Folks:
The posting below looks at the many advantages and opportunities for U.S and Canadian faculty to teach and study overseas. It is by Wendy Williamson director of Study Abroad at Eastern Illinois University and author of Study Abroad 101 (Paperback Book). wswilliamson@eiu.edu. She is also one of the co-founders of [Facultyled.com] which I urge you to check out for more information.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: The Business of Business Education Is More than Business
Folks:
The posting below offers some excellent insights on what goes on behind the scenes in hiring decisions and the implications this has for candidates. It is from Chapter 2, Hiring from the Institution’s Point of View, in the book The Academic Job Search Handbook, fourth edition, by Julia Miller Vick and Jennifer S. Furlong, Copyright 2008 Julia Miller and Jennifer S. Furlong Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 [www.upenn.edu/penpress] ISBN 978-0-8122-2016-2
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: he Joys and Opportunities of Faculty Travel-Study Abroad
Folks:
The posting below looks at how to keep students motivated and on task in their work. It is by Michael Theall, education director, Center for the Advancement of Teaching And Learning at Youngstown State University, and is from POD-IDEA Center Notes on Instruction series. POD is the Professional and Organizational Development Network [http://www.podnetwork.org/] and the iDEA Center is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to serve colleges and universities committed to improving learning, teaching, and leadership performance.[http://www.theideacenter.org/] ©2005 The IDEA Center Reprinted with permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Shifting Attention Spans
Folks:
The posting below assembles a kit of principles and exercises designed to help teachers consolidate and improve the ways they use informal writing and peer response assignments, in class and out, to increase student engagement and critical thinking in any discipline. It is co-authored by Jane Kokernak, Lecturer in WAC at MIT, and Lowry Pei, Professor of English at Simmons College, who are at work on a series about teaching college writing.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Encouraging Students to Stay Up-To-date in Their Work
Responding to Journal Decisions
It is time to strategize how you are going to respond to the editor’s letter and reviewer’s comments on your work. Let’s go through this process step by step.
Task 1: Reading the Workbook
On the first day of your writing week, you should read the workbook up to this page and answer all the questions posed in the workbook up to this point.
Task 2: Evaluating and Responding to the Journal Decision
Read the review and put it away for several days. What seems shocking and rude on the first day may seem much more manageable by the third day. Getting some distance on the comments is useful for strategizing on how you are going to respond. Once you have done that, make sure you are clear on what decision you have received. You will have to proceed differently depending on whether the journal has rejected your article or asked you to revise and resubmit it.
Responding to a Journal’s Decision to Reject
Let’s say that your article gets savaged and rejected. First, remember that almost all scholars have had their work rejected at one point or another -between 85-90 percent of prominent authors admit to having their work rejected (Gans and Shepherd 1994). Second, allow yourself to feel angry and depressed. You are only human!
Third, after allowing yourself to feel down for a week or two, revisit the letter and its recommendations, if there are any. It is time to make a decision about how you are going to proceed. Your options upon rejection are (1) to abandon the article, (2) to send the article without a single change to another journal, (3) to revise the article and send it to another journal, or (4) to protest or appeal the decision and try to resubmit the article to the rejecting journal. Let’s go through these choices.
Should I abandon the article?
Studies conducted several decades ago on the publication experiences of those in the physical and social sciences found that one-third of the authors who had an article rejected, abandoned not only the article but also the entire line of research on which it was based (Garvey, Lin, and Tomita 1972). Don’t let that be you! If your article is rejected the first time you send it to a journal, you should definitely send it to a second journal. About 85 percent of scholars now send their rejected articles to another journal (Rotton, Foos, Van Meek 1995). If three or more journals have rejected the article, it may be time to think about giving up on it, but remember the story that started this chapter. Further, a political science professor recently told a student of mine that an article of his had been rejected eight times before being published. The main reason to abandon an article is if reviewers raise objections to your methodology, theoretical approach, or argument so serious that you believe, upon long reflection, that they are unsolvable. Another reason is if the peer reviewers regularly agree on what is wrong with the article. Research shows that peer reviewers tend to agree with each other when an article is poor, but then to disagree when an article is strong. In other words, if you are getting split reviews, that’s a good sign.
Should I resubmit the article elsewhere without revising it?
Some scholars insist that they never revise an article until it has been rejected by three different journals. As one author put it, “Once it’s clear the editor is not interested, I’m not that interested in what the reviewers had to say [because] Šone reviewer may argue strongly that you change x to y, another may argue equally strongly that you change y to x. Authors should be wary of being drawn into this morass until they find an interested editor. When that happens, then you pay extremely close attention to the reviewers’ comments” (Welch 2006). Given the subjectivity of reviewing, this is not a bad plan. In the humanities, such scholars prepare three envelopes, each to different journals, so that if the article comes back from the first or second journal, they can send it right back out that day. If these authors get three rejections, only then do they sit down and really read the reviewers’ comments, see whether there is any agreement among them, and then revise accordingly. One study shows that about half of rejected articles that were resubmitted to other journals were not revised (Yankauer 1985). However, and this is important, revising an article increases the chances of a second journal accepting it (Bakanic, McPhail, and Simon 1987).
Should I revise and resubmit the article elsewhere?
Most scholars try to use the recommendations to revise the article each time it is rejected so that they can send an improved article to the next journal. You can’t go wrong with this practice, so long as you don’t spend too much time on revising and you only respond to critiques with which you agree. You should take care of any factual errors or real mistakes. The purpose of peer review is to provide you with sound recommendations for improving your article; you might as well use them.
Although three-quarters of authors felt that peer reviewers had some recommendations that were based on “whim, bias, or personal preference,” about as many authors also felt that the process of peer review improved their articles (Bradley 1981). It seems that authors must live with two contradictory truths: peer review is a subjective, biased process rife with problems AND peer review is a process that definitely improves articles. The editors’ review of the reviewers’ reports can be particularly helpful in deciding how to proceed.
Folks:
The posting below gives some excellent advice on constructing evaluation instruments and their uses in testing and grading. It is from the Occasional Paper series published by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) [http://www.crlt.umich.edu/] at the University of Michigan. The author is Stanford C. Ericksen wh was appointed the founding director of CRLT in 1962 and for the next 20 years wrote and edited the Memo to the Faculty series published by CRLT. He is now retired and living in Florida where he produces a similar publication entitled Update On Teaching for the University of Florida. The present report has been adapted from one of these recent publications. Copyright © 2008 The Regents of the University of Michigan. Reprinted with permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Responding to Journal Decisions
Folks:
The posting below looks at the impact of communication styles on male and female students in engineering team projects although the results have implications for all gender-mixed work groups . The article is by Joanna Wolfe and Elizabeth Powell and is from theJournal of Engineering Education Selects “Research in Practice” section of ASEE Prism, March 2009. © Copyright 2009, American Society for Engineering Education, reprinted with permission, 1818 N Street, N.W., Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036-2479, Web: www.asee.org
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Testing and Grading
Folks:
The posting gives some great advice on avoiding writer’s block and builds nicely on posting #900, How to Write Anything, by Richard M. Felder. Today’s posting is by Gina J Hiatt, Ph.D and is from the Academic Ladder – Get help with the climb, which can be found at: [http://academicladder.com] © 2009 Dissertation Coach, reprinted with permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: He Said, She Said: Gender-Typical Speech Can SourTeamwork.