactive (see note on clickers and such above).
10. What can you do for yourself in advance that will make your semester easier?  The better you plan out your course, the less stressful your semester will be.  My goal is to have both of my courses completely ready to go by the first day of classes so that I just need to execute during the semester.  So I am organizing all my notes now, testing my iPad with a projector, and otherwise attempting to make sure that there will be no surprises.

In the back of your mind you should always be balancing the techniques used with the amount of time you have available to work on the course.  If you have no TAs and 300 students, you shouldn’t assign multiple papers and may be better off with multiple choice tests*.  If, on the other hand, you have a small graduate seminar you may NEVER give an actual in-class test.  (I’ve actually been asked about one of my assignments because the person doing the syllabus review thought it might take up an awful lot of my time.  It does, but the student learning that comes out of the assignment is sufficient to make it worthwhile.  I compensate by using computer graded homework for much of the day-to-day work.)

One last thing:  remember that it gets easier.  The first semester is always the hardest, as you change, adapt, tweak and otherwise fix up your course.  You will find places you need to add material, other places you need to subtract it.  You will find assignments that just don’t work, and others that work so well you want to further build on them.  This is normal. Just as your students are learning, so are you.  Take it all in stride and keep your sense of humor.

*A multiple choice test doesn’t HAVE to be a cakewalk.  How easy or hard it is depends on the questions asked.  The worst grade I got in graduate school was in a statistics class with 4 tests, 10 multiple choice questions each.  Each question required solving a problem and choosing a response that explained the outcome you got from the problem.  They were by no means trivial problems, and frankly I am a REALLY good test-taker.  However the grade I got (B+, so not actually bad) reflected what I knew and understood quite accurately.  It takes longer to write these kinds of questions, but they can be just as rigorous if well done.

I got through about half of the class (which ends up being a couple hundred double-sided pages) when it occurred to me that this was ridiculous.  I mean, this is 2011.  I own an Ipad (1st gen).  Why was I printing this stuff out so that I could carry it to class every week so that I would have the slides and notes in front of me when I could just carry the ipad instead? (The room has a computer and projector, but I use the notes section of my slides to hold things like practice problems, solutions, and notes to myself on things I want to make sure I explicitly mention, so I want that information with me and right there during class.

This led to thought two:  what do I need to do to not have to carry huge packages of paper back and forth.  The class involves 2 papers* (turnitin, here we come), 5 test, 1 in-class problem per lecture and 10 labs.  The tests I want on paper; I give students partial credit for the tests if they make a math error but otherwise follow through correctly.  (5 times 0 is ZERO people, not 5).  The in-class problems I want them to do on paper, but those should only be a single sheet per student, so that isn’t overwhelming.  Pedagogically the point of those is to also give them feedback on problems done the same way as the tests, done immediately after learning the material.

That leaves the labs and  I need to brainstorm on that one.  The point of these labs is to teach students to use SPSS to solve statistical problems.  Personally I think this is a waste of their time and mine.  Maybe 5 out of 20 will ever use it again, and most of those will be in the research methods class.  Then they will all forget it until the 1 out of that 5 actually gets to graduate school.  The labs were written by another faculty member and are the most dumb down way to earn a credit hour I have ever seen.  They don’t actually TEACH the tool itself OR anything about statistics.  I’m thinking I may move the answer sheets online and call it good.  I will still have to grade the short answer sections, but can do it much quicker online.

Regardless, I will be documenting this process and the new tools I adopt as I work through moving to a less paper-intensive process for both me and the students.  I will need to integrate this with my entire process, so it will also mean moving the lovely paper to do list onto the ipad and integrating it into my life better.  (Right now I mostly play games and read books on it, which makes it a seriously overpriced ereader or toy.)  My focus for now will be strictly on my teaching work; the day job and the rest of my life is going to be excluded until I get teaching sorted out.  (David Allen is screaming in frustration somewhere…)

* Yes, I assign not one but TWO papers to my stats students.  They have to find an article in the mainstream media that talks about a study, then find the study, then write a paper comparing the two and showing me they understood both the study and how it differs from the media coverage.  Surprising as it sounds, it’s one of their favorite assignments.

What I didn’t realize as I went through these permutations was that the tools needed to manage coursework were different from the tools needed to manage the dissertation.

Even with my project management certification, the dissertation was the biggest SOLO project I have ever executed.  A book is comparable.  Parts of the process can translate – for example it is critical to break the dissertation into sub-parts in order to make it a workable task, which is the same for any project from a course paper to cleaning the bathroom.  But the timeframe and VOLUMES of material you have to keep straight are very different.

During my coursework I could carve my day into pieces and usually cross at least one thing off by the end of a piece. I tried to do something similar with the dissertation and found it didn’t work so well. Admittedly I could “read and take notes on article X” in a chunk of allocated time.  But that didn’t help me integrate article X with articles Y, Z, and A through F on the same topic.  That integration time was much harder to schedule, since sometimes it came easily and other times it didn’t.

In the end, from a productivity perspective, I blocked off chunks of time (ranging from an hour to a day) and then put together a goal list at the start of each session.  Planning those goals in advance didn’t work; I needed to take into account my mood, my level of energy, and most importantly what I had completed the last session.

At the same time certain planning became easier.  I no longer needed to maintain a complex, detailed schedule of my days because I was no longer running from work to class to teaching to homework to somewhere else at top speed.  Class was no longer in the picture, and there really was only one “homework” assignment to be worked.

When you move out of coursework and in to writing your dissertation, you need to revisit your tools and systems.  Accept that the requirements have changed and therefore the system needs to change as well.  For some people, that will mean setting aside a dedicated hour or two per day to work on the dissertation while for others it may be setting aside a day or two per week where you focus on that.  Organizing the other elements of your life around these times will may require a different approach or it may be just a different way of using what you have.  Regardless, taking that step back and revisiting your system will help you make the best use of your time.

Seriously.  After some troubleshooting, it turned out that the raid controller built into my motherboard had committed suicide, making none of my 3 internal drives visible.

Now, a month and a half before graduation (knowing there would be at least one more round of revisions), this should have caused a panic.  It didn’t.  Why?

1. I have copies of all the key dissertation files in dropbox
2. I have copies of my entire Documents folder on the external backup drive, along with my itunes library
3. I have copies of my entire Documents folder backed up using crashplan

1. Create a folder structure first: You should have one for the document itself, one for pdf”s of literature you may reference, one for your data, syntax and output.  At it’s simplest, you can have something like this:

• Dissertation
  • Chapters
  • Data
  • Reference

1. Break the document down by chapter:  I broke my dissertation down by chapter so that it would be easier to edit.  At least twice I have seen a document in word implode due to size combined with track changes and code fields for citations.  Working on each chapter in a separate document let me avoid that problem.  Because I use Zotero, when I copy and paste the text into a single document I can just refresh the bibliography and Zotero merges it all into one.  (Most other reference management software should do the same.)
2. Set your word processor autosave to ridiculously frequent:Seriously.  I set word to save autorecover information ever 2 minutes.
3. When you first open a document on a particular day, save it with a different name: Saving with a new name should be the very FIRST thing you do.  That way you can be sure that the old version is preserved.
4. Create a file naming convention and stick to it: There are lots of different ways to do this.  Here’s mine: 20110228-Ch5-Results.docx
   1. The first string of numbers is the date.  That is the part that changes every day I work on it.  Notice that the year comes first, then the month, then the day.  This ensures that it sorts in order of when the document was created.
   2. The second part tells me where in the overall document this chapter belongs. I added this after I realized that the chapter names didn’t sort into the correct order.
   3. The last section is the chapter name, more so that my husband and my editor can easily find things.  It isn’t technically necessary.
   4. When someone reviews it, they tack their initials on to the end of the document name so as to separate it from the original document.
5. Every time you pause, hit the save button:  More is better.  Or set yourself an alarm to hit the save button approximately every 15 minutes.
6. Set up background automatic copies to a different disk drive: I use Syncback free to copy the entire documents directory to my Dropbox folder, which makes an offsite backup copy.  If you are worried about security, Syncback free can save to a zip file and add a password, or Syncback SE ($34.95) can encrypt the file.  Set it to backup FREQUENTLY (I used 5 minutes), but only worry about the chapter and data folders.  That should keep you under the free 2G dropbox limit.
7. Your data analysis output needs to be kept as well: As important as your writing is the syntax you are running in whatever analysis tool you use and the output of that tool.  Use a similar naming standard, and name the syntax that created the output and the output itself the same.  Try to give the files a name that tells you what you were trying to do that day.  (“Analysis” isn’t good enough…)
8. Clean up the old files each time a milestone passes:When my proposal was approved, I got rid of all the earlier versions of those chapters and saved a set with the names 20110104-Ch1-Intro-APPROVED.docx.  Then when I started working again, I used those versions as the base.  I will do the same thing when I send it all off to the editor, again when I submit, and then with the final version.

The key is to automate what you can (backup copies, off-site backups using dropbox), save early and save often.  I have heard too many horror stories of crashed laptops with no backup copies or bad word documents that were the only version.  All of these can be avoided with a bit of planning and a pinch of paranoia.

I ran into a couple of problems, and since I know that several of you use the software I would appreciate any suggestions.

1. The import from Zotero went relatively smoothly, but it put almost all of the items into the Needs Review folder.  When you click on an item that needs review, it lets you search google scholar and try to update/complete the item.  However there doesn’t appear to be a way to say “just take them as they are”, and google scholar‘s throttling won’t allow for sending all of them at once.  (Nor would you want to; I did a few and what came back was worse than what I had before in some cases.)  Not major but annoying.
2. I have a LOT of citations.  5 years worth of accumulated stuff, totaling several hundred citations.  They weren’t well organized, which I admit is my fault, but I am struggling with figuring out the best way to GET them organized now.  Anyone know if there is a search that will look at titles so that I can grab all the ones on specific topics to put into their own folders?
3. The biggest issue is with the citation generation.  it comes in two parts.
   • First, Mendeley does not appear to have been updated to APA 6th edition yet.  While I realize that it is hard to keep up with all the different formats, that is one of the core ones they support.  It’s important to get it right.
   • Second, I regularly used a Zotero feature to basically create the citation for a single item, copy it to my clipboard and then paste it into something else.  I needed that this weekend to put a citation for some data into my presentation.  When I tried it from Mendeley, the citation was wrong.  Specifically it was missing the title field.  I tried a few and they all had the same problem.  This is a big deal.

The sum results of this little trial are that I’m not sure I can use Mendeley for my dissertation.  Item 3 is a big deal when faced with the evil people who check dissertation formats, and if I have to spend a day cleaning up my library it may not be time I can spare.  My hope is that the folks from Mendeley are working on the APA issues and coming up with better tools for cleaning up existing citation libraries.  I can’t believe I’m the only one to have problems with dirty data being imported.

Recently a chart came to my attention that lays out the competing capabilities and compatibilities of the top reference management software products out there.  It includes commercial products such as EndNote and RefWorks, Mac-specific products like Papers, as well as my favorite Zotero and runner-up Mendeley.  It also includes a couple I hadn’t heard of before, specifically Citavi and JabRef.

If you are unhappy with what you have now or don’t have one at all, I suggest taking a look at the chart.  The author has also made it available in a PDF at this link.

My only complaint about this chart is that I don’t feel the Search section does justice to Zotero’s (and possibly other products) ability to directly grab the bibliographic information off a web page from most major databases.  A click of a button and, without changing pages in your browser, Zotero can suck the citation information in so that you can move on with your work seamlessly. Of course I have no doubt that fans of other products can come up with areas in which they feel the chart doesn’t do their product justice. *** Update: And I was correct – that feature is available in the bookmarklet features listed for some of the other reference managers!

One interesting thought from looking at this chart; it appears that none of these products directly interfaces with Google docs.  That may be an opportunity for some ambitious programmer out there!

However when I sat down this morning I realized I have a problem.  On each side of my keyboard, with little room for anything else, are piles of journal articles.

One of my tactics thus far is that when I am reading an article and find a reference to something I believe will need to be included, I find that article, add the bibliographic data to zotero, send the article to my printer and then go back to the one I was reading.  This is a great way to ensure that I never run out of things to read, or forget to go back and look an article up.  However it has resulted in piles of papers that I haven’t gotten two yet.

I had originally thought I needed to read all this stuff first, THEN start writing.  However I am finding that writing is helping me focus my thoughts, so I don’t want to stop.  But I also need to organize all this paper, and quite obviously two piles (read and unread) isn’t doing the trick. (Of course, had I read this series on a paperless dissertation BEFORE I started, I might not have this problem….the article REALLY make me want a mac though.)  (UPDATE: A bit of digging (yay procrastination) turned up Mendeley, a piece of software for windows similar to Papers for mac that the author of the paperless dissertation references.)

Usually when I post I try to have a solution ready to go.  Today I don’t have one.  I’ll let you know when I come up with something, but if you have an idea definitely drop it in comments….

Let’s start with the bottom line:  Buy This Book.  It provides practical, useful tools and techniques that you can immediately apply to your academic writing, as well as a ton of things to consider as you move through your degree.  It doesn’t matter how early you are in your graduate career; in fact I wish someone had given me this right away.  The note taking method alone would have helped as I went through my coursework, and the thoughts on how to choose a topic and advisor are helpful very early in the process.

The book begins with a discussion of some of the statistics around dissertation completion; to say the least, they are kind of scary.  In the social sciences, only 20% graduate within 5 years and only 56% graduate within 10.  She emphasizes how a writing group can improve both your likelihood of finishing and your time to completion, and makes it clear that she understands the challenges that all too many graduate students face today (like families, full time jobs, etc.)

The second chapter focuses on questions of topic and advisor, and most critically interaction between these two parts of the decision.  Single talks about all the possible considerations in choosing an advisor, putting together a committee and then managing the process.  Her advice here is down to earth, practical, and realistic; a welcome change to many of the more philosophical approaches.  Frankly, I wish I had read it much earlier in my academic career.

The core chapters of the book focus on what she calls the “Single System for Academic Writing”.  It includes 8 steps:

1. Interactive Reading
2. Interactive Note-Taking
3. Citeable Notes
4. Focus statement
5. One-Page Outline
6. Long Outline with References
7. Regular Writing Routine
8. Dissertation

The first 6 steps fall into the category of pre-writing.  This is critical in the system because it is hard to know what to say until you’ve completed these steps.   Nonetheless it helped me a lot to hear that so explicitly.  I had been feeling rushed to finish reading and start writing, when in fact it is critical to do the first stages correctly.

She talks extensively about how the point of the reading and the literature review is to enter into the academic conversation, and how part of the goal of the reading is to learn the tone and style of that conversation.  The book provides extensive hints as to what questions to be asking as well as examples of what does or

One of the interesting features of this system is that you begin with the great stack of reading to do, work down to a focus statement of 3-4 sentences, then back up again to the completed dissertation.  Each step prepares both you and your materials for the next stage, although there is some extent to which you can move back and forth between the different steps.

Steps 1 and 2 are covered in chapter 3.  I’ve read it 3 times now and continue to find new nuggets of wisdom.  Single argues that you should read each article once, get the key notes out of it you need and, if done well, never have to go back to it again.  Further those notes should be organized and focused on the major elements of the article like theoretical framework, methods, hypothesis and results.  She also touches on when and how to use quotes.

Chapter 4 moves on to talk about how to distill those notes into usable citeable nuggets that can be used for your dissertation, as well as suggesting that you do this as you go rather than at the end.  Her system for both chapters 3 and 4 are practical, easily implemented and well thought out.  Not surprising since this book grew from her experience teaching a dissertation-writing seminar, which means that many of the kinks have already been worked out.

Chapter 5 talks about creating a focus statement to clarify where you are going.  While I understand why she places this step after the the others, I would advise any person beginning work on their dissertation to at least read through to this point and start to pull together a focus statement early.  You’ll revise it several times, but the process of writing and revising as you read will help you clarify your own thinking about your topic and express it to others.

There is so much great stuff in just these first 5 chapters that I haven’t made it past them.  As I said, I’ve gone back and re-read sections in order to get the steps down.  I can’t even begin to summarize all the nuggets I’ve pulled out so far and the changes it has made to how I approach my reading and note-taking.

The bottom line here is that you should buy this book.  Demystifying Dissertation Writing is about the most practical book on the topic I’ve found, and provides the tools you will need to move your research forward.  Even if the remaining chapters were blank (they aren’t) or advised only writing under the full moon by candlelight, the book would still be worth the money, time and effort to read.  Since a quick scan shows that the remaining chapters are every bit as useful, I can unreservedly recommend this book to anyone involved in a thesis or dissertation.  You will get the skills necessary to be a prolific and ORGANIZED academic writer.