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There were only 2 meeting scheduled in February. We were assigned tasks based on our team's responsibilities. As a member of the Rubric Instrument team, we were responsible for researching on literature reviews for the discussion rubrics. Eugeniu had provided many useful and insightful studies regarding the discussion assignment. With an access to the online program, I could contribute some rubrics that are currently used. From the discussion about team's progress, I have found that in order for me to work on the rubric part I would need to have a background on the qualitative assessment. Learning about the qualitative assessment is now one of my high priorities for MARS research project.
I have only had a chance to attend one meeting on February 23 rd , 2008. It was another great opportunity to listen to Hien's proposal presentation. I found her research area very interesting. From her presentation, I have learned that when it comes to working on my dissertation or research project, I need to be very resourceful in order to setup the research problems and methodology.
Another great experience I had in that meeting was to participate in Hyeon Woo's senior student teaching opportunity. I think this is an excellent idea and method to allow senior students to share their knowledge and skills as well as to practice their teaching methods and strategies. Hyeon Woo's teaching topic was the SEM (Structural Equation Modeling). Some of the terms presented during his session were the statistic terms I have never used. However, his teaching and presentation had made them easily understandable. Though I didn't entirely understand, it would not be too hard to learn more about this topic by using the knowledge and understanding I obtained from his teaching session.
Throughout the end of the meeting, Dr. Grabowski introduced the term “Publish or Perish.” This term refers to the pressure that academic profession is required to produce many publications as one of the criteria for career's promotion. The issues being raised during the discussion was about the “Authorship.” This seems to be very unclear topic to discuss. For example MARS research project, whether or not an individual member can fully / partially use the research data / findings; whether or not member who graduates be the completion of research can have a credit / be listed in as a researcher; whether or not I, as a member of the Rubric team, can use the data from other instrument teams; etc.
The discussion focused mostly on “Authorship” and “Contribution.” Looking at a publication of the research team project as a profit of organization, it seems unmotivated for unknowledgeable or inexperience members not to receive a credit, if the authorship is solely based on the contribution. On the other hands, I found it reasonable to say that the more you contributed the more you should own the publication. The question is how authorship can be motivatedly and fairly recognized.
