New Report Format
The faculty at MSU like the new report a lot better than the old Excel reports. One thing John noticed is that there is reference to the rubric level, but it’s not explicit which rubric category goes with which level (i.e., there isn’t color coding that is consistent across the report, level 1 might not always mean completely correct, etc.). Matt responded that if you look at the final page of the report, in the confirmatory analysis section, that is where the key/identifiers are. Matt said that he will change that around to put it on the first page. John also suggested that some alt text that can pop up to give a full description would be nice. Tessa agreed that it would be helpful because she found herself confused about the reports due to the lack of the key. She also brought up the page “frequency of categories” page, the categories on the graph do not match the category names below. Matt is working to update these. He is also working to
COPUS update
Michelle wants to remind everyone to get their COPUS schedules set and to stay on top of observations! We want to collect as much observation data as possible
FLC Meeting Updates
From John at MSU: Recording failed for his first meeting, which is unfortunate because he said it was a great meeting! They had a great discussion about the report and then went on to discuss the Central Dogma activity and got some good discussion going about the activity. There was the idea that there needed to be a more explicit connection made between what was going on and the underlying mechanism. The students don’t seem to realize that explaining the mechanism is what will help them answer the question. One FLC member thinks that the MSU group isn’t meeting often enough!
Update from Mark
He had to participate in the NSF panel by teleconference so he did not have a meeting with Miles. They emailed back and forth and he seems interested in hearing about progress with the project. However, Mark will not be back to DC before the end of May. Michelle offered to set up a meeting when she will be there in March just to show him a presentation of some of the data we have collected thus far. Mark urged everyone to meet with program officers if there is a convenient opportunity to do so.
Mark suggested doing an interim report so that we could make it explicitly clear how much progress we have made. He will look into what would need to happen for this and we will discuss this next week. There are a number of factors to consider when asking for more money, so please think about all research costs associated with this project at your institution.
IBM
There are some challenges with the collaboration with IBM. There shouldn’t be a disruption for the FLC participants, but there are some difficulties with the MAP program and progress with the reports. According to Mark there are some communication difficulties between them and IBM. They are looking into the standard text analysis or using a different product (SASS). Hopefully this will not impact the faculty, although report scheduling might become difficult int eh future if too many faculty need reports with a quick turnaround all at once. Mark is also unsure how a transition will be managed but the team at MSU will meet this week to establish a plan. Right now, it looks like the schedule is manageable.
Central Dogma activity update
Last week, Karen sent an email to everyone who has ever expressed interest in the activity. She set up a Doodle poll for a Zoom meeting so if you or your FLC participants would be interested in participating please fill it out!