The most useful textbook & academic posts of the week: March 2, 2018
This week’s collection of academic and textbook articles have a theme of learning. Perhaps you’re looking to learn how to author academic books, manage an Early Career Researcher blog, or write peer-reviewed research articles. Maybe you’re exploring or developing a threshold concept, working with Big Data, or examining changes in research workflow. Possibly you’re seeking solutions to drive down the cost of textbooks. This week’s collection covers them all.
No matter your learning path, keep in mind Isaac Asimov’s insight, “It’s the writing that teaches you.” Wishing you a great week of learning through writing!
PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to author academic books
In this post, we’ll zoom in to the very first step of writing a book: how can you turn a research project or other work you did into an idea for a book? There are several categories you can consider.
Managing an Early Career Researcher blog
Research Whisperer Tseen Khoo has been a big fan of the Australian Historical Association’s Early Career Researcher blog since it started in October 2016. She jumped at a recent opportunity to invite the blog editors, Carolyn Holbrook and Margaret Hutchison, to write for Research Whisperer about why they do it and how.
Lesson learned: Writing peer-reviewed research articles
After graduating with a PhD in Public Affairs from Rutgers University in May 2017, I wanted to take some time to reflect, discuss, and share some of the lessons that I learned about writing for peer-reviewed journals throughout my doctoral program. The lessons are organized below by the following three themes: 1) The Writing Process, 2) Organization and Interpretation, and 3) Peer-Reviewed Publications and the Job Search.
Threshold concepts in academic writing
A threshold concept is something that is held in common by a disciplinary community. A threshold concept brings apparently disparate disciplinary ideas and arguments together, and it therefore creates the space in which you can work. The threshold concept provides a language and a history of ideas, but also offers possibilities for building new knowledges. A threshold concept is not the same as a core concept or foundational idea.
Big Data rich and Big Data poor
The capacity to collect and analyse massive datasets has already transformed fields such as biology, astronomy, and physics, and for many, the ‘big data revolution’ promises to ask, and help us answer, fundamental questions about individuals and collectives. But who gets access to all this data we’re producing through our increasingly networked and digital lives, and for what purpose?
How a partnership over annotation software fits into bigger changes in research workflow
Elsevier, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, hasn’t been shy about shifting away from just publishing to offering a set of tools for scholars to use throughout the research process. Last week the company took another step along that path by announcing a partnership with a nonprofit named Hypothesis, which makes annotation software that lets readers make margin notes on online articles.
Four faculty receive awards for reducing student textbook costs
The University Libraries and Global Campus offer incentives to faculty each semester of $3,000 to adopt open access course materials or $7,500 to create open access course materials. This semester’s recipients of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Awards are Daniel Barth, Julio Gea-Banacloche, Adam Rex Pope and Luis Restrepo.
This month, McGraw-Hill, Barnes and Noble Education, and Chegg (a platform that allows for personalized learning and e-textbook rentals) have partnered to enhance student access to more affordable higher education textbooks. The new partnership will allow university students to rent a wide array of some of the most popular textbooks or purchase their ebook equivalent. The newly forged partners anticipate the venture will allow students to save as much as 70% on textbook prices.
Just for fun! PHD Comics: Winter Olympics Have you participated in any of these Academic Winter Olympic Sports?
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