Hey guys, ready for one more week of activities?
For this week, you will remember the discussion you had in class on the activity 28 about academic biographies and résumés. You will write a brief paragraph (8-10 lines) talking about the reflection you and your friends reached when you were discussing the following questions in class:
A) In your academic field, do you usually look for academic biographies? In which situations? What kind of information do you try to find in this kind of text?
B) Do you think the author of the academic biography can help you judge the quality of the text?
C) Does the résumé of a person reflect the professional he/she is? Why (not)?
RUBRICS:
for the paragraph activity, you will be evaluated on:
- the depth of your reflections;
- meeting the requirements of the activity;
- being punctual to turn your activity in;
- good use of the language and structures studied in the classroom.
You will post your paragraph here.
This activity is due May, 3, 2013.
Have fun and be reflexive!
Camila :)
I sometimes look for academic biographies when I need know about a specific scientist in a determined area. There can be information on articles writing by that scientist, what area that person works, where he/she is from or what is his/her formation. If that scientist writes a good academic biography we are able to judge the quality of that person, because all important information on academic life can be contained in academic biographies without being repetitive and monotonous. A wrong choice can be decisive for the judgment of the reader will do. Then a academic biography reflects how professional the person is.
ResponderExcluirWe can predict the future actions of a person based on their past behavior and atitures. It's common when it wants to work or know academically someone previously analyze the resume or biography, this allows us to evaluate how good is the work of this person.
ResponderExcluirSo it's important when we write about ourselves, we must be careful, because depending on how we write people can misninterpret our work.
A) Yes I do! I often read the biography of the researchers I am interested in. Usually I try to figure out which are the main research topics they are working to or have been working on. I am also interested to know which the professor’s formation is where and when they began their scientific career. That kind of information is very important when you are looking for someone to work with.
ResponderExcluirB) I confess I didn’t understand very well this question. But I will answer it the way I suppose it means. I believe it mustn’t be the one parameter to judge the quality of a researcher, but there is no doubt it is a something relevant to be considered.
C) Actually the resumé is the professional front door of a person, so it needs to be worked with care and attention. Again, It shouldn’t be the one thing to look in, but it is a important one.
I usually use academic biographies when I need to discover something about researchers that I don't know so much. Sometimes, information like research lines, contributors, works and institutions where they worked or studied can be useful.
ResponderExcluirBy the other side, academic biographies must be used with care. To judge a book by its cover it's not always a good idea. Specially in a country that uses number of papers as a score to rank professionals in the academic field, without considering the quality, big academic biographies with a lot of works can be a trap.
Even in cases where the researcher has papers on the most remarkable journals, academic biography or résumé won't tell you if he is a good supervisor or a good professor. Only people with personal contact could say something about that, so it will depend on the kind of information you are looking for to make good use of these tools.
There is three main kind of situations on that I look for academic biographies. The most common one is when I want to know more about someone is going to give a talk. At this case, I can see what kind of formation this person has, hence what kind of information I am going to have in the talk (e.g. if the talker is a physicist, probably there will be more equations). Moreover, I can see how good this person is at the talk's subject, through earned prizes and quality of papers. The second one is when I want to make some contact with another research group, than I can see at the academic biographies of the main researches what is their main objectives and their influence at this field. Lastly, in general I look for academic biographies just for know more about someone, whether I am reading his/her paper or even if one is new at my research field.
ResponderExcluirSo, I do think the quality I've found at the academic biography's author can tell me a lot about the his/her paper or work. In other words, I judge the book by the résumé.
There is almost all the information we need to know at someone's résumé to tell how good a person is at its field. Of course, sometimes this kind of information is not enough and we can't know, for example, about the work ambient and the relationship this person has with his/her students or even with another researchers. This is very important to know if you are intending to work with this person.
A) Yes, I usually look the biographies of the most important researchers in my academic field. Sometimes, I search these biographies to understand the individual production and the autor's speciality. Normally, I do searches about the graduation and where this autor work. I would like to know about the speciality of this autor, this helps to understand their production.
ResponderExcluirB) I think so, because the expertise about autor biography helps to understand their articles. Moreover, the biography helps to find a important article in your field because, normally, you know what is the best research center in your field.
C) Not, but is possible have some case. In general is only possible understand the work and production, some times is not possible know how is the person in professional life.
In academic world, it is necessary to know about who make research. The way to do it is to read about the researchers and important authors of your field in their academic biographies. You can have an idea about the scientist but sometimes, we can not judge the profissional with only this. Unfortunately, sometimes, we only have this way to get some information and we need to judge with those informations.
ResponderExcluirAnd that is exactly why we have care to make our academic biographies and with all important information about our job, courses, expertises and research.
Great job guys!
ResponderExcluirI've sent you the individual feedback.
Camila :)