“We need to learn to listen and read and interpret messages more thoughtfully,” Amy Lombardi told me. A doctoral student at the University of California at Davis, Lombardi says such skills are “undervalued and need to be taught more.” In our conversation recorded below, we talk about Lombardi’s recent article “More Is More: Explicit Intertextuality in University Writing Placement Exam Essays.” This study is an admittedly hyper-specific examination—looking at a corpus of exam essays written by incoming college students to see how they cite sources, including the phrasing (how many times do they say “says” vs. “believes” vs. “opposed”?) and punctuation (does all the mention of the sources get crammed into parentheses or are the sources actually named and discussed in the writing?). But in this very specific focus, this is still a study with bearing on a much broader topic: “receptive skills.” The phrases and punctuation that students use (or do not use) to cite sources are “the techniques they’re using to signal to the reader overtly that they’re bringing in information from other sources.” Looking at how students cite is thus a perfect site for examining larger skills such as “reading as a listener” and “listening to the text.” Isn’t writing often referred to as a conversation? Well, Lombardi notes, “these [details of citation] to me are the elements of that conversation.”
May 9, 2022 – Edu Alliance announces the launch of Higher Ed Without Borders a podcast series dedicated to education professionals worldwide. The series is hosted by Dr. Senthil Nathan and Dean Hoke co-founders of Edu Alliance. Each episode is a half-an-hour-long conversation with international thought leaders that will enlighten and provide some new thoughts on critical issues facing higher education globally.
The series will examine critical issues in higher education that are common to universities throughout the world. The introduction episode titled “What Makes This New Series Unique?” Dr. Senthil Nathan and Dean Hoke, discuss why they created this international higher education podcast series.
The initial 13-part series will begin on June 7th and a new episode will air every two weeks. The free podcast series will be available on Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, IHeart, Deezer, Player FM, and others, just search for the phrase “Higher Ed Without Borders”.
Higher Ed Without Borders is conducting a short survey asking members of the higher education community to suggest future topics and guests. You can participate by going to Podcast Topics and Guest Suggestions.
If your organization wants to know more about how Edu Alliance can best serve you, please connect with either Dean Hoke in the United States or Dr. Senthil Nathan in the United Arab Emirates.
The podcast is a production of Edu Alliance an education consulting firm located in Bloomington, Indiana and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Founded in 2014 Edu Alliance assist higher education institutions worldwide on a variety of mission critical projects. Our consultants are accomplished leaders who share the benefit of their experience to diagnose and solve challenges. We have provided consulting and executive search services for over 35 higher education institutions in Australia, Egypt, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, and the United States.
A special thanks to:
White Rabbit in Bloomington, Indiana who is providing graphics, and audio support.
Higher Education Digestis the media partner for Higher Ed Without Borders podcast. The Digest is an independent Higher Education Portal and Magazine.
I cannot help but think of Joseph Welch and his historic face off with Joseph McCarthy when he finally said, in effect, ENOUGH, “Have you no sense of decency.” The answer was obvious, Joseph McCarthy had no such thing.
Nor does the despicable, demagogue Ron DeSantis who will do anything to appeal to the worst values in people. Rather then lead people to embrace the moral high ground, he encourages people to wallow in the mud of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Rather than ask people to be better he asks them to be worse, much worse.
And among his staunchest enforcers is the University of Florida particularly President Fuchs, Provost Glover, and Law School Dean Laura Rosenbury. With respect to the latter especially, one would expect some sense of decency, or at least the courage to resist what is clearly a case of moral lawlessness. But no, in the Desantification of the University of Florida, rather then stand up against a bully, as did Joseph Welch, these so-called leaders cowered and when ask to jump simply asked “how high.” Any one of them could have been a hero in the world of higher education if they had simply said I will resign before I follow the orders of a maniac.
So, at the height of the covid crisis faculty were allowed to teach remotely but only after weeks of in person teaching. In the next year, while other schools required masks — a small price to pay perhaps to save a few lives — UF did not require masks. Fuchs, Glover, and Rosenbury were just trying to keep Florida’s McCarthy happy. And then, when professors were asked to testify as experts witnesses, they all folded again and decided it would displease their master if a word were uttered to upset his seemingly fascist agenda.
When the Desantis’ bizarre choice for Surgeon General appears to have needed a little extra dough, he was appointed to UF Med School. Not sure if the opening was announced ahead of time or whether a search took place. But who cares when it is to please the Governor. What was Fuchs’ response? Once again he simply said “how high.”
And remember, this cowadise occurred in the context of administrators who all had a guarantee of life time employment. In fact, even their professional aspirations might have been enhanced if they stood up against a demagogue. In short, some show of courage would have been easy but, then again, there are no heroes at UF.
I have seen some confusions recently on twitter regarding university finances. Here are four recommendations:
Avoid using sector aggregate figures to make your arguments The sector is very uneven both in terms of size of institutions and in financial performance, make sure you are familiar with your institution and how it fits into the sector.
Avoid using figures for “reserves” when you mean cash In accounting terms, “reserves” does not mean cash. Cash is included in reserves but that is because reserves names the excess of assets over liabilities: that the institution owns more than it owes. If it didn’t have reserves it would be insolvent. But its assets include buildings and land, which can dominate the reserves figure. It is a confusion that crops up regularly and is often associated with right-wing arguments about the sector being “awash with cash”. If you want to talk about cash, use the figures for cash – but bear in mind that it is good management to hold significant levels of cash or other liquid assets to manage the day-to-day running of the organisation. Universities are large and have large outgoings!
Revolving Credit Facilities (RCFs)are like overdrafts … If you have one, you aren’t necessarily planning to use it. It provides extra headroom or is there for an emergency. Universities might simply be using it in their “liquidity” calculations to assure OfS that they have sufficient resources to cover 30 days of expenditure – falling below that level is a “reportable event” – and never intend to use it. That your institution negotiated one, but haven’t used it, is not per se a sign of bad management.
Avoid confusing one-off costs with recurrent costs There is a clear difference between spending £1million on a one-off purchase and an annual outgoing of £1million. Your management may not always present the difference between such items in a very clear way, particularly when they have a certain narrative they wish to present or when they need to hit targets or covenants. One to be wary of is “vacancy savings”. Are these higher because of a recruitment freeze? Are these one-offs or recurrent savings? Technically, the former; they would only become recurrent savings, if the posts are made redundant. A management highlighting a certain level of vacancy savings may want to convey discipline to governors or lenders, but it can mask issues of sustainability: it isn’t a way to address persistent deficits. If there is an underlying deficit of, say, £2million, you shouldn’t be confident because they covered that through a recruitment freeze this year. And that’s solely from the numbers perspective: before you consider the implications for workload …
There are a few resources on this site for thinking about university finances. There is also a blog and recorded seminar for UCU on getting started with university accounts and “challenging the financial narrative”.
If you want more help, please get in touch.
I have worked with more than 40 UCU branches over the last few years to help with negotiations. Get in touch for details.
A testimonial:
We can’t recommend Andrew’s work highly enough. His report for our branch was brilliant. It helped save jobs, we recruited new members and learned lots and lots about university finances. Well worth the investment. https://t.co/U70NUkLVXjhttps://t.co/taEFKHhzio
About once a year a student comes to my office to ask about becoming a law professor. I have to tell him or her there is virtually no chance and that may be overly optimistic. The reason, of course, is that they are not attending one of a tiny handful of — mainly expensive private — law schools that produce what people who went to those schools, and are in charge of hiring, regard as good enough to be law professors. This always seemed odd to me since some of the smartest people I know went to mid level law schools and some of the dumbest and most narrowly educated (including some law professors) went to the fancy schools.
Even if they apply to be a law professor they will be quickly vetoed — without so much as a second look — by someone who did go to one of those law schools. Strange isn’t it. The privileged attend the fancy schools, get all puffed up about it but they actually do not think they are very good teachers. How do we know this? Because rarely, if ever, do they think they have been effective enough in class to elevate even the smartest student to be a potential law professor. They must be lousy teachers since they cannot even explain to others what they claimed to have learned in law school themselves.
So what is up with this. It’s either about rankings or some delusional notion that you have to have gone to a fancy school to be an effective teacher and researcher. I’ve said enough in other blogs about how law schools will sacrifice everything to advance in the rankings. It is the least ethical conduct I have seen in legal education. And, I do not know whether going to a fancy school is correlated with good teaching and research. I once attempted an empirical study of this but could not find enough people who went to non fancy schools to make the study valid.
So what’s is it really about? It’s about status and preserving status– anyway you can. Think about it. You’ve spend a few hundred thousand to attend a fancy school and you are a law professor. (And you are sure to remind the students of your days at Harvard or Yale,) Then someone is hired who did not go to a fancy school and is running circles around you both teaching-wise and research-wise. What does that mean about you? It may mean that you are not so hot after all since some poor schlub from the University of Florida is kicking your elitist ass.
So don’t feel bad. It’s just a way elitists ensure that the caste system is perpetuated. It has nothing to do with your merit and, most definitely, nothing to do with theirs.
April 11, 2020 by Dean Hoke– When I came back to the United States in 2017-18 I wanted to re-engage with the US university community. I joined NAFSA primarily due to my work in International Higher Education but I also wanted to be a part of a smaller organization where I could get to know the people better and attend conferences that would continue my professional development. I decided to join in 2018 The American Association of University Administrators (AAUA).
Who is AAUA
AAUA is a non-profit professional organization founded in 1970 for higher education leaders and administrative personnel. It is the only professional association for individuals who are interested in the entire range of higher education management (from department chair/unit director through president) in the entire diverse set of American colleges and universities (two- and four-year; public, private non-profit, private for-profit; comprehensive, research-focused, special mission).
Membership in AAUA helps support the association’s mission. In addition, membership provides—for those members who have an interest—opportunities for professional networking and leadership. In addition to enrolling and serving a significant complement of administrators at the most senior levels, the association is also interested in assisting early-career practitioner administrators build/enhance their leadership portfolios by providing leadership opportunities through service on association committees, boards, and taskforces. Opportunities to collaborate on offering professional development services are available as well.
Professional Development Opportunities
Annual Leadership Seminar: In particular this is my favorite because of the networking and the presentations. The 50th Leadership Seminar of the American Association of University Administrators is scheduled for June 9-10, 2022. It will be held as a hybrid event, with in-person sessions meeting at the Marriott Stanton South Beach Hotel (Miami, Florida). In-person sessions are planned for June 9 (morning and evening) and June 10 (morning). On-line sessions will be held on the afternoon of June 9th. I will be attending in person.
AAUA Professional Development Fellows Program : The Fellows Program is an individually designed, year-long, mentored professional development experience during which the candidate uses his/her day to-day responsibilities as the spring board for improving a set of self-identified professional skills to enhance his/her administrative competence.
Cross-Institution Visits : Recognizing the value of learning from administrative peers at other institutions (both similar in nature and of radically different structure or purpose), AAUA facilitates short-term (one to three week) cross institution visits between like-role administrators. The association also occasionally organizes and conducts small group (6-10 people) two- and three-day visits to clusters of institutions for the purpose of learning about notable or unique programs.
So What is the Cost of Membership?
There are two types of memberships. One is Individual and the other is Institutional
Individual: An active Membership (Open to any person interested in the administration of higher education) is $100. The Student (Open to any graduate student enrolled in an institution of higher education who is interested in the field of higher education administration. is $35.
Institutional: Any college/university or any other organization/firm may sponsor the membership of individuals on the following basis:
1-6 Supported Members – Total membership dues rate: $500
7-15 Supported Memberships – Total membership dues rate: $1,000
16-24 Supported Memberships – Total membership dues rate: $1,500
25 or more Supported Memberships: $2,000
I would encourage you to consider becoming a member of the AAUA. I have found the people you get to know are outstanding, the conferences educational and enjoyable and the cost of membership is well worth the value.
If you have questions or wish to join feel free to contact me or better yet contact:
Dan L. King, Ed.D., President, and Chief Executive Officer American Association of University Administrators 1 Ralph Marsh Drive, Glen Mills, Pennsylvania 19342 (USA)Phone: 814-460-6498 Email: [email protected]
Dean Hoke is a Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group in the United States and Co-Founder of Edu Alliance Ltd. in the United Arab Emirates. Dean has decades of progressively responsible and visionary leadership roles in higher education, communications & online learning. He has led numerous initiatives that have created innovation & positive change in the higher education & non-profit sector.
Dean began his career in 1975 with Bellarmine University working in various roles, including admissions and external relations. In 1983 he entered the broadcasting field, serving as a senior executive for Public Broadcasting System stations and a cable network. In 1998 he co-founded The Connected Learning Network, a full-service online learning company. In 2009 accepted an invitation to move to the United Arab Emirates serving in senior positions at Higher Colleges of Technology & Khalifa University.
He participates in numerous advisory & consulting projects in the fields of international education, branding, business intelligence, and online learning. He is an active speaker and writer in the field of global higher education and distance learning. Dean has presented and written worldwide on leadership, higher education, and distance learning. Dean is a member of the Board of the American Association of University Administrators, the Franklin University School of Education Advisory Board, and a member of NAFSA. Mr. Hoke has a B. A from Urbana University, an M.S from the University of Louisville, and a Certificate in Executive Management from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School.
Tullio Rossi, PhD helps scientists share their research with visuals
Dr. Tullio Rossi is a marine biologist turned entrepreneur helping scientists around the world share their research. Tullio found that video animations and graphical abstracts increase the impact of your science.
And, they’re great for sharing your research with the media. Now as Director of Animate Your Science, Tullio and his team are changing the way scientists communicate with visuals.
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to my blog, The Social Academic. It’s all about your online presence in Higher Education. Whether you’re a graduate student, professor, scientist, researcher, or independent scholar, The Social Academic is here to help you communicate online.
In this featured interview, Tullio and I talk about
Jennifer: Hi everyone, it’s Jennifer van Alstyne here on The Social Academic blog, YouTube channel, and podcast. We’re here talking with Dr. Tullio Rossi, Director of Animate Your Science.
I’m so excited to have this conversation today because having some kind of
can make a really big difference for sharing your research.
Tullio, welcome to The Social Academic. Would you mind starting us off by introducing yourself?
Tullio: Hi, Jennifer.Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. So I’ll give you a bit of a background about myself.
Everything’s started when I was still a teenager and I started playing around with graphic design. For years I made flyers and posters for events because my best friend organized events. So one day we thought, why don’t we make a flyer for the next event? It was a lot of fun.
I always considered [graphic design] as a bit of a plan B career, if you like. Because then I went on and pursued a career in marine biology. That was back in Italy, in my home country I did undergrad, master’s degree and then a PhD, which brought me here in Australia, where I currently live.
I was doing that PhD when I realized that actually science really needs some help from the world of graphic design and communication in general.
Because there’s so much great research published in these peer-reviewed articles, which nobody gets to hear about. Often not even the researchers themselves. So that pushed me to try things that not many others were even considering to figure out a way on how we can make sure that this research we publish is noticed. That it’s not just lost in this giant online repository of papers.
The question is how do we make sure that our research stands out?
Jennifer: That’s amazing. And I actually watched one of your early videos about your own research. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Tullio: Sure. My research was about the effect of climate change on fish and the ocean in general. It’s a kind of research that has absolutely no commercial application whatsoever.
The only point of that research is to let the public know what we risk if we don’t address our climate change problem.
I concluded that I really needed to get these results out in some way. So I read a lot about storytelling.
I found that whiteboard animations are actually within reach to everyone. I’m not trained as an animator. I used to be a graphic designer. Yes, but I’m not an animator. But anybody can actually make a whiteboard animation. Because there are a number of fairly user-friendly software out there that have very extensive libraries of drawings and assets that you can just use.
I figured out, okay, I actually can put together an animation myself with…my budget was what? $30 [laughs], which was like a one month license to this software I used. And so I decided to try it.
What really made the difference is that I told about the research in a way that didn’t feel like lecture, but in a way that felt like the story. And that makes all the difference, really.
So I started the video, “Imagine to be a baby fish,” you know, and that really drew people in.
I had the opportunity to observe people watch my video. I could see emotions on their faces. And I was like, yes, that’s the holy grail of communication is when you make people feel something.
That video worked really well. It was seen by thousands of people around the world. It won prizes in science communication. And even got me an email from a stranger saying, “Oh, I finally understand what the problem is with this thing called ocean acidification. Thank you for making the video.”
I was like, all right, I think nobody has ever told me thank you before for doing the work I was doing. That feels good.
The world is not just made of angry planet climate change deniers. Now, also nice people out there will show signs of gratitude if us researchers do the little extra effort to break it down in a simple and accessible way for everyone. That was really a great experience.
Then, I presented this work at a scientific conference and the feedback from other researchers was really good. A lot of them came after my talk and said, “Oh, I love what you did. I wish I could do the same. I just don’t know how to do it.” Or, “I don’t have the time.” And so that turned on a light bulb in my head thinking, I should take these more seriously and perhaps I can even make a career out of this.
And so that’s started a new part of my life of my career into science communication and led to where I am today, leading Animate Your Science, a science communication agency that is privileged to help researchers and institutions from all around the world, literally all continents to communicate science using tools like
Animation videos
Graphical abstracts
Posters
Infographics
Training
So either we do it for you if you’re busy, but if you have the time we can also teach you some skills.
Jennifer: I think that’s amazing. And that really helps anyone who needs this kind of skill in their life, whether it’s having it done for you or getting help to learn how to do it yourself.
What you were talking about in terms of being able to see the emotions of people who watched your video, the very first video you created about this. I wish you would see me watching it. I was like crying by the end. And I remember going to my fiancé and being like, you know, how much we care about sustainable fishing? Let me tell you about this video that I just watched and how important it is for us to understand our oceans, understand what climate change is affecting, and what we can start to share about it.
This video affected me so much that I was already telling people about it within just a few minutes of having watched it myself. And I just think that that kind of excitement, that kind of emotional impact that that video had on me, just goes to show how important a company like yours is, how important the work that you’re doing to help other researchers and scientists communicate their work to the general public, but also to other researchers who can benefit from it. It’s amazing.
Tullio: Thank you, Jennifer, I’m very happy to hear that it touched you. That’s always the deck part of communication is reaching people not just at the brain level, but way deeper down here in the heart.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Tullio: And when that happens, which is not easy, you really hit the jackpot in communication.
Jennifer: For sure.
Free online presence workshop
Get started for in this virtual choose your own adventure workshop for professors, researchers, and graduate students.
What is a graphical abstract to share your research?
Jennifer: We’ve been talking about a little bit about video, but they’re also amazing at graphical abstracts and that’s something that you’ve helped scientists with. What is a graphical abstract?
Tullio: Sure.
When I started this new part of my career in business, I looked around or what was out there in terms of graphical abstracts. And I realized that pretty much none of what was out there was actually suitable if you wanted to communicate your research to a non-expert audience. So if you want to reach the general public with your graphical abstract, none of what was out there would work.
All the graphical abstracts we used to see are very technical. They are straight to the key process, let’s say molecule A meets molecule B, they have a reaction to create this new molecule. That’s pretty much what they look like. Some in the medical field even go as far as having p-values, which definitely will mean nothing to a non-expert.
My interests and vision was really to bring science to society, not just to other experts. I wanted to create something that will go beyond the expert sphere.
I created the new format, the graphical abstract, which is a little bit more wordy, I limit it to 80 words. But it has the advantage that it gives some context. It tells the story of that research.
In 80 words, I figured it was enough to just touch on
A little bit of background highlighting what the knowledge gap or the question that the research is asking.
Providing the key results and why that matters. Can it be done in 80 words? I’m not saying it’s easy, but it can be done.
And the rest are visuals relevant to the research.
The reality is that people process images way, way faster than the process text. That’s why we have street signs that are not worthy. Yeah, they don’t explain things with words. They explain with iconography.
Same applies to your graphical abstract. The more visual it is, the more rapidly the viewer will be able to understand it.
Jennifer: So by limiting the words you’re really able to communicate through both words and visuals, what the story is in that graphical abstract it sounds like.
Tullio: Yeah. With this balance between words and visuals, you can really reach anybody. Then you’ve got a much wider audience. Then at the end of reading [the graphical abstract], they’ll be able to decide whether they want to go and read the actual paper. Great. That might be your goal.
Or, just to understand what the key message is, and then move on.
But they can still then share it on social media with friends, which is still a very important thing. It really extends the potential impact of the research passively.
Jennifer: That’s great. So it sounds like once you have this graphical abstract, it’s something that you can share on social media. That must really help scientists to reach more people.
Tullio: Absolutely. So we’re seeing a great use case for graphical abstracts is social media. I will say Twitter above all.
The wrong approach, which I still see very often is to say, “Hey, I published a new paper.” And you pop the link to the paper and that’s it. Well, that’s a tweet that goes unnoticed because it’s not visual. It’s just a string of text.
Some researchers then screenshot one of the figures, maybe the previous figure and they pop it in there. That’s a little bit better, but still people don’t want to see charts on Twitter.
Jennifer: That’s kind of a figure out of context too. You don’t necessarily have access to that paper right away.
Tullio: Yes, it’s often out of context, so people will struggle to make sense of it.
Here is where the graphical abstract really helps. In one panel where you can flesh out that key story and attract people with visuals.
Jennifer: That’s amazing. A thing I really like about it is that it can be shared on its own and in conjunction with the paper.
It’s okay if people are only connecting with the graphical part of it, they don’t necessarily need to read the paper to be able to share it.
They compare how effective it is to tweet about your research with, or without a graphical abstracts. Still consider that these are fairly technical graphical abstracts. So not those I was describing. Even with the technical [graphical abstract], here’s what they found:
The reach (how many people will see it on Twitter) is almost 8x as high.
The number of retweets (how many times people will share it) is more than 8x as high.
Article visits (how many people click and actually read your paper) is almost 3x as high.
Jennifer: Wow.
Tullio: This is pretty amazing. Isn’t it like day and night?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Tullio: I think it should become the standard that when you publish your paper and you want to share it on Twitter or any other social media it needs to have a graphical abstract.
It will be a massive lost opportunity if you don’t. It might be.
Jennifer: Yeah, it sounds like if we’re seeing those kinds of numbers with the kind of really technical graphical abstract, having something from you or something that really just communicates more effectively to the general public can even increase that potential reach even more.
That potential for retreating, if you don’t understand what is going on in the abstract, it’s going to go down. Once you have that connection, that connection that helps you not only understand, but know why it might be helpful for other people to see it too. That’s what increases that potential for sharing. So I just love that.
Jennifer: Now what’s the difference between a graphical abstract and a scientific poster? In the humanities. I think I’ve done one poster about my research and it wasn’t very good.
What is a scientific poster versus a graphical abstract?
Tullio: Sure. In my view, they are actually very similar. The key difference is the size.
Jennifer: Okay.
Tullio: Graphical abstract is typically something that needs to fit in a tweet on social media.
As I said, I would not write more than 80 words and have one or two key visuals.
On a poster, you have much more real estate. Typically it’s printed on an eight zero format, which is very large. Yeah, plenty more real estate.
But having all that real estate often leads these researchers to make the most common mistake, which is to dump everything they’ve got on it. So they dump a couple thousand words. They dump not one chart, maybe eight. And then a couple of tables too.
Then the whole thing becomes this wall of text and chart that is just overwhelming for the audience. That’s the key problem of posters.
One of my battles is to change that. Because if we designed posters this way, we’re creating a disservice to ourselves and our audience.
These posters are ineffective because they put people off. Literally. If something looks overwhelming, you don’t want to look at it.
Think about the typical poster session, pre-corona. You know, it’s the end of the day, you get your first glass of wine. You’re starting to relax. And you go around and look at posters.
Do you really want to read for half an hour 2,000 words and processes, and eight complicated charts? I don’t think so.
What you want is to have a conversation with the person presenting that poster. Right?
The poster should, first thing, attract attention. Because, you know, it’s a room full of posters. There’s probably maybe some conferences, hundreds of posters.
Jennifer: Right.
Tullio: The first thing is that you need to stand out. The way you achieve that is by having one key large visual that is related to your research. Let’s say if your research is on let’s say the bone structure chemistry, have a large bone. Something that is recognizable from that other side of the room.
Jennifer: Ahh, so a big visual.
Tullio: One key, big visual that will make your poster stand out from the other side of the room. People will notice it, get curious, walk towards you and then start the conversation.
The goal is not to watch people read your poster. The goal is to quickly walk them through the story in a one minute spiel. And then ask a question and start conversation which is supposed to go two ways. Right? And that’s how good networking is supposed to be.
Bottom line is that a poster is an eye-catcher first, and a conversation-starter second. That’s what it’s supposed to be.
To achieve that we need to slash the amount of content we put on our posters. That’s the key thing that will dramatically improve. Even without getting into graphic design principles. If you just cut the content in half, you improve your poster massively.
Because everyone is making the same mistake, having way too much on it.
Jennifer: I definitely made that mistake. Yeah.
Tullio: Yeah, look, we are all guilty, but in a way, we’re not because we don’t know any better. Researchers don’t get any training on this. And that’s why I want to change this.
Jennifer: That’s great!
Tullio: That’s why I am providing training on scientific posters in the form of workshops and online courses. Because literally I couldn’t find any training on this. I was lucky to have this background in graphic design. But 99.9% of researchers, don’t.
Jennifer: Right.
Tullio: We need to at least spend a couple of hours learning how we should design an effective poster before we go to the first conference and then get disappointed because,
Oh, nobody came to talk to me.
People were not really interested in my poster.
Nobody really noticed it.
I don’t have any contacts from this conference.
I think it was a waste of time and money.
That’s not the kind of experience you want. It should be the opposite!
You should be full of people that want to talk to you, having lots of new contacts. To thrive in your career. That’s the whole goal of a poster session.
Jennifer: I guess that’s why your course is called How To Design An Award Winning Poster. So this isn’t just a poster that’s going to do well for your research. It’s a poster. That’s going to capture that attention so you can really meet people who are interested in it, interested in what you’re doing. I just love that.
Tullio: Yes. And ideally your poster should work for a broad audience, not just technical audience, you know? It depends on where you set the bar, but let’s say for most scientific conferences, it’s a technical audience and that’s fine.
When designing a research poster for a general audience
Jennifer: We were talking about different uses for posters. What is a good poster that you could make for a general audience?
Tullio: For a general audience, the key thing is keeping jargon in check. Because if you’re not an expert and you’re not familiar with the jargon on something.
One jargony word. Okay. Two? On the third one, you’re like, this is not for me. I feel stupid. And you switch off. And you stopped reading.
And you lost the person. It’s just how it goes.
If you want to reach a broader audience with your poster, definitely keep the drive in and check. It’s better to have a few extra words, but to explain a concept, rather than just relying on jargon.
Other than that, you cannot assume people will be able to understand complex charts. Like 3D plots? Forget about it. Like, bar charts? Fine. Most people can understand a bar chart, but forget about all the more complex things like 3D plots, which is very common in some disciplines. Or, some crazy charts like in evolutionary biology or genetics which look so complicated.
If those are your visuals, you should really rethink how you present your data visually for a broader audience.
But if you go to a genetics conference and there’s just hundreds of geneticists around you, then go for it and that’s fine.
Jennifer: [Laughs.] Then the jargon will make sense to them.
Tullio: Then the jargon will make sense. Then the complex genetics chart will make sense too. And then it’s fine.
The first thing is always to ask yourself
Who am I talking to?
Who am I presenting to?
Once we’ve got clarity on that, then that sets the bar for your communication.
Jennifer: I think that’s wonderful. I really enjoy talking to you about this because I think that visuals are so important for researchers in all fields, not just scientists, but everyone who’s working on something that maybe a limited audience is going to be able to read that kind of final product.
It can really help to talk about it online, whether you’re embedding a video on your website or sharing it on social media. There’s potential to reach way more people than most researchers expect with that kind of visual. So I just have enjoyed this conversation so much.
Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Tullio: Oh, look I could talk about this stuff for hours.
Resources on the Animate Your Science website
Tullio: Something I wanted to add is that yes, we have this online course on our website called How To Design An Award Winning Scientific Poster. But we also have plenty of free resources on our blog including some poster templates, which many researchers find really handy. So feel free to visit our website. If you can dig into the resources section on the blog. There’s plenty of very well-written valuable materials for free.
But then if you’re interested in really going deep, I recommend our online course. That would be the right way to go.
Jennifer: [Laughs]. Well I am so excited to share your course with people. I hope that if you’re working on a scientific poster you check it out. Having that ability to reach more people can really affect how you feel about your research.
Dr. Tullio Rossi is an award-winning science communicator, marine biologist and graphic designer.
As founder of the science communication agency Animate Your Science, he helps researchers tell their story to the world.
His engaging video animations and eye-catching graphics make science understandable for everyone, reaching millions of people around the world, thereby creating a real-life impact.
I spoke with Dr. Timothy Oleksiak, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts—Boston, about two of his essays, “A Queer Praxis for Peer Review” and “Slow Peer Review in the Writing Classroom,” recently out in College Composition and Communication and Pedagogy. In these essays, they present theory and practice for a pedagogical practice they call slow peer review, a different way to approach that classical strategy of writing classes, student-to-student peer review, where students swap drafts and give each other feedback on how to improve them. Slow peer review does have students swap drafts but asks them to spend a lot more time with the drafts than usual, reading them very carefully and thinking about them deeply. Slow peer review then asks students to respond in different and more in depth ways than just giving the writer suggestions. I found the essays really compelling, opening up so many questions with relevance far beyond this specific practice and far beyond even just the teaching of writing.
In our conversation, which you can watch below, we discuss opera, “the improvement imperative” (i.e., there are more things to do in a writing classroom than help students write better, even as that remains a key goal), and the concept of “cruel optimism” (which refers, in this case, to an unhealthy attachment to certain teaching strategies that aren’t working and won’t suddenly start working through being tweaked). We also discuss the ways in which writers and readers of drafts both participate in “worldmaking.” The idea here is that each draft someone writes envisions a world in which some are included while others are not, and peer reviewers can help writers imagine more clearly what sort of world they’ve built. We also discuss what all of this has to do with queer theory. Lastly, I asked Timothy whether this peer review pedagogy isn’t actually a reading pedagogy. While he’s not so sure, he does have students “read the drafts five different times” and directs students to consider such questions as “What does it mean to be fully human in this world?” (i.e., in the world of the draft being read). Those seem like scaffolds for deep reading to me. At any rate, whatever else this pedagogy does, it does ask students to really read each other’s writing. And that feels extraordinarily valuable to me.
Jane CoomberSewell started her website in graduate school, now it’s time for a re-design
Meet Jane CoomberSewell, PhD in this featured interview. She’s been a business owner throughout graduate school. Jane recently completed her PhD in Media and Culture Studies, researching English entertainer Joyce Grenfell.
Jane’s website has always been helpful. Now as an independent researcher, her website has needed to change over time. That’s what this interview focuses on: how personal website can change over time to meet your needs.
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic blog, where I share articles and interviews on managing your online presence in Higher Education.
Whether you’re just creating your website, or need to re-design your outdated website, I hope this interview helps you. Jane and I talk about
Jennifer: Hello everyone. I am Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to the 1st featured interview of 2022. Today. I’m here with Dr. Jane CoomberSewell. We’re going to be talking about how a website can change over time.
Dr. Jane CoomberSewell created her website when she was in graduate school. And it’s been a journey to figure out exactly what belongs on the website, if the website is going to work long term. Now some changes are being planned, they’re ready to be made. So I thought this is a great subject to share with you.
Jane, it’s great to talk with you today. Would you mind introducing yourself?
Jane: I’m Jane. In the networking world in the United Kingdom, I’m now being referred to as Doctor Word Nerd. I run a business with my wife which has two parallel streams. Which is one of the reasons why the website is now websites. Joyce is an autism advocate and specialist.
Jane’s website was originally shared with Joyce. Now they will each have their own website.
Joyce’s one of the few people in the United Kingdom who is qualified to mentor autistic people who is herself autistic. While we’ve worked both work words, I am very much moving from
Proofreading
Editing
Student support
more and more into being a family and company historian and biographer. Because companies have life cycles and stories to tell just as much as individual’s do.
Jennifer: That’s right. And websites because they help us tell those stories to a wider number of people, it needs to be changed and updated with time as our needs change. And as the things that we want to share with those people change as well. So I’m really glad that we’re getting to talk today.
Can I ask, what was your graduate background and what did you do your PhD in?
Jane:So my, my PhD, it comes under media and cultural studies. But very broadly. It was a 4.5 year–cause I started off part-time and then went full time–adventure into the life of a lady called Joyce Grenfell who is a British entertainer. And really considering her as a sociopolitical commentator, hence the history side of it. And a feminist.
Was she a feminist? The answer being probably only with the small ‘f.’
But really looking at the power-knowledge dynamics that she explores in all her sketches which she wrote herself. Now I’m trying to turn that into a book for normal people.
Jennifer: You want to write a book about that for a general audience it sounds like?
Jane: Yeah. There’s 2 books at the moment. One is something that be useful to undergraduates, sort of a different spin on feminism. Feminism moves away a bit more from theory into lived feminism.
And then hopefully something very much more for the general readership.
I am the only person currently that has ever looked at Grenfell academically. There’s been journalistic approaches and there’s a very good biography by her goddaughter who is also a journalist. But that more general approach I think hasn’t been done yet.
Jennifer: Fascinating. Well, thanks for sharing that with me about your research.
Can I ask, is that something that shows up on your website?
Jane is working toward launching a new version of her personal website
Joyce: It is. I suppose there’s been 3, no 2.5 versions of the website so far. There was the one that we launched at the very beginning of my grad school days.
It was fine. Actually, when you look at my website or our websites, they don’t look very much different at all. The colors are the same. The logos haven’t changed.
We’ve updated the photos cause because you get fat, you get thin, you get fat, you get thin.
[The websites] They’ve become a lot more focused I think.
The 2nd version, which was launched about 18 months ago was about giving us a lot more on control our end. It’s when I started blogging.
I have a love-love-bit-of-hate relationship with blogging. In that I would love to spend more time doing it. And I think I could make it better work better than I am. But you just keep rethinking how you blog all the time.
I think that’s my big thing, not just with the blogging, but with websites is that it’s not something static. With the 1st version of the website, the major mistake we made was it was static. It didn’t change it. Didn’t have a blog element. And I may be looked at it once every couple of years. And I sent off a note to our web designer. She would charge me £15 to change 2 words on a page.
The way it is, or the way version 2.5 is that all the actual text and layout I can control myself. It’s only when we want to do more technically advanced things like changing pictures and adding new drop downs that I have to contact my designer for. And that’s the level I’m comfortable with.
Jennifer: And you like, you like being able to do some of those things.
Can I ask, did you work with a designer on version 1 of the website?
Jane: Yes and no. Accessibility was always important to us. I come from a disability services background. That’s what I did when I was a civil servant. For most of the times the civil service disparity employment advisor. I was always aware of making things accessible in terms of scaling font and it still looking good.
We had a young designer to do our logo for us. And I love our logo. Would I change it? Probably not. I might tweak it a little bit, but I don’t think I’d actually change it.
But all the text I’ve always written. Partly because I’m quite…Okay. Yeah, let’s be honest…quite arrogant about my use of English language.
Search engine optimization for academic websites
Jane: That has its downside. Because of course, search engine optimization (SEO) wise, I dislike…balancing got to get 5 versions of the keyword into the box pick-it-up vs. flow. I find that a tricky balance. And getting all your metatags right. I find all those things I find quite tricky. So sometimes I will get a bit of help on that side of it.
Jennifer: For some of our readers, they might not know what SEO is. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s something that people with websites do in order to help more visitors actually find their page. There are specific keywords or phrases that you might go search for on Google.
If those phrases or keywords match up with the phrases or keywords on Jane’s website, for instance, it will help you find her website.
Jane is saying that it’s difficult to balance the number of keywords she puts into the copy she writes for her website and actually writing it. I think that’s something that many people with websites struggle with.
If you’re brand new to websites, this is your very first website, you might not be doing so much SEO work as Jane is. But you do want to have keywords, like your name in there.
Being able to put your name on your website is so important for helping people find it.
Jennifer: Thanks, Jane. I appreciate you bringing that up.
Jane: I think there’s also something really important about keywords in that. Often the keywords we end up having to use to get found and not words we’re comfortable with.
My wife’s previous business was that she ran a telecoms billing platform. She wanted her website to say ‘value.’ Okay, but people don’t type into Google value. They type in ‘cheap.’ So she had to change this whole page…to ‘cheap’ to get her SEO to work, which is not the image she wanted to portray. But it’s what she needed to get people to then come and have that conversation with her.
Jennifer: Yeah. I think with academics in particular, keywords might even be a little bit easier than that because they’re looking for a really specific audience. So if your research is on a specific type of microbiology, for instance and you include that phrase in there, it’s pretty likely to, you know, show up in Google.
It’s definitely harder when you’re looking at a keyword that’s as general as ‘value’ or ‘cheap,’ because there’s only one word. It can make a really big difference in the types of visitors you get.
My recommendation for anyone reading is try to be really specific when you’re thinking about the keywords that are going on your website.
Remember, you’re looking for a specific audience. In this case, you may not be needing money that’s tied to that. Maybe you’re just looking for readers for your publication. So there’s lots of options for keywords.
Jane: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. And it’s very industry specific. You really have to think through a strategy. Which is why it’s useful to use a designer sometimes.
It’s time to update an old or outdated personal website
Jennifer: Tell me more about what your old website was like. It sounds like you really didn’t like that you couldn’t do update yourself. And that you had to pay for updates. What else didn’t you like about it?
Jane: I think it was mainly just the staticness of it. It was very difficult and expensive to keep it current as you know. Obviously when you start a business, especially now, you can’t start a business without a website.
But in those first 2 years–I mean, I think businesses are always evolving and changing–but in those first 2 years, that’s probably when they move most.
Therefore, if you’ve constantly got to be sending information to somebody else to tweak your content…
The layout was very current, which meant of course, it very quickly became very dated because just like clothes, just like hairstyles–there’s style, and then there’s fashion.
Jennifer: Hm.
Jane: Because I don’t do the graphic aspect of it, I find it very difficult to pinpoint what that is. But it’s things like a Hermès scarf is always stylish. There are other things that are very fashionable for a very short period of time.
I think there are elements of website design, which I hope we’re getting now, which is much more about a classic style. While still being able to bolt on [things like] on Joyce’s site, she’s got the live transcription so that she can vlog rather than blog which connects in with the fact that she’s dyslexic. When she vlogs it will transcribe it live. Speaking as somebody who does audio transcription, it’s good. It’s still not as good as me sitting there and doing it for her will ever be, but it’s a lot quicker than me doing it. Cause it does it live.
Jennifer: So live transcription is one of the ways in which your separate websites revisioned the blog that you were, you were both working.
Jane: Yes.
Jennifer: So you still blog. And [Joyce] vlogs.
Jane: Yes. Well, she’s learning to vlog.
How you blog on your personal website may change
Jane: It’s one of those things like the blogging. I always feel that I’ve got more to learn and I could always do more of it.
And as a writer there’s a great discipline in blogging because it keeps you writing and it keeps the ideas flowing.
Jennifer: Right.
Jane: Often, I don’t know about you, but the ideas always come at the most inconvenient moment, you know? When you’re in the car I can’t really scribble an idea down. And then unless you have something like Otter AI on your phone so you can give yourself a quick note, the idea has gone.
Jennifer: I feel like I have a lot of blog ideas. I keep a list of them on my computer. And then I have time to write a lot of them. [Laughs]. That’s my problem.
Jane: When we first relaunched a new [website], we were religious. One of us blogged every single Monday. But we’ve been so busy. I’ve been so busy writing books. I haven’t had the emotional energy, I think, to blog as well.
Jennifer: That’s interesting. Can you tell me a little more about that? What do you mean by emotional energy to blog?
Jane: There are lots of different approaches to blogging, aren’t there? You can be your intellectual expert, or you can be a raconteur. Cause it’s all about engaging with your particular audience.
Because particularly when I’m doing the family biographies, people are telling me things. It’s not supposed to be a therapeutic thing, but often it becomes therapeutic. Often people will tell us things–cause Joyce does the interviewing and I do the writing–very personal and perhaps stuff they haven’t talked about for years.
So I want my blogs to be quite open to. And I often reflect on something that has happened during the week. If I have been very busy writing, I perhaps haven’t had time to process that myself.
I don’t feel I can blog about it until there’s a little bit of distance.
I think the last blog I did was about the phrase ‘self care.’ I really struggle with the phrase ‘self care.’ I think being middle-aged and British…And anything foregrounded with self gets linked just to words like ‘selfish,’ which is not how I feel about it but it’s kind of like a kick reaction. It took me ages to write that blog because I had to kind of balance it out.
And I think if you blog from the heart, which is what I try and do because I want our customers to know us because we feel very strongly that integrity is something that is impossible to attain, but must be your strongest goal. Sometimes those blogs take a lot of emotional energy.
When I used to copywrite blogs for another company, you know, I can churn out 500 words on why certain photocopiers are the best on the market. Really I can probably do that in about half an hour.
And the other thing I find quite time consuming when I’m blogging is sourcing the illustrations. Cause I always try and put in a couple of irrelevant illustrations.
And I think it was you or somebody in the same meeting we met at who told me about Unsplash.
Jennifer: Yeah!
Jane: And that has made that a lot easier, but actually again, we’re back to keywords. Finding the right keywords to get the image you want…
Jennifer: It can be difficult [chuckles].
Have a personal website you can control
Jane: It’s a constant learning thing, isn’t it? I think that’s that’s the biggest message is if you can always have an element of your website that you control. Even if it’s not the techie stuff. Because it’s an absolutely live document. You will never finish your website.
Jennifer: That’s right. That’s what I teach all of my [website design] clients. The process that I worked through with them, you know, we go through an intensive planning process for their websites to figure out what they actually need.
Then we sit down and we create the copy for the website or they do it on their own. Once that copy is placed, I actually teach them how to
update pages on our website
add new pages
navigate the backend so that they can find what they’re looking for
And they get a recording of that so that they can do it themselves afterwards.
I actually don’t do long-term management for websites that kind of nickel and diming that you were talking about changing two words for £15 pounds, I don’t do that. I want to help as many people as possible. That means that I can’t manage websites long-term.
I really need the academics that I work with to be able to do some of that work themselves. So I think that’s really important having some of that control yourself.
It sounds like it’s making a really big difference for you on your website.
Jane and Joyce used to share a website, now they’ll each have their own
Jane: I also find it much easier to help Joyce. So what we’ve done now is we’ve separated [our websites]. I’ve retained CoomberSewell.co.uk.
We’ve done little things so some of the pages mirror each other totally. And others, obviously her autism pages are a lot more detailed than mine. My pages is like a condensed version on autism, but it links to her website.
So silly things like I know for a fact at the moment because I’ve spent more time on her website than mine, her price list for proofreading as much more up to date than the one on my website, but I’m the one who does the proofreading!
In fact I’ve got a list of jobs to do at the weekend. And it’s this knowing that I was going to talk to you. That led to #6, being “Update price list.”
Do this when preparing to update your old or outdated personal website
Jennifer: It’s good to actually create a list like you’re doing right now. Like what are the things that I need to change on my website?
If you are approaching a website update project, I do recommend make a list of all the things that you
don’t like about your website
do like about your website
things that you need to change.
Then once you have that list, go ahead and schedule it in your agenda.
Maybe you don’t have time to accomplish all the things on your list right away, but if you space it out over time, you’re going to get those updates made.
You don’t want to wait 1-2 years between updates on your website. Things get outdated more quickly than you think.
Jane: And that is very, very true. I also think it’s good to have an honest friend. A really honest friend. I had a very amusing phone call today, a video call actually. My longest term friend, we’ve known each other since I was 5 months old, contacted me today on video call.
She’s just about to launch a professional photography website. The one thing that she’s not good at is photos of herself.
And whilst, perhaps that was a little over blunt, it did help her choose the pictures that she was going to choose. And acknowledge the fact that it’s only going to be a holding picture till she can get some new ones done.
Jennifer: Yeah. That’s important. And having that honesty and that rapport with you, it helped her move forward in her thinking of it.
Jane: I think particularly on the visual side. And on the text side, because I mean, as a proofreader, there’s one rule that I have. It’s just proofread to proofread thyself. Because it is almost impossible when you’ve written something and edited it and re-edited it…
I mean, you know, where I’ve been sort of trying to convert my, my thesis into a book, I am aghast at the mistakes have slipped through as I’ve put it to bed for 6 months and then come back to it.
Really, did I say that? Was I on said drugs at the time?
Jennifer: [Laughter]. And you’re a professional, you’re a proofreader.
Jane: It’s the hardest thing in the world to proofread your own work.
Jennifer: That’s so true.
Jane: So having a trusted friend who is good at being straight, but also kind is really, really important.
I think in business, we get very hooked up on should I be paying for this? Should I be paying for that? 99.9% of the time, I would say, Yes. But occasionally it’s okay, especially if it’s just a quick check to ask a friend for a favor because this guarantee there’s a bit of skills barter that can go on.
Jennifer: I think so. That I explain it to my clients is that your friend, they love you and they care about you. They’re actually going to be reading and examining your website with greater depth than your average visitor.
They’re going to stay on it longer.
They’re going to read into it more, try to understand it more so that they can talk with you about it. And that’s more than your average website visitor is doing.
If your friend is telling you that something’s
Confusing
Distracting
That it shouldn’t be there
well that’s something that you should listen to because other people aren’t even going to give you as much time or attention as a friend is. So it’s worth listening to what they have to say.
You don’t have to, you don’t have to respond to it. You know, you don’t have to do it, but getting that opinion is so helpful.
Do it while you remember (or write it down so you don’t forget)
Jane: And I think, I think also we’ve talked about planning and making sure we prioritize, but I think there’s also some times merit in striking while the iron is hot as well.
I mean a year ago you said to me, “Jane, you need to make more of the fact that your ‘bilingual.’” Do you remember this conversation? It was, it was a, it was a comment about my proofreading, the fact that I’m being of Canadian heritage, that I can proofread in
Canadian English
American English
English English
You said you need to make that much clearer on your website and you should blog about it. I still haven’t done it because I didn’t do it in that moment. And if I had done, it would have been very much more impactful.
I am going to get round to it. I am going to blog on it, but I don’t think it will be as good a blog as if I’d done it within 24 hours.
Jennifer: Oh, I don’t know that that’s the case. It’s possible that even that you’re thinking about it for the last year is going to add even just one sentence to that blog that is emotionally in a better space now than it would have been then.
So you never know that. I think it’s totally going to be awesome when you do it now.
Jane: Interestingly though, I have remembered to use the phrase when I’ve been talking to people.
Jennifer: Wonderful.
Jane: And I think I’ve pretty much got every American PhD student at my university now sending me their theses for proofreading.
Jennifer: I love that. I love that. I remember that conversation so well, and you were telling me about all the amazing things you were doing. And I was like, oh, I just read your website and it didn’t say that. Like, that was so awesome how you have a skill that really is going to help people that are English language speakers bet the proofreading that they need.
I also think that the way that you go about updating your website to meet your needs is so awesome. It sounds like version 1 and version 2 were both joint websites. And now version 2.5 is like separating that a little bit.
But what it does is it gives you each more space. So it’s like your website is growing. It’s like your needs are growing, your website’s growing and all of that copy, all of the things that you know, can be updated, hey–everything gets updated with time. That makes sense.
Jane: I think it also provides a lot of clarity. We were trying to be all things to all people. And although we work together and our sides of the business compliment each other. They’re not the same.
Joyce, certainly couldn’t do what I do. I know, I don’t have the patience, I think, to do what she does.
At the moment, they’re very similar. I’ve done a way updates, but I think over time as she grows the vlogging side of it…I’m teaching her how to edit. It’s going to be hysterical cause she’s even more of a Luddite than I am…And as I continue to blog, I think it will give me the room.
How Jane shared her thesis and publications on her personal website
Jane: One of the other things I did based off the conversation you had with me is that I changed one of the pages entirely. You said to me earlier, I’ve just remembered this, you know, is your thesis on your website?
Well, I took a sidebar. And that now has every journal article every, every time I’ve contributed to a podcast. It’s all on there. There’s a publication sidebar. So you don’t even have to go to a separate page for it.
If you’re interested in having me write a biography for you. You can get a sample of my writing by clicking on the sidebar. It was actually me being tight because I didn’t want to pay to have another page created. Actually it works really well.
Jennifer: Well I love that innovation can cause you to adapt. It sounds like you didn’t want to pay for another page so you needed to find another solution and that creative solution ended up working out for you.
That’s what websites are all about: experimenting to see what’s going to work well for you long term. And if it doesn’t, well, that’s something that needs to be changed.
I think that adapting with your website, making room for it to grow, it’s not going to happen all at once.
Jane: Right.
Your website will change, and that’s a good thing
Jennifer: You’ve had now 2.5 versions of this website, and you can still see it changing in the future. So for anyone who’s reading this interview, I definitely want to let you know that your website, it’s probably is going to grow or change over time.
Even if he just have a simple 1-page website that has your bio and a photo on it. Those elements are going to change. Your bio will be updated over time. Your photo. You’re going to want to change that over time so that it looks like you.
I think that being open to that is such a great quality to have when you’re building a website. And when you’re approaching a big update.
Jane, I just want to thank you so much for your candor in talking about how that website change has been for you.
What’s it like to work with multiple designers on your website over the years?
Jennifer: I want to ask a little bit more about what it’s like to work with someone since you worked with, it sounds like multiple designers on your website.
Jane: Two, yeah. So we had our original website designer. There were some design elements that came from other people, but as such, we had our original website designer and then we’ve got our current website designer.
And I think there’s something really important to say about I current website designer, not so much about his technical skills as a designer, although they’re very strong. It’s about personality matching. You know, particularly for, for joy as an autistic.
Choosing a website designer
Her technical skills are very different from mine. Actually, they’re great, but she worries about them. And so we needed a designer who got how you talk to this person on the spectrum. Because actually once you’ve met one person on the spectrum, you’ve met one person on spectrum.
A lot of the problems with our previous version is that I’m not convinced our previous designer was quite on particularly Joyce’s wavelength.
From that point of view, I would encourage people that if you feel like somebody is talking a load of jargon and your constantly running to catch up, they’re possibly not the right designer for you.
Jennifer: Oooh, that’s so important. So picking a designer is not just about budget. It’s not just about location or what their portfolio is. It’s also about how they get along with you and how well you communicate with each other.
Jane: I mean after all. I think we both know that you can go and buy a product. You could go buy website product. Most of my Canadian and American friends tend to use SquareSpace. If they’re building it from scratch and over here, it will be something like GoDaddy. But ultimately if you’re going to invest in that tailored service…People buy people. They don’t buy a product. They buy people. So get to know your designer.
I am fortunate in that our designer is the partner of a friend of ours. And he will come and train Joyce in exchange for a handmade pizza. But, from that point of view, it is worth spending the time not just getting quotes, not just finding out what particular language they’re skilled in, or design they’re skilled in…
You know, have a coffee with them if you can in these days of masks. Take your time. It might not be a big investments in dollars or pounds, but it’s a big investment in terms of your business. Or your future in terms of the academic reputation that you want.
So take your time. Yes, you can change later on. Because we’ve been talking about keeping the websites updated, constantly.
But actually, if you’re going to move that whole relationship to another designer, it is a bit of a hassle. You know, getting them to shift domain names from one host to another, it’s not a big job, but it is a hasley job. So take your time picking your person.
Jennifer: Oh, well, wonderful advice. You know, meeting someone in advance can make a whole difference in how you understand them. Seeing their facial expressions, seeing how they respond to questions or how they ask questions of you can make a big difference for people’s comfort levels.
Thank you so much for sharing that with me.
Jane’s new article on Sara Paretsky’s Guardian Angel
Jennifer: Speaking of academic reputation, you were telling me about a new article that you have out about your favorite lockdown read. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Jane: Oh, that was wonderful. I think that again is something I’ve learned about academia this year. I’ve written or half written or even sent off terribly intellectually worthy articles. And they tend to fall over.
I’m often always telling my students, don’t overcomplicate things. Go with your first instinct. Build on your first instinct. If you’ve made the right choices, it will flow.
I just happened to see this call for paper and I drafted out this article in about 40 minutes.
Jennifer: Pretty quickly.
Jane: It didn’t even have a single edit on it. Because it was passionate. I’m probably underselling my skills here because that’s what I do.
It’s a piece in the South Central Review. They did a lockdown special. I think they chose 25 articles in the end. They ask people to write on their favorite lockdown re-read. I chose a book by Sara Paretsky.
Jane: To be honest, I could have chosen any book by Sara Paretsky because I love them all. It was a joy to write, and I think that’s what comes through in the reading of it.
My major message from it was about independent researchers. I find Paretsky a very brave writer. She’s always gone with the flow and she’s changed publishers when she’s needed to. If she believes in something, she goes for it. Even if people tell her not to.
And I think to be an independent researcher, which is what I am, and to an extent what you are…
Jennifer: That’s right.
Jane: …is a brave place to be. And I think academia needs to take us a little bit more seriously. Because actually for us to stick our necks out with no institution backing us, with no access to other funding. You know, there used to be this attitude and I think there still is this attitude that if you’re not sponsored, you can’t be any good. But actually I think it’s the other way round. I think if, if you survive without an institution backing you or without permanent post, you are brave. You actually you’re showing your metal.
I was self-funded through my PhD. You don’t set out to spend £25,000+ unless you’re sure you can produce the goods or at least you’re brave enough to find out.
I think that was my big message in this article is academic world, you’ve really got to stop underestimating and putting barriers in the way of us independent researchers.
I’m doing a piece of research next week which I feel rushed on because it’s the last piece I was able to get ethical approval on before I finished my PhD.
I have more options in the arts than my wife does in the sciences because there are publications who will take me without being without ethical approval as long as I’ve gone through my own kind of ethical quality assurance.
But stop putting barriers in the way of us independents, because we’ve got plenty to say. Because we’re independent. Sometimes we can do things that you can’t.
Jennifer: I think that academia does need to listen up to independent researchers and where they’re at because so many PhD students that are graduating these days will end up as independent researchers in some way or another.
There are not enough teaching positions to go around at the university level. And the adjunctification of the university is prolific. And it’s and it’s not changing. It’s not going to go down. I mean, I hope it does, but that’s not what the trends are saying.
We do need to have more conversations like this. We do need to talk about things like open access and journals accepting independent researchers and appreciating the contributions that they make unfunded, frankly.
I’m so glad that this kind of lockdown reread inspired you to just kind of jump into a new article and get it out into the world.
Which book did you choose by the way?
Jane: I chose Guardian Angel (1992).As I say, I could have chosen any. There was another one I didn’t choose because I realized the specific remit was what’s your favorite re-read? I could have chosen one of the others.
But I realized it was my favorite purely because I’d won my copy in competition.
And bless her, Sara Paretsky had posted to me herself. And being daft enough bless her—sorry, Sara—to leave her home address on the envelope.
Which I promise you faithfully, Sara I’m not going to come and stalk you. But I do still have the old envelope and it is very carefully preserved.
Jennifer: That’s sweet. It meant a lot to you. And that’s why you felt so strongly about the book.
Well, the people who ran the organization or the competition for that book are like, “Yes! Our competition really inspired someone to love this book.”
Jane: I really hope. Yes, I really hope so.
Jennifer: Well, Jane, thank you so much for our conversation today. I have really loved talking with you about your website and how it’s changed throughout the years.
Is there anything else that you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Jane: No. I think I would just, just underline: your website is never finished and that’s okay.
Jennifer: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jane! We’ll see you again in 2022. Bye, bye.
Jane: Lovely. Thank you for inviting me, you take good care.
Having had a previous incarnation as a Civil Servant and public sector manager, Jane CoomberSewell(@JaneCoSe) is an independent researcher/biographer based in Kent, South East England. Jane completed her Doctorate in 2020, with a thesis re-examining the socio-political contributions of monologuist and entertainer Joyce Grenfell. Jane’s research interests include reception theory and female-led detective fiction.
Jane is an advocate for change in the way independent researchers are viewed by the establishment, believing that those who succeed in publication without the support of a University may be some of the strongest researchers in their field, certainly in terms of determination. When not working on one of the several biographies and other research projects she has under way at the moment, Jane can be found walking with her wife Joyce, an autism advocate or working in the garden to progress the couple’s drive for self-sufficiency. This may or may not include having lively conversations with her chickens about the history podcasts she plays to them.
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