I get asked a lot how you can improve your skills and chances of getting a job as a developer. Best way is to work on a real-world project, deploy it, make it open-source, get feedback from others, share your knowledge, rinse, repeat.

Here are my top 7 project ideas. Thread 👇

So - what is the deal with the AntiBlack 'awarding gap' in UK higher education?
@Wonkhe @officestudents @nusuk @UWankings @BantshireUni
#BlackAwardingGap #highered

What do students think about their university experience?
#BlackAwardingGap #highered

A student-deficit approach is a fundamental reason why efforts to eradicate the gap have failed, such that despite ↗️ access to HE for Black students, their experiences, assessment and opportunities remain disproportionately affected (one of the ways in which whiteness works⬇️)

UK higher ed, far from being immune or removed from structural inequalities, often actually reproduces them. In this context, white supremacy is the social structure, and the University the institutional operation.
But what is whiteness? Here's some helpful terms ⬇️

Aside from dismantling the institution, and starting over in a different and reparative way, there are things we can do at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, and community level to address it. Such as, manifest an anti-racist pedagogy ⬇️

I’ve had a fantastic MSc experience (almost done!) and have been talking to a lot of incoming or current students. Some topics / questions come up a lot. Here’s what I know!

🧵 Tips for an awesome MSc experience.

#AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter @OpenAcademics @academeology

1/ Ok to start, some context: I started my MSc in September 2019 in Organizational Behaviour. I start my PhD this September.

A lot happened in my MSc: I won several scholarships, my Dad died, I submitted my thesis work to a major conference, annnd there was the pandemic.

2/ Let’s get into it!

Choosing a thesis topic: Read read read.

What are you interested? Pick an umbrella topic and start reading. Follow the rabbit holes. Write questions, answers, more questions. When you find questions you cannot answer, you might have a thesis topic.

3/ Don’t get stuck on the idea you came in with.

My first semester a professor said “if your research ideas don’t change, you haven’t learned anything.”

No one is going to pull up your SOP and hold you to whatever you said you were interested in upfront.

4/ Pin down a thesis format

What will you do, broadly? One study? Two? A review paper? Meta-analysis? As early as possible, find out what YOU actually need to do to complete your thesis. ESPECIALLY if you’re in a lab with lots going on. What is YOUR requirement?

You know what I don’t miss? Parent teacher conferences.

Most of Rocketkid’s teachers were lovely, but we had two that still stick out in my mind as sad/hilarious.

The first one, he was in elementary school. The teacher said it was ‘important’ for us to come in.

1/

So we worried about that for two days until the meeting. What could be wrong? It’s scary for parents to be left hanging like that.

So we meet his teacher, goatee and sunglasses...we live in the boonies and yet there’s something here like he’s trying to be a player.

2/

Not like a lady-player, like he’s got an image of himself in his head. We like teachers, but this guy’s manner is just weirdly kind of pushy a little bit.

Anyway, we sit does in the kid chairs, he’s behind his desk, again, weirdly focused on ‘power,’ somehow.

No idea why,

3/

We ask about our son, he acts as if he forgot that’s why we’re there, says some random stuff, all normal, nothing at all worthy of a conference. I mean, contact and communication is important, but thus just feels off-the cuff entirely.

4/

So then suddenly he gets really intense, but pretends being casual. Like it just occurred to him.

And he says to me, ‘So, I hear you’re a writer.’

What?

I tell him yes, I write comics and some animation and stuff.

He says. ‘I looked you up.’

5/