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Here's the most useful #Factualist comparison pages #Thread 🧵

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?

This thread is for parents of teenagers. I have something for you: the first chapter of @ronlieber’s THE PRICE YOU PAY FOR COLLEGE. Because ye gods, here’s what we and our kids are facing.

Beyond obvious changes, like $$$ tuition prices, the system has changed from when we were in school. Nearly all colleges use so-called “merit-aid” to pay kids for good grades.

This is NOT need-based financial aid, and it’s not about expanding college access for the poor... it's an arms race by schools scrambling for US News rankings.

Tuition list prices are misleading at this point. College seats are more like airline seats, and your kid's actual price is calculated based on everything from his zip code... SAT scores... how much interest he and his cohort have shown in school X (yes they can figure that out.)

Ron has seen NYC high school classes in which three kids were offered admission to the same small school at three different prices-- and *none* of them had applied for need-based financial aid!

I have news about online teaching and reading workload, friends.

I have experimented with REDUCING the number of readings I assign for a class. This is hard in overview courses because you always feel like they should have "the lay of the land" and master all that there is.

HOWEVER...

My students have performed BETTER with reduced reading workloads.

Undergrads focus on ONE reading per week, while having 3 more available "if they so happen to have the time to read them" (they often do try to read these extra readings).

Masters' level students have appreciated taking a "let's just take things more slowly" approach.

Doctoral level students felt somewhat weirded out that I wasn't assigning three books a week. Though they appreciated it.

What I have drawn from my experiences:
- Workshops work.

Having a section of the class that is "hands-on, let's get writing/analyzing/thinking/reading" as a workshop fulfills two goals, for me:

1) Cements my students' understanding of the method.

2) Helps them have actual time to think and read and write rather than rush through.

Depth and breadth are issues we need to compromise on.

- Do I want them to read more broadly or more deeply?
- Do I want them to become more expert in a few things or become more generalist-type people?

These choices are malleable, as is our context.

What is NOT malleable:

Many of us are about to begin a new semester of online teaching. The learning curve for moving my lecture units last semester was STEEP, so I compiled some sort of hand over notes to people approaching this for the first time. I hope it's useful for someone somewhere.

Reduction in the amount of content was important. What used to be 2 x 1 hr in-person lectures/week had to be condensed down into 6 x 10 minute prerecorded videos (aka aynchronounous content) with 1 x hr live zoom session (synchronous). Even that was too much.

For the sake of yourself and your students, SLASH. Slash your content down. This doesn't mean having to lose important stuff, but keeping it short and sweet.

10 minute video chunks was just about short enough to hold attention. Have you tried watching an online lecture? It is HARD to maintain focus. The shorter the better.

Importantly, each 10 minute video had an explicit Intended Learning Objective given at the end and in the associated text, so that everyone knew what the point was (and how this might relate to assessment later).

Grade Awarding 2021 - a thread.
1. For pupils and parents; it sounds daft but there isn’t much you can control right now. Teacher will play the main role in awarding grades, and there may well be some time or formal exam for subjects. But we don’t know exactly what yet.

2. What we do know is that all work pupils have done, their resilience over such a difficult time, their drive to keep going will make a difference to them. It’s never been more important for pupils to keep going, and keep engaging with the provision a school provides.

3. To our pupils? Have faith that the work you are doing will pay off. Please don’t lose heart right now. We love you lots and we all want you to excel. We are always here for you.

4. For school leaders - we need to build a year story. Right now they need a narrative that stresses the need to keep engaging in lessons. A letter every two weeks won’t get that job done. It’s never been more that pupils and parents feel connected to a school and we have clear

5. Communications cycles. Media - twitter/YouTube etc are vital tools for keeping our pupils and parents connected to school. This news cycle is vital for building a cultural expectation of what will happen when pupils set foot again in our school buildings.