By Rey Rosales. Imagine it is the year 2030 and the former student centre at Big University X is full of people dancing to a new comeback tune from an aging pop star named Psy. Twenty years ago, the place would have been full of young college students playing video games, working on an assignment, or simply chatting with friends. Read more...By Brent Herbert-Copley. It sounds like the lead-in to a bad joke: “How many PhDs does it take to …..”?
By Joey Fitzpatrick. How the new credo for community-engaged research is making a difference both in communities and at universities. Emergency youth shelters serve a vital purpose, providing sanctuary to young people in crisis. Staff at these shelters are all too familiar with “revolving door syndrome,” in which the same vulnerable young people cycle through the social service network. Ideally, a person stays in a shelter temporarily before finding a suitable housing solution. But in most cases, the supports are not in place for that to happen. It’s a problem with no easy solution. The problem of revolving door syndrome was not specifically on her mind when Naomi Nichols began her doctoral studies at York University’s faculty of education in 2006. But she did have a clear vision of the direction of her research. “I knew I wanted to work in the area of service provision for marginalized youth, and was thinking about a participatory-activist research project with young people.” 
By Melonie Fullick. Though it isn’t the topic of my current research, I’ve been interested in the Internet (as an object of study) for some time, in particular its possibilities for connecting people and helping them generate new relationships and forms of social support that might not otherwise have been available. I think this is because I’ve been engaging in forms of distance-networking for over ten years now, starting with snail mail and leading all the way to Twitter. I’m not particularly sociable by nature, because unfamiliar social situations tend to tire me out; all social interaction is a form of performance, but some people find it more taxing than others. Over time I’ve discovered that for me personally, it’s easier to cultivate an initial level of familiarity through mediated interactions, rather than through increased in-person socializing, because the latter tires me out too quickly. Read more...
By Léo Charbonneau. The recent public outreach efforts of International Space Station Commander and Canadian Chris Hadfield – his explanatory videos, photos and remarkable cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” shot from outer space, not to mention his nearly one million Twitter followers – was a triumph for science communication, says science writer Kyle Hill, writing for Scientific American. Who could argue with that? Read more...
By Nicola Koper. In my last blog, I talked about the lengths of graduate students’ programs. I noted that often, longer times to completion are in the best interests of the graduate students, and we shouldn’t try to shorten all completion times regardless of individual circumstances. In general, I still think this way. However, I also appreciate the benefits of finishing up and getting on with one’s life; I also had an interesting discussion with a reader, who noted that long completion times can raise red flags with hiring committees. So, assuming that sometimes it really is in the best interests of students to just get on with it, already, this week I’m going to talk about some of the practical steps that we can take to encourage students to complete their graduate programs in a timely fashion. Read more...By Martha Radice. Making us proud to be part of academia. Hot on the heels of tedx talks and Pecha Kucha nights, there’s a new knowledge mobilization craze sweeping the world of higher education: the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. It started in Australia and in 2011 reached Canadian shores at the University of British Columbia. 3MT has been spreading ever since, making it to the East Coast and my university, Dalhousie, in 2013. The idea is that graduate students present their research in three minutes flat, using only a single static slide as a visual aid – no props, extra audio or video allowed. Presentations are judged by professors and other experts, such as university communications staff, on criteria of comprehension, engagement and communication. A 3MT contest can involve several heats, with winners from each heat going to the next round. Ontario and Quebec have run provincial competitions, so a pan-Canadian one might be next. Read more...By Maureen Mancuso. Grim tales are taking over our story. If there is one virtue that university education values above all else it is critical thinking. Doubt, not the false security of certainty, is what we seek to instill in our students; we value questions over answers, because only in withstanding the most challenging questions can an answer begin to satisfy the truly critical mind. Oh, we are hardly immune to the paralysis of orthodoxy, but the very essence of scholarship is to relentlessly question what is known, how it is known, and whether there is some further insight to be had by a mind open to what it does not yet know. This is why “revolutions” – disruptive events in the political sphere – are so essential, and so frequent, in the academic world. Maybe too frequent, and appearing to outsiders as a ferment of undirected, purposeless chaos. Read more...
By Rosanna Tamburri. Canadian researchers are being inundated with offers to publish their work by dubious online publishers. Faculty members say they are being bombarded with spam emails from dubious publishers of online academic journals soliciting contributions for articles or inviting them to review manuscripts and sit on editorial boards. Some publishers even send personalized emails to professors, praising their earlier published work and inviting them to submit an article. Scholars who do so are then charged article-processing fees that range from hundreds to thousands of dollars./https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
