Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Lecture 18: Science Article Writing
Today we have a guest lecture from Kaustav!
Please remember to send three tweets to @JessL about what you're learning from Kaustav's lecture. Please also tweet back to a fellow student - start a discussion about what you're learning.
Remember, next week is e-portfolio week! It's your chance to work on your own topic of a blog post and perhaps start drafting your reflective blog post. You can add your twitter feed and in general spruce up your e-portfolios!
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I enjoyed Kaustav's lecture this morning. He discussed how to find relevant journal articles, the importance of the Results and Discussion, publishing journal articles, and journal databases. Prior to today's lecture, when I searched for journal articles, I selected ones based only on their titles. Today, however, I learned that it is important to find the connection between the title and the abstract; those articles that clearly express the relationship between the title and abstract tend to be worth reading. I will use this method in the future.
ReplyDeleteI found today's lecture to be very useful! All of my classes require me to find primary literature for papers and lab reports. For me, finding the primary literature sources was by far the most time consuming part of the process. Now that I know how to more efficiently determine if an article is useful to me, I'll be able to spend far more time concentrating on writing my papers. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThis presentation was useful. It was interesting to hear from someone who was used to writing scientific articles for areas in our areas of study. He had some good tips on what to look for in a good article and what to avoid. He also emphasized how important statistical analysis is and I am really glad I took university statistics! I am definitely going to use his suggestions next time I have to analyze or write a scientific article.
ReplyDeleteDuring Kaustav's lecture we played a memory game, where he randomly says 20 words and we have to write out what we remembered in ,I believe, was 30 seconds. I only wrote down words that belonged in the same category like parts of a house and colors. I thought that was the highlight of the lecture because in order to write a scientific journal or article you must analyze your data and know keywords associated with your findings. It is important that you organize your data and structure your layout of your tables and figures. From there it is easy to come up with an article title, your abstract, intro, and the rest. Your goal is to help readers understand the objective of your article because most readers would initially read the title, abstract and intro first and judge from there whether they should keep reading the rest or not. Those major sections are critical if you want your article to be accepted. Another major section that must be read is the discussion because it is what gives depth to the article. Without understanding your data and key concepts, then your discussion will be all over the place. The main point of this lecture is that when it comes to reading and writing scientific articles, it is imperative that you understand key concepts and analyze your data so that the article makes sense.
ReplyDeleteNaomi Porciuncula
this presentation was very usefula nd is something that can be aplied and refered to for the rest of our academic careers. The majour topics and processed really guide you through the paper and lay it out as to what to thinkabout and whats expected... THANKS :)
ReplyDeleteVery Useful lecture!!! Kaustav`s presentation was very clear and he gave a very clear presentation on how and is required to be written on a Scientific Paper.. I thought the memory game was very interesting... and I had fun playing it..:)
ReplyDeleteThe memory game was neat. I remembered so many more words the second time... splitting topics into categories really does help with memory and I wonder if I could somehow apply that to studying.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Kautav's lecture this morning. The most useful information I learned today was how to choose a scientific article effectively while spending least amount of time. This task was indeed very difficult for me before as I did not knew the techniques and knowledge of how to accept or regect articles, But now i do know. Thanks to ales. I can now concentrate more on my paper thank to spend time reading the entire article.
ReplyDeleteThe memory game was very useful and it clearly demonstrated the key to gouping similar information! and therefore, easing the task on ourself.
Very beneficial lecture. Most students have to read and write papers and learning how to do it properly with tips to help along the way to get the best mark possible is great.
ReplyDeleteKaustav lecture was really good! reading scientific articles may sometimes be difficult if your looking for specific information. Kaustav mentioned that you should determine whether the article is what your looking for by reading abstract and conclusion. If it's not what your looking for you can stop reading it and go to the next one.
ReplyDeleteIf you do find an article that suits what your looking for you the results/discussion is where youll find most of the information!
Having to write a scientific article for one of my classes this year, i found this class very important. I learned scientific articles should focus more on the point and really put emphasis on certain topics. The heart of a scientific article is in the discussion and abstract. It will attract the audience and let them decide whether or not they want to continue with the reading. The memory game was also neat. It was a great way to teach us to group words that will be remembered, to make a good paper.
ReplyDeleteKaustav's lecture this morning was very helpful especially because we have a scientific research project to do in our labs. It was great how he discussed the importance of each section of a scientific journal and how to properly determine if it was good or not. Ive never tried to connect the title and the abstract together to see if i should continue reading the article i would usually just read the title and maybe skim through the article randomly. I now know that you shouldnt do that. Overall i found his lecture to be really helpful and i will definitely apply what i learnt whenever i research a scientific journal.
ReplyDeleteGreat lecture on how to effectively read a scientific article and determine if it is suitable for your needs. I have never considered the connection between the title of an article and the abstract, I found this point very interesting.
ReplyDeleteThanks for a helpful lecture!
Thank you Kaustav for doing a great presentation! I liked hearing a perspective from a student who has experience in the field of study I am in. He had very helpful tips to efficiently pick through good reference articles and bad. I now know to always use these tips when choosing an article, not only will it save time, it will help when relating your article to the one you choose. Learning how to organize and properly make a scientific paper is very important for our future! Thanks again!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for doing a great presentation. As a international student, writing is always the problem especially for those science courses. Scientific articles are often high demanded and accurate. From this lecture, I learnt that the quality of evidence is very important! I used to just focus on the structure and then context of an article, however, scientific articles are more stressed on the accuracy of statistics and the evidence as proof. I took notes of this lecture and I regard it as a valuable resourse for further study.
ReplyDeleteWhat's more,those thre types of questions are also very useful. They are descriptive, comparative and analytical questions. I often forget the second question, which is making comparasions with other researchs. This part is too important to be ignored. I learnt to address this question in my next paper and I think it will make my paper convincible.
All in all, thank you so much for this lecture! This course is amazine, it's like a box of chocolate,you never know what's the next surprise is!
It was nice to have a lecture from someone who has experience in writing scientific articles, and the memory game was engaging. Thanks Kustav!
ReplyDeleteGreat presentation by Kaustav today! I really enjoyed everything he had to say and definitely had a lot of new information to take away. He definitely opened my eyes to how articles can be biased and to try and avoid that when making my own. Also, skim the article by comparing the abstract and conclusion to see if it is relevant to you. I never knew this before and instead would read whole articles just to get a few bits of pertinent information. I had a lot of fun in todays lecture - it was truly engaging for all the students. I would love hearing from him again!
ReplyDeleteKaustav's lecture brought academic scientific writing into focus for me. I like how he explained how to and organizational skills. I've always struggled getting my thoughts focussed for writing a research paper but I think Kaustav's lecture will be very useful in the future for my other papers I will be submitting to this and other classes next month.
ReplyDeleteReally liked the memory game in Kaustav's lecture! Organizing your information into categories makes does it easier to remember the information.
ReplyDeleteI tend to struggle when reading certain scientific articles because they are so complex. Kaustav did a great job explaining everything and gave great advice. It was useful to hear on how he found reading a scientific article helped him the best. I feel more confident about tackling the science article project.
ReplyDeleteI found Kaustav's lecture very helpful. I now look at reading scientific articles in a whole new light. I use to read them word for word; I found it very difficult to get all the way through without losing interest. By following his directions on how to find a relevent article I hope that I will find it much easier to get a benefit out of an article.
ReplyDeleteKaustav's lecture was very informative! Having to write a research article eventually, it definitely gave me points to be aware of and implement when the time does come. His memory game that was demonstrated in class was also really neat.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteKaustav's lecture was very informative. When reading scientific articles in the past I always just try to read all of it, and it took forever. His advice on skimming over certain parts of the articles and focusing on the tables, conclusion and discussion was very valuable advice that will follow me throughout my university career.
ReplyDelete-Mallory Cook
This presentation from kaustav I thought was very useful! lots of awesome tips and things to think about when writing our scientific articles. I definitely forget to look at the diagrams, and usually focus on the text itself, but now ill definitely make sure to look at the graphics too! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThe lecture by Kaustav was very informative on all aspects of a science article. Not only did he give us tips for writing a science article, but for reading one as well. An important aspect when reading an article is to identify the objective and if it correlates to the information you are seeking. (to quickly decide if it is relevant: check out the conclusion).
ReplyDeleteWhen writing a science article the first thing you should do is analyze your data and organize the main points.
These tips will help me to disseminate information for the research article project.
Kaustav's lecture was a great way to learn about scientific articles. I have had to review articles and read many articles and would have greatly benefited from this lecture beforehand.
ReplyDeleteOne of Kaustav's statements that rang true was the importance of the abstract and title. When I searched for articles, I would always scan through titles first and then read the abstract. If these weren't clear or if they weren't analogous to my research subject I would quickly skip to the next article.
Those are just a few things to consider when writing a scientific article.
I loved the memory game! I have played it before in other classes and it is always fun to test how good your memory is!
ReplyDeleteThis was a very helpful class for me because I have never really had to write I scientific article in my program before. All the papers that I have written have all been english papers or research papers but not scientific! This will definitely help me out! Thanks Kaustav!
The topic of how to read and write a scientific article may be a dry one, but it is useful. I found Kaustav's presentation especially applicable to my own studies when he laid out the questions and details we should search for in each section of a scientific paper. I find it easy to become lost in scientific papers if I don’t have particular questions to ask myself while I am reading. His tips on finding articles and papers were very relevant, since research is a part of so many projects in University classes.
ReplyDeleteKaustav's lecture was really informative. I learned a lot from his lecture. Since scientific artile is a very important part in university study, it is really good to learn how to read and write a scientific article. Before the lecture, I always thought scientific articles were very long and full of professional concepts, I was always afraid of reading a scientific article. However, after the lecture, I don't consider reading a scientific article as that tough and am looking forward to read one in order to challenge myself.
ReplyDeleteWhat's more, the memory game played in the lecture was pretty fun!!!
This was a great lecture - full of very useful information for us to use in the upcoming assignment in lab. Looking at the tweets following this lecture, I think it's safe to say we all learned that statistics in an article are very important even though most of us probably didn't enjoy Stats 141/151 (haha).
ReplyDeleteTo think I have spent so much time reading through an entire journal to determine the results, when in reality I could have simply read the abstract and conclusion to determine the key bits of information! I think this knowledge is really important to keep in mind when writing an article, insuring that the take home message is put into conclusion.
ReplyDeleteThis lecture was done right around the time we got our assignment, and I'm glad Kaustav gave this lecture. Sometimes it can be intimidating when trying to start a written assignment. Kaustav gave me good ideas of what I should have in my essay. Also, his lecture helped with once finding an article, of how to read it and make any sense out of it. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteEven if I'm famous, I could reference 50 of my articles and I would be biased. looks like even if I'm famous, I can't do whatever I want...
ReplyDeleteI had heard most of what was said today before but he helped give me some more idea's to think about for when I'm writing a lab write up. I think everyone knows the basics but there are a lot of technical questions to answer when you're writing to make sure it's a good scientific article.
ReplyDeleteNow I feel that ESL is actually very useful! I learned about how to write an article in ESL classes. Most of what is said today is what I have learned, but it is still useful to hear it again.
ReplyDelete