Not That Kind of Doctor - Reading

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10/30/2023 Added

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Reading - Ph.D. discussions with Nicholas Husbye and Guy Trainin. www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor and https://mediahub.unl.edu/channels/42980

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[00:00:00.000](upbeat music)
[00:00:10.590]All right.
[00:00:11.423]So, today we're talking about reading.
[00:00:14.640]Look at you just diving right in.
[00:00:16.620]We gotta dive right in.
[00:00:18.570]You're like, I'm gonna show up in this flashy shirt.
[00:00:21.510]Yes.
[00:00:23.160]Show Nick up
[00:00:24.256](Guy laughing)
[00:00:26.070]and then just dive right in.
[00:00:27.660]I just needed something this morning to pick me up.
[00:00:30.450]So here we go. That's why I got coffee.
[00:00:32.850]Caffeine is our friend.
[00:00:34.140]Color is your friend.
[00:00:35.100]Color is not my friend. Color is my friend.
[00:00:36.900]So, okay.
[00:00:37.733]Yes, we are talking about reading today.
[00:00:40.410]Yeah.
[00:00:43.620]Reading in ways
[00:00:45.660]that actually feed your work as an academic.
[00:00:51.120]I think I've said it a couple of times in other episodes
[00:00:53.880]that I did a lot of reading
[00:00:55.320]around knowledge building this summer.
[00:00:58.170]And one of the books
[00:01:01.410]that I ended up reading was called "Ambient Findability"
[00:01:04.680]by Peter Morville.
[00:01:06.720]And there's a quote that's just,
[00:01:09.150]it's lived kind of rent free in my head.
[00:01:11.640]All right. Ever since I've ran
[00:01:12.600]across it.
[00:01:13.950]And it's this idea that knowledge workers are paid
[00:01:17.250]for their ability to find, filter, analyze,
[00:01:19.950]create, and otherwise manage information.
[00:01:23.400]Those who lack these skills become lost
[00:01:26.130]on the wrong side of the digital divide.
[00:01:30.150]And that just struck me
[00:01:33.390]as an essential skill
[00:01:37.020]for any kind of work
[00:01:40.260]that we do here in the academy,
[00:01:42.450]particularly as we move from more print-based journals
[00:01:48.270]into digital journals.
[00:01:50.340]And now we have so many more journals
[00:01:53.850]than there ever have been before.
[00:01:54.930]Yeah. There's so many
[00:01:55.763]different venues for publication,
[00:01:58.650]whether it's podcasts or journal articles
[00:02:02.040]or book chapters or...
[00:02:04.140]So how do you manage all
[00:02:08.730]of that information coming at you?
[00:02:13.860]We're constantly encountering this new information
[00:02:17.730]through new research
[00:02:19.980]as we're trying to build up our repertoires
[00:02:21.840]and our specializations.
[00:02:23.760]And so I'm interested in how you manage this
[00:02:29.040]and I'm interested in, like, how systems have changed
[00:02:32.610]because newsflash, I'm old.
[00:02:37.485](Guy laughing)
[00:02:38.340]I realized... Yeah.
[00:02:39.300]I realized two weeks ago
[00:02:41.310]that I have been working in a university
[00:02:46.110]for 17 years,
[00:02:47.820]which just,
[00:02:50.400]It's a while.
[00:02:51.766]It's a while.
[00:02:53.190]It's a while.
[00:02:54.023]It's not a number that I expected.
[00:02:55.770]And so I think that there are a few transitions
[00:02:59.700]that happen as you are more in the system
[00:03:02.550]because part of it is that as we get old,
[00:03:05.550]we have less time or at least less fictional time.
[00:03:09.360]We've talked about time in previous episodes.
[00:03:12.420]AKA Nick's breakdown episodes.
[00:03:13.991](Guy laughing)
[00:03:15.510]But it is true that when you're younger,
[00:03:19.920]you can pull an all-nighter or you can read into the night.
[00:03:23.400]And I can tell you that at 10:00, I can do other things,
[00:03:27.210]but reading seriously for research...
[00:03:29.910]Wait. Is not one of that.
[00:03:30.960]You last until 10?
[00:03:32.280]Sometimes.
[00:03:33.300]Sometimes. Like, by 8:30, man,
[00:03:35.010]I am like, the brain is gone.
[00:03:37.740]Yeah, so that's one thing.
[00:03:40.740]But the other things are that we have more commitments,
[00:03:45.660]professional and otherwise, and we have other ways
[00:03:50.100]and other things we need to get over and read and process.
[00:03:53.820]So there are a lot of other reading tasks,
[00:03:55.710]like reports we have to write or read or student papers
[00:03:59.820]and student dissertations right now.
[00:04:02.400]We're reading dissertations because it's that time of year
[00:04:05.070]or that time of the semester.
[00:04:06.840]And so there's a lot of other reading
[00:04:08.760]that is not necessarily reading in your area of research.
[00:04:13.890]And so it's important to have a method.
[00:04:17.160]You call it a system.
[00:04:18.870]And I think we have very different approach to systems.
[00:04:23.277]And this is why it's useful to have that conversation
[00:04:26.280]'cause I was thinking, "Do I have a system?"
[00:04:27.930]I guess I do.
[00:04:29.550]Okay, what is that system?
[00:04:30.450]Talk to me. My system is people.
[00:04:32.340]My system has always been people.
[00:04:34.650]So... Okay.
[00:04:35.970]I use my interactions
[00:04:40.470]with people to help me read through things.
[00:04:42.690]So it's a few thing.
[00:04:44.490]People are a commitment device.
[00:04:46.680]So for example, if I teach a class about something I need
[00:04:49.530]to refresh my knowledge on,
[00:04:51.480]then I will build a reading list and I will read it.
[00:04:54.510]So that's a really useful strategy.
[00:04:56.970]And I have groups that do mini studies.
[00:05:00.540]For example, computer science has a group
[00:05:03.390]that gets together twice a week.
[00:05:05.220]I can't make twice a week,
[00:05:06.660]but if I make once every two weeks,
[00:05:09.600]I get to read something about computer science education,
[00:05:12.150]which I'm interested in right now,
[00:05:14.070]and we get to discuss it.
[00:05:15.480]And that creates this sense of I'm gonna show up.
[00:05:19.800]I'd better do at least rudimentary reading of this article,
[00:05:23.070]and while we're talking, I'll pick up a few more things.
[00:05:25.470]So that's another way to use people.
[00:05:27.480]The third way is, of course, to use conferences
[00:05:32.370]where you are actually two years before publication,
[00:05:34.860]you can hear from the people you're interested in
[00:05:37.200]that you know are leading some interesting research.
[00:05:40.080]You can hear about what they're doing right now.
[00:05:42.270]In a year to two years, it'll show up in print.
[00:05:44.880]So you're actually kind of hopping the line on
[00:05:48.810]where you are gonna go with reading.
[00:05:50.790]And then I use reviews.
[00:05:55.410]So I review for a few journals.
[00:05:57.060]I'm very selective about where I review,
[00:06:00.630]but that allows me to see
[00:06:02.580]what other people are doing in the literature review.
[00:06:05.100]And of course, the paper itself.
[00:06:06.600]But the literature review often leads me to some things
[00:06:09.540]where I go, "Oh, I haven't read this.
[00:06:11.370]I need to at least take a look."
[00:06:12.960]Sometimes it's to see that it's the right interpretation
[00:06:15.960]as part of the review process,
[00:06:17.220]but sometimes it's just like, "This is curious.
[00:06:19.410]I think it's worth at least taking a look at it."
[00:06:23.190]And so that's another way.
[00:06:26.100]And finally, working with students,
[00:06:30.240]with graduate students going
[00:06:31.590]through the dissertation process.
[00:06:33.300]There's a back and forth
[00:06:34.860]about creating the literature review
[00:06:36.810]and everything around it.
[00:06:37.680]That's another opportunity to have a window.
[00:06:40.170]So I take advantage of it
[00:06:41.820]because we all want to be totally caught up,
[00:06:44.430]but there's too much coming at us
[00:06:47.130]and too many other assignments that have clear deadlines
[00:06:51.270]around them and clear steps that we need to take.
[00:06:54.570]So that, naturally, comes first.
[00:06:57.480]So I use people and opportunities to create these deadlines.
[00:07:02.850]So I will actually show up and get done
[00:07:05.910]and not push it into that
[00:07:07.650]after 8:30 magic time where nothing happens really
[00:07:11.670]with a clear way
[00:07:16.770]to process.
[00:07:18.330]Yeah, I feel like my own personal system
[00:07:20.660]is a little disconnected perhaps.
[00:07:24.359]Okay.
[00:07:25.710]Okay, tell me more. From all of that.
[00:07:27.420]So, whereas yours is very people oriented,
[00:07:31.260]some of mine is people oriented,
[00:07:33.180]but it's really about,
[00:07:38.490]like, thinking through the flows of information
[00:07:42.300]and how I kind of assess what's out there
[00:07:45.960]and how I move that into my working resources
[00:07:50.490]for my thinking, my teaching, my writing, my research.
[00:07:55.170]I always start with have you ever played with BrowZine?
[00:07:59.040]I have not.
[00:08:00.150]So BrowZine is not sponsored,
[00:08:03.390]but if you want to, I don't know how that works.
[00:08:07.080]Anyway, so BrowZine is this really interesting app
[00:08:13.050]that connects with,
[00:08:15.540]so for us, it connects with our UNL library account.
[00:08:18.600]Yeah.
[00:08:19.433]And you can load up journals
[00:08:24.240]that you follow within BrowZine
[00:08:26.187]and it automatically updates.
[00:08:28.260]So instead of having to go to, say, Google Scholar
[00:08:33.090]and searching for a particular article,
[00:08:34.386]Yep.
[00:08:35.219]You can load up these shelves,
[00:08:38.310]they call them, with the journals
[00:08:40.050]that typically publish the kinds of stuff
[00:08:42.360]that you're following and you can have different shelves
[00:08:44.730]for different purposes.
[00:08:45.870]So I have a reading instruction,
[00:08:48.720]writing instruction shelf.
[00:08:50.040]I have a teacher education shelf.
[00:08:51.900]I have a children's literature shelf.
[00:08:54.360]And what I really like about
[00:08:57.480]that particular app is it collects all
[00:09:02.465]of my, like, core resources in one spot.
[00:09:08.220]And I get an announcement
[00:09:09.480]when a new issue has been uploaded,
[00:09:12.210]I go, I check the table of contents,
[00:09:14.580]I think through which ones based upon the titles.
[00:09:19.080]And sometimes I go check the abstract
[00:09:22.320]to think through what's the usability
[00:09:25.260]Yeah. Of that
[00:09:26.093]in terms of it's all usable,
[00:09:27.930]but is it usable to...
[00:09:30.519]To the work you're doing.
[00:09:31.352]To the work that I am doing, either again in my teaching,
[00:09:34.190]in my writing, or in my thinking.
[00:09:36.630]And then I export it out if it's useful
[00:09:39.780]and throw it into my annotation software,
[00:09:43.170]Because then I can annotate there, cite it as I'm writing.
[00:09:48.810]And then I have this like buildup of,
[00:09:52.350]within my annotation software, my citation software,
[00:09:55.230]I have a folder where everything lives
[00:09:57.810]until I've processed it.
[00:09:59.370]Yeah. And then I start sorting it
[00:10:02.070]and foldering it in other ways,
[00:10:05.700]which should be no surprise to anyone.
[00:10:08.850]No. That there's lots
[00:10:09.990]of folders.
[00:10:11.580]But lots of folders actually make a lot of sense
[00:10:14.400]because if you put it in a large vat,
[00:10:16.590]it's not any different than having it just in a library.
[00:10:19.800]Right. If you don't,
[00:10:20.760]I mean, the magic here is the organizational system
[00:10:23.760]because everything is searchable.
[00:10:26.130]But if you are putting a big vat,
[00:10:27.720]then you still have to search.
[00:10:29.370]The minute there's a file system or a folder system,
[00:10:32.700]then you have a systematic way
[00:10:35.820]to identify what you need instead of frantically searching,
[00:10:38.880]which you can do anyway on Google
[00:10:40.770]or wherever, library resources.
[00:10:43.650]Right, and what I've tried to do,
[00:10:47.790]particularly as I've been,
[00:10:48.623]like, doing all this reading around knowledge,
[00:10:52.350]is thinking about how I'm mobilizing those systems
[00:10:55.290]for action.
[00:10:56.123]And I'm not sure Yeah.
[00:10:56.956]That I've always been good at that.
[00:10:58.350]So it's something that I'm really trying to be,
[00:11:00.270]trying to be better at
[00:11:02.400]in terms of I'm doing all of this work,
[00:11:06.750]but am I doing this work in ways that are usable
[00:11:11.580]for the work that it's supposed to support?
[00:11:13.230]Does that make sense?
[00:11:14.130]Yes.
[00:11:15.660]And so that's kind of where I'm at,
[00:11:17.490]but I'm also kind of
[00:11:18.750]in a conference hibernation period.
[00:11:24.243]Mm, yeah.
[00:11:25.729]So, yeah. That changes things.
[00:11:28.560]That's gonna stop
[00:11:29.393]at some point. Yeah.
[00:11:30.384]Right, like, I will get back into conferences.
[00:11:35.220]I will do that.
[00:11:36.210]Yeah. It'll be fine.
[00:11:37.043]And one of the things that emerges both conferences,
[00:11:40.080]but writing and research is now,
[00:11:44.370]for the most part, a collaborative effort.
[00:11:47.040]And where I learn a lot is from colleagues.
[00:11:50.850]When we go into a new area
[00:11:52.410]where they bring in a certain amount of expertise,
[00:11:55.410]my first question is what are the two
[00:11:57.210]or three pieces I need to read to understand this better?
[00:12:01.500]So for example, recently we've been writing
[00:12:04.290]about empowerment and teacher engagement
[00:12:08.100]and teacher identity.
[00:12:09.510]So I went to the people who are co-writing with me
[00:12:13.050]and I said, "What are the pieces that I need to read
[00:12:15.720]to understand this topic better?"
[00:12:17.880]A foundation and then kind of a cutting edge piece.
[00:12:21.540]And so I do use my colleagues that have a lot of expertise,
[00:12:25.350]whether they're colleagues in this building
[00:12:27.150]or colleagues somewhere else where we collaborate
[00:12:29.640]or they're people I meet at a conference.
[00:12:33.510]So that's where the conference, again,
[00:12:35.430]that informal interaction after presentations
[00:12:38.730]or just during a get-together
[00:12:40.410]is usually helpful if you use it that way.
[00:12:43.560]So introvert system, extrovert system.
[00:12:46.470]Absolutely.
[00:12:47.303]I see how this works now.
[00:12:48.136]Okay.
[00:12:49.014]Okay, I can separate these two things out.
[00:12:51.300]This makes sense.
[00:12:53.430]So those are kind of the systems that we're each utilizing.
[00:12:58.350]Yeah.
[00:13:03.870]So one of the things that I also came across this summer
[00:13:06.960]as I'm cleaning out, like, you know,
[00:13:10.620]Swedish death clean of my basement.
[00:13:14.654]It's a thing.
[00:13:15.787]Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a thing.
[00:13:16.620]I know.
[00:13:17.453]I know it's a thing.
[00:13:18.286]It's a thing I respect.
[00:13:19.119]And so one of the things
[00:13:19.952]that I came across was this huge binder
[00:13:26.100]that I utilized for my dissertation
[00:13:28.770]in order to... Oh, wow.
[00:13:29.603]Build up Yeah.
[00:13:30.436]My literature review.
[00:13:32.280]And I was just thinking about,
[00:13:35.220]like, 12 years out,
[00:13:41.310]like, what was the function of that binder, right?
[00:13:43.860]And it was really to help me think
[00:13:45.990]through that particular literature review
[00:13:49.200]without really thinking
[00:13:52.050]about how future me would use that, if that makes any sense.
[00:13:59.700]And so again, I've been trying to really shift
[00:14:03.150]and have been trying to engage in this shift
[00:14:05.490]for a while now in terms of, like, when I read,
[00:14:09.570]how am I sending some love letters
[00:14:13.230]to my future self
[00:14:14.640]in terms of the durability of the ideas within this article,
[00:14:18.780]so that when I sit down
[00:14:20.580]to get ready to write a literature review
[00:14:22.710]or pull upon some of this research,
[00:14:24.840]that I'm not having to rewrite or reread
[00:14:30.570]Yeah. The article
[00:14:31.403]'cause again, that's time.
[00:14:32.670]Yeah.
[00:14:34.200]And that's time you seldom have.
[00:14:36.000]Right.
[00:14:36.870]So I'm curious about,
[00:14:39.870]the thing that struck me particularly
[00:14:41.490]about that binder was I just kept thinking, like,
[00:14:43.627]"What was all this highlighting for?"
[00:14:46.759](Guy laughing)
[00:14:47.970]Also before the advent of mild liners, man,
[00:14:50.970]all we had were neon color options.
[00:14:52.950]Yes. It was a very sad.
[00:14:54.930]How far we have come, technology,
[00:14:56.670]technological advances.
[00:14:58.170]Like, give me a good olive green highlighter
[00:15:00.960]these days,
[00:15:01.939](Nick's lips smacking) chef's kiss.
[00:15:03.630]But I would love to know a little bit more
[00:15:06.660]about how do you,
[00:15:11.999]after leaving an article
[00:15:13.740]or after leaving
[00:15:14.573]a book chapter... Yeah.
[00:15:15.406]Or what have you, how do you leave yourself
[00:15:17.370]with some durable goods to support your future writing
[00:15:19.830]so that when you get into that writing, you're not like,
[00:15:21.607]"Oh my gosh, I have to reread this whole thing
[00:15:22.950]'cause I don't remember what was what it was about."
[00:15:24.310]Yeah. And talk me through.
[00:15:25.980]So I usually use notes.
[00:15:29.610]I don't like highlighting.
[00:15:30.990]I liked highlighting in graduate school,
[00:15:34.508]as you were saying,
[00:15:35.460]the highlighting works in very short term.
[00:15:38.370]So if you just need to write the paper now
[00:15:40.620]and you're reading a piece for now,
[00:15:43.770]the highlighting would probably work.
[00:15:45.390]I don't believe highlighting works long term
[00:15:47.850]because of two things I thin.
[00:15:50.520]One is that you forget what was your methodology
[00:15:54.240]or your thinking behind the highlighting
[00:15:56.250]and what prompted it.
[00:15:57.990]And so you look at it just like in looking at it
[00:16:01.650]from a distance of more than in years,
[00:16:03.240]like looking at somebody else's highlighting.
[00:16:05.430]It's like, "What were they thinking?
[00:16:06.810]This is not where it is."
[00:16:08.130]So that's part of it.
[00:16:10.380]So I stopped highlighting a long time ago actually,
[00:16:13.830]but I write short notes and summaries.
[00:16:16.740]My summaries are not linear summaries.
[00:16:19.710]They're more like here are the concepts that are here
[00:16:23.610]and this is how it connects to the work I'm doing right now.
[00:16:26.310]So there's a short series of notes.
[00:16:29.370]I usually email them to myself.
[00:16:30.960]And so that's my folder system is I have folders based
[00:16:35.190]on the projects I'm doing
[00:16:36.360]and it fits within one of my writing projects.
[00:16:39.060]So it sits there, but I know it exists.
[00:16:41.880]I often find that I seldom have to go back to them
[00:16:46.080]because after I wrote them, if I wrote them well,
[00:16:48.450]'Cause I'm Guy Trainin
[00:16:49.350]and I'm amazing. No.
[00:16:51.420]That was not the point.
[00:16:52.499]It's when you do make the notes,
[00:16:54.870]you tend to remember the highlights.
[00:16:56.970]And so for me, that is a system,
[00:17:02.700]but I do write notes
[00:17:03.960]because I think that if I just read it,
[00:17:05.790]there's a vague memory, there's a shadow of memory
[00:17:08.610]that is totally useless.
[00:17:10.200]If I do a summary,
[00:17:13.172]I have a very good chance of remembering a lot more
[00:17:16.650]and something to go back to
[00:17:18.270]and say, "Oh, this is how it connects."
[00:17:19.950]And then I can reread a section or just take it.
[00:17:24.690]I often find that when I go back to those pieces,
[00:17:27.630]I actually find a different nugget that is somehow relevant
[00:17:31.050]to something fairly different.
[00:17:33.180]So that's something you do need to keep in mind
[00:17:35.310]that within that system,
[00:17:37.800]the idea behind notes is there might be nuggets there
[00:17:40.560]that will inform later writing
[00:17:42.480]without being highly relevant right now.
[00:17:45.390]Right.
[00:17:46.223]And as I'm thinking about,
[00:17:49.770]so I'm doing something new
[00:17:53.760]as I'm engaging in my reading right now.
[00:17:56.370]But I used to have this dual system where I would keep,
[00:18:00.960]I was using papers for a while
[00:18:01.838]as my annotation system. Yep.
[00:18:05.580]And then I started using,
[00:18:09.690]I just discontinued it, what is its name?
[00:18:12.120]But it integrated with Google Docs better
[00:18:15.420]and with my iPad better and I could switch everything over.
[00:18:18.810]I think I'm gonna make a move to EndNote...
[00:18:20.470]Okay. Next just because it seems
[00:18:22.140]to be the most...
[00:18:23.370]It's stable.
[00:18:24.720]It's endured, right? Yes.
[00:18:25.860]And I'm also tired of paying subscriptions.
[00:18:29.670]Very true. (Nick sighing)
[00:18:30.503]Find out what your institution has...
[00:18:31.419]Yes. Through the library.
[00:18:34.470]And it's at that point it's freely available to you
[00:18:38.490]and use that. 'cause it is really easy.
[00:18:41.580]And if you're a graduate student
[00:18:42.900]or a beginning assistant professor,
[00:18:46.200]you have a lot on your plate.
[00:18:47.730]A, B, you don't get paid enough
[00:18:50.760]to start paying lots of subscriptions.
[00:18:52.950]Some of them are necessary.
[00:18:54.360]But if you can start with something
[00:18:56.070]that the university supplies
[00:18:57.780]and there are ways to transfer them between systems.
[00:19:00.540]Yeah.
[00:19:01.768]And to a really pragmatic point, like,
[00:19:03.251]Yeah.
[00:19:06.517]This is probably my seventh citation manager...
[00:19:09.090]Oh wow.
[00:19:09.923]That I've used in the course of my,
[00:19:11.490]you know, 12 years. Yeah.
[00:19:14.040]And I mean, I haven't ever had a problem with PDF loss
[00:19:19.770]or file loss or information loss.
[00:19:22.980]Like, sometimes I will have to,
[00:19:24.840]there's always that, like, getting to know you moment.
[00:19:28.860]Yeah. Where, okay,
[00:19:31.020]how does this work now
[00:19:33.090]if I'm working in Microsoft Word versus Microsoft Docs
[00:19:36.870]versus, you know, other places where you might be writing.
[00:19:42.300]But I have found that citation management system to be,
[00:19:47.040]or that citation tech to be really, really helpful.
[00:19:51.750]And normally, I would have that on one end
[00:19:55.530]to, like, track my annotations.
[00:19:57.540]Like, it was a game changer once these apps started syncing
[00:20:01.770]with my iPad and my iPhone.
[00:20:04.590]And I could be reading and annotating wherever,
[00:20:07.170]more on the iPad
[00:20:08.160]than on my iPhone. Yeah.
[00:20:09.060]I'm not a big iPhone reader. Reader.
[00:20:12.030]I'm not of that generation.
[00:20:15.570]And then I would start keeping kind
[00:20:20.130]of a separate notebook of,
[00:20:23.550]oh, these are the quotes
[00:20:24.870]that I either want to understand what made them so impactful
[00:20:29.850]or quotes that I could see myself using
[00:20:33.660]in further pieces and how I could see myself building upon
[00:20:38.280]what they've kind of asserted thinking
[00:20:40.800]about, like, what the big ideas are.
[00:20:42.807]And so I'm trying to shift
[00:20:45.990]from that dual resource system
[00:20:49.830]to having... One?
[00:20:51.690]One system where I'm just working
[00:20:54.390]within my citation software as much as possible.
[00:20:58.170]One, because the world is burning
[00:21:00.960]and like, we can recycle paper,
[00:21:03.300]but Yeah.
[00:21:04.470]It still takes energy to do that.
[00:21:05.960]So there's this ecological imperative there.
[00:21:09.000]But also just the ability to have it all in one place
[00:21:13.260]instead of, oh, which notebook are the notes for
[00:21:16.680]that article in,
[00:21:17.820]'cause, like, the bare basic stuff is
[00:21:20.760]within my citation...
[00:21:21.975]Yeah. Management work,
[00:21:23.310]but the, like, meatier stuff
[00:21:26.820]that helps actually spark thinking are in my notebooks.
[00:21:31.800]And so I'm trying to bridge those two systems.
[00:21:35.400]And here's what I always think
[00:21:37.680]and I talk to, especially graduate students,
[00:21:40.260]but if you're starting a career in a new place,
[00:21:42.930]that might work as well.
[00:21:44.610]And that is this is the time to start on a citation manager,
[00:21:50.070]is start early.
[00:21:51.240]I find that the habits
[00:21:53.520]and the technology we start using in graduate school
[00:21:56.550]or right after are the most durable.
[00:21:59.400]Changing in the way,
[00:22:00.570]like you've changed seven,
[00:22:02.160]these are sometimes necessary steps,
[00:22:06.540]but they can lead to that procrastination that feels useful
[00:22:10.230]but is actually procrastination.
[00:22:11.760]And that is I'm getting to try a new software.
[00:22:15.840]So essentially, Guy is telling me
[00:22:17.100]that I'm procrastinating.
[00:22:19.050]Well, that you have procrastinated.
[00:22:21.780]But organizing can be a way to procrastinate.
[00:22:26.250]And that is I'm now dedicating a few weeks
[00:22:30.810]to reorganizing everything.
[00:22:31.880]Whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:22:33.240]Who's doing a few weeks?
[00:22:35.340]No, that's what I'm saying.
[00:22:36.780]This is the warning.
[00:22:37.950]If this is starting to take over your time,
[00:22:43.440]and especially when you are starting on a piece
[00:22:46.350]of software,
[00:22:47.220]in the beginning, there's gonna be that learning curve
[00:22:49.350]and it's going to take a while
[00:22:50.760]and you need to take the time to do it well
[00:22:52.650]because if you are switching
[00:22:53.910]or if you are creating, it is worth the time to do it well.
[00:22:57.000]So it is useful,
[00:22:58.710]but if six months in, you are still working really,
[00:23:01.830]really hard to make it work
[00:23:03.480]and it's a lot of work every time you do something with it,
[00:23:06.630]then maybe it's the wrong emphasis
[00:23:09.300]or the wrong piece of software.
[00:23:10.680]So that's the other thing is you need to be aware
[00:23:13.530]that this is not stealing your time.
[00:23:15.150]It's stealing time from being actually productive
[00:23:18.180]on your area of research.
[00:23:20.280]Well, and keeping in mind
[00:23:21.450]that the use of a citation manager is
[00:23:25.860]to help you be able to find the information
[00:23:29.760]that you need at the time that you need it, right?
[00:23:32.100]So part of that,
[00:23:34.470]part of how you use that software,
[00:23:36.720]no software is gonna just necessarily do
[00:23:38.460]that for you, right?
[00:23:39.293]Like, we create... Yeah.
[00:23:40.980]The user experience as we use it.
[00:23:44.520]And I myself typically
[00:23:47.580]have a fairly loose frame
[00:23:50.400]for how I organize stuff in my citation software.
[00:23:53.160]Like Yeah.
[00:23:55.890]I have kind of some key words that I leverage
[00:24:00.390]and organize based on that just coming out of,
[00:24:04.050]oh, this is a really good teaching idea,
[00:24:06.510]this is something that I want to be keeping
[00:24:09.030]in the back of my head as I'm writing about some stuff.
[00:24:12.690]But yeah, I think it's really important to,
[00:24:17.430]so yes, I've gone through multiple different citation pieces
[00:24:21.690]and I would say that each iteration,
[00:24:24.210]as I've moved from citation manager
[00:24:26.250]to citation manager, has been an improvement.
[00:24:28.230]Yeah. It's allowed me
[00:24:29.250]to do certain things differently
[00:24:31.080]that I really appreciate,
[00:24:34.050]but I also don't fetishize the software.
[00:24:39.840]That's important. Right?
[00:24:40.855]Like... Yeah.
[00:24:41.688]If things don't transfer in,
[00:24:43.860]if certain things don't transfer in,
[00:24:45.120]like, when I went from EndNote to Papers,
[00:24:50.910]I lost certain information.
[00:24:53.190]I was like, "Eh, if I need it, I need it.
[00:24:54.810]I'm just gonna keep moving on."
[00:24:56.670]Like, this is one of the unfortunate pieces
[00:25:01.170]that sometimes happens when you shift things like that.
[00:25:05.640]And so as I'm thinking about these systems,
[00:25:07.920]I'm really trying to think through,
[00:25:09.060]it's not the system itself,
[00:25:10.500]it's what the system allows me to do and buys me some time.
[00:25:15.240]It's really the affordances of that system.
[00:25:17.790]And where I find that affordance important is
[00:25:21.180]at the beginning
[00:25:22.350]when you are formulating ideas
[00:25:24.510]and creating a literature review,
[00:25:28.140]it is a huge time server at the end
[00:25:30.600]where you actually need to create your reference list
[00:25:33.870]and the accuracy there.
[00:25:35.310]It can take hours if you're not organized right there.
[00:25:40.233]And so that is time well spent
[00:25:44.820]when you actually create that
[00:25:47.850]and it can update and do whatever is new on the APA, MLA,
[00:25:52.290]or whatever format, Chicago, whatever format you're using,
[00:25:55.380]it can just produce it and move on.
[00:25:58.020]That's highly effective and will save you a lot of time
[00:26:01.410]and heartache at the point where it becomes really technical
[00:26:05.580]and it's all about the details
[00:26:07.170]and if the software can do the details you want.
[00:26:10.350]Right.
[00:26:11.610]And I think when we think about citation software,
[00:26:13.470]that's the reference page is where we,
[00:26:15.990]Yep. Like, boom,
[00:26:17.370]that's what we want.
[00:26:18.660]But there's work at the front end that it does.
[00:26:21.300]And also trying to think through is that the best?
[00:26:24.360]Are we expanding...
[00:26:25.530]Yep. Our best use of that?
[00:26:27.390]And so I've been thinking about this a lot
[00:26:29.760]because I'm teaching a course in writing in the academy
[00:26:33.510]for our doc students and our EdD students in the spring.
[00:26:36.990]So I've been thinking a lot
[00:26:38.010]about how
[00:26:41.610]I build up some systems
[00:26:44.370]and how I can make that clear
[00:26:45.600]and apparent to our students
[00:26:48.540]who may not be as familiar writing...
[00:26:51.810]Yeah. For academic journals
[00:26:53.430]or practitioner journals
[00:26:54.420]or wherever they're writing.
[00:26:57.360]And I love your your email idea.
[00:27:02.310]Like, I can't imagine sending myself more email
[00:27:05.670]to compound the fact that there's...
[00:27:07.290]They go directly into a... Yeah.
[00:27:10.560]But I have been thinking
[00:27:12.630]about summaries a lot more
[00:27:16.260]in terms of, like, executive summaries
[00:27:18.990]where I read "Building a Second Brain"
[00:27:24.090]and "The Para Method"...
[00:27:25.301]Yeah. This summer.
[00:27:26.970]And one of the things that Forte does in there
[00:27:30.600]is he helped me think
[00:27:34.410]about ways
[00:27:37.650]to process things that I've read.
[00:27:40.770]So like, okay, you've read it, you've made all
[00:27:42.800]of these notes, Yeah.
[00:27:44.550]Now it's time to process those notes.
[00:27:47.310]Which is so interesting because I ask my students to do that
[00:27:50.250]and I don't always do
[00:27:51.420]that myself. Yeah.
[00:27:53.430]And so I've started doing that
[00:27:54.357]and that has made something of a difference
[00:27:58.380]in terms of the kinds of stuff
[00:28:02.670]that I'm capturing
[00:28:04.080]and how that's translating
[00:28:05.820]into writing around those things.
[00:28:09.540]Like, it's felt
[00:28:13.260]like these connections are more concrete
[00:28:16.290]and really helping me, like, delineate
[00:28:19.800]and create nuance within the concepts
[00:28:22.080]that I'm writing about at the moment,
[00:28:23.670]like knowledge construction
[00:28:25.980]as a result of reading, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:28:27.900]So I would love to know about,
[00:28:31.650]so we've talked about your shifts as you're reading
[00:28:34.500]and you hinted at the end about that shift
[00:28:36.570]from when you are reading,
[00:28:39.960]what happens as you're writing.
[00:28:42.210]So you've got all these emails,
[00:28:43.800]you've got all these things that you've read.
[00:28:46.230]What kind of shifts do you see yourself engaging in?
[00:28:48.960]How do you engage with that reading when you're writing,
[00:28:52.770]when you're moving from consumption to production?
[00:28:57.360]So this goes back to literature reviews,
[00:29:01.830]which we've talked about a little bit before,
[00:29:03.960]and strategies around those.
[00:29:05.490]These are not my favorite kinds of things to do.
[00:29:08.820]I love the experimentation, I love the describing
[00:29:11.610]what I've done... Do tell.
[00:29:12.443]And all of that. Do tell, Guy.
[00:29:14.537]But you have to really set the stage both
[00:29:18.180]from a framework perspective or theoretical perspective
[00:29:20.580]and then what does empirical,
[00:29:22.590]if there is any empirical data, say about this.
[00:29:26.010]And so I find that it's an interplay.
[00:29:29.370]I chart it out,
[00:29:30.990]I chart how the introduction is gonna go,
[00:29:35.220]here are the topics that we need to hit,
[00:29:37.740]here's the theoretical background we need,
[00:29:39.840]here are the empirical evidence, usually funneled to say,
[00:29:44.280]and this is where we are
[00:29:45.180]and this is where my research question is.
[00:29:47.130]So it's a fairly structured thing that I do in advance.
[00:29:50.160]And that's when I find the holes where I'm like,
[00:29:55.267]"I am not sure what I know about X.
[00:29:58.530]Let's go back to the notes
[00:29:59.820]and see if I've got enough to work on.
[00:30:02.280]Or do I need to actually beef up my literature review."
[00:30:05.190]So it's a conversation between what I already know
[00:30:08.820]and what I need to go back
[00:30:10.050]and make sure I have the most up to date.
[00:30:12.300]Because sometimes as you went back to, you know,
[00:30:14.730]you look at your dissertation
[00:30:16.230]and that's 12 years old.
[00:30:18.240]And the fact that it was in a binder,
[00:30:20.730]Some of the theory,
[00:30:22.950]some of the theory may very well be the same,
[00:30:26.760]but the empirical results, I mean, it's been 12 years.
[00:30:29.370]The theory might have shifted a little bit.
[00:30:31.230]Empirical results are considerably newer.
[00:30:33.810]Oh, it's Aladdin.
[00:30:35.190]We're in a whole new world.
[00:30:36.060]Yeah.
[00:30:37.050]And so from that perspective,
[00:30:40.680]you have to go back and say,
[00:30:42.727]"Okay, I had this, but this is really old."
[00:30:46.290]And I've gotten this review.
[00:30:47.880]Often, you are citing things that are too old.
[00:30:51.090]And sometimes I accept that,
[00:30:52.560]especially with empirical results,
[00:30:54.090]you want something closer.
[00:30:55.320]But when I talk about theory
[00:30:56.820]or kind of foundational readings,
[00:30:58.980]they are going to be a little bit older.
[00:31:00.720]That's why we call them foundational.
[00:31:03.450]I don't like the idea of an instant classic.
[00:31:05.820]Sometimes there is, but that's often overhyped.
[00:31:08.880]I also have to say I appreciate your use
[00:31:10.500]of foundational versus seminal.
[00:31:14.070]Yeah. Which always strikes me
[00:31:15.240]as patriarchal and somewhat misogynistic.
[00:31:18.600]So thank you.
[00:31:20.241]All right. I appreciate that.
[00:31:21.600]All right. That drives me crazy.
[00:31:24.960]Particularly when it's in
[00:31:27.870]like a we'll talk about diversity statements
[00:31:30.720]as part of the job market. Yep.
[00:31:32.520]But they'll be like,
[00:31:34.237]"What's your seminal thinking...
[00:31:35.890]Yeah. About diversity?"
[00:31:37.140]I'm always like, "Oh, buddy."
[00:31:41.231]Oh.
[00:31:42.660]And that does bring an important point
[00:31:45.510]and that is that you need to look at your sources
[00:31:49.620]and make sure that they represent a diverse,
[00:31:54.090]diverse points of view
[00:31:55.500]and not just one seminal point of view,
[00:31:58.830]but really you want a diversity of point of views.
[00:32:00.570]I literally just cringed a little inside.
[00:32:02.550]Yeah. Cringed.
[00:32:05.550]And really think through,
[00:32:08.100]making sure that they represent different histories
[00:32:12.900]and different perspectives,
[00:32:18.300]potentially even, and maybe even advisedly so international
[00:32:22.530]when it makes sense and local
[00:32:25.740]but diverse when it makes sense.
[00:32:28.230]Because we have a tendency to look just at a few things
[00:32:31.740]like what's the frequency count
[00:32:33.750]of the times this paper was cited?
[00:32:36.570]And it's like this was cited many, many times.
[00:32:39.510]Therefore, I should cite it.
[00:32:40.683]Must be foundational.
[00:32:42.330]Yes, and so you really want to make sure
[00:32:45.900]that you're giving light to all of these other perspectives
[00:32:50.010]to make sure that first of all it's rounded,
[00:32:51.840]it's well thought out
[00:32:53.760]because we do live in a different world
[00:32:55.470]where we are actually considering all of that
[00:32:58.080]and we do need to branch out from that very narrow view.
[00:33:02.160]So make sure that as you're thinking about through
[00:33:05.910]what are you writing, what are other perspectives you need
[00:33:09.180]to write before you go forward.
[00:33:11.760]And I think that's one of the reasons
[00:33:14.910]that BrowZine has been important is
[00:33:17.250]because I make sure I put journals on there
[00:33:20.880]that I might not normally read
[00:33:23.700]and it forces me to do that work
[00:33:26.460]versus it's really easy to stay very, very sheltered.
[00:33:29.820]Yes. And so I try,
[00:33:31.380]particularly in reading education right now,
[00:33:32.910]I can't do that.
[00:33:34.650]I don't have the affordance to do that, right?
[00:33:38.280]So based upon my field,
[00:33:39.840]I need to be reading the "Journal of Dyslexia".
[00:33:43.740]Yeah. I need to be reading,
[00:33:44.790]I need to be reading these other things
[00:33:46.140]where stuff that impacts my everyday job,
[00:33:50.010]stuff that impacts my research is being discussed
[00:33:52.440]and it's not in venues
[00:33:53.820]that I would normally think through.
[00:33:58.800]But like you, I tend to tend to think about
[00:34:02.280]within my citation system,
[00:34:04.230]pulling all of those articles within that larger topic
[00:34:07.590]and then thinking through what the connections are,
[00:34:09.840]what are the big ideas between them,
[00:34:12.600]how do all the quotes that I've pulled out link up?
[00:34:16.470]What are the executive summaries that I've developed
[00:34:19.830]for each of these articles?
[00:34:21.810]And that's what I kind of use as my backbone
[00:34:26.400]as I'm thinking through what the argument I want to make is.
[00:34:29.760]And how I'm going to build upon
[00:34:31.530]what others have argued in the past.
[00:34:36.120]And the one extra piece in any summary of article
[00:34:40.410]that we haven't mentioned,
[00:34:42.060]and maybe it's because it's obvious for us,
[00:34:44.610]but is really important
[00:34:46.560]and that is write down the critique as well.
[00:34:50.970]Every paper, no matter how good,
[00:34:53.310]has some area where they are weaker,
[00:34:56.520]whether it is they are not considering diverse perspectives
[00:35:02.490]or they they have potentially
[00:35:08.100]some methodological problems
[00:35:09.600]if it's an empirical study and there's no such thing
[00:35:12.240]as a study without methodological concerns.
[00:35:15.210]It's just impossible to make the perfect thing,
[00:35:18.120]at least in our area.
[00:35:19.830]And so we have to constantly be aware of the critique
[00:35:24.900]and think is that critique really making it problematic?
[00:35:30.420]Or how do we counter that critique?
[00:35:33.360]Or how do we account for it?
[00:35:34.860]Don't ignore it.
[00:35:35.760]Other people know as well.
[00:35:37.710]And so that allows you to think about
[00:35:40.350]where do I put it in the hierarchy
[00:35:41.730]and what other evidence do I need to bring to compliment
[00:35:45.120]that that would make a better argument
[00:35:48.900]than just that one piece.
[00:35:51.180]And I think when you're reading for,
[00:35:53.760]right, we've been talking a lot about reading for writing.
[00:35:55.477]Yeah. But when we're thinking
[00:35:57.060]also about reading
[00:35:58.140]for kind of establishing the boundaries
[00:36:00.450]of what's in your field,
[00:36:01.440]those limitations are helpful
[00:36:05.730]in terms of what work still needs to be done.
[00:36:08.880]Right? Yeah.
[00:36:09.713]Like, what are the limitations effectively accounted for
[00:36:13.740]and what doesn't that particular piece of work do?
[00:36:18.330]And that's really helpful for thinking about,
[00:36:20.280]oh, this is an area of need.
[00:36:22.980]Like, if I'm seeing enough,
[00:36:25.740]the same kinds of limitations
[00:36:27.420]or particular kinds of work,
[00:36:29.970]that gives me an idea for a research question
[00:36:33.840]that I can pursue then, right?
[00:36:36.540]But also, yeah, thinking through
[00:36:41.250]what are both the strengths, the assertions
[00:36:43.830]as well as what are those limitations and tracking those
[00:36:47.460]'cause that may help you think through further ideas.
[00:36:51.220]Yeah, and how maybe your paper is the one
[00:36:54.150]that addresses some of those limitations.
[00:36:56.370]It's one of the ways to find the next step.
[00:36:59.760]The other thing that I was thinking about
[00:37:01.500]as we were talking about this is
[00:37:03.780]that in thinking about research,
[00:37:07.890]especially early on,
[00:37:10.170]while we're saying define the boundaries of your discipline
[00:37:14.250]or your specific area, especially early on,
[00:37:17.490]you want to read outside of that,
[00:37:18.810]you want to find those boundaries,
[00:37:22.050]and those boundaries are found when you try to go into areas
[00:37:25.710]where it seem like there might be something relevant there,
[00:37:28.710]reading there and then realizing,
[00:37:30.517]"Yeah, I've gone too far into that area.
[00:37:32.880]I need to go back."
[00:37:34.320]For example, for a while,
[00:37:37.244]I was reading, on a regular basis,
[00:37:40.260]the "Journal of the American Statistical Society".
[00:37:44.250]For fun?
[00:37:45.083]For fun.
[00:37:45.916]This is what I read for fun
[00:37:47.400]Guy in a bathtub, bubbles, journal of statistics.
[00:37:52.140]Yes. I do want to say
[00:37:53.700]that that's what my kids thought was a bathroom reading
[00:37:56.521](Guy laughing)
[00:37:57.453]when I was in graduate school.
[00:37:58.317]Oh.
[00:37:59.242]Anyway, but there was a point in time
[00:38:02.820]when I started thinking through it
[00:38:04.410]and I realized that while it's interesting
[00:38:08.310]and sometimes even captivating, it is not enough in my area
[00:38:12.060]to spend the very little time I have to read
[00:38:14.700]on these articles.
[00:38:16.200]And so I have decided this is too much,
[00:38:20.070]I'm condensing
[00:38:22.380]and I am always topping a little bit, peeking over fences,
[00:38:26.430]seeing if it's relevant,
[00:38:27.480]and if it's not relevant, retreating.
[00:38:29.700]You get better at it with time, at that decision.
[00:38:32.760]Is this relevant or not?
[00:38:34.020]But it is important to experiment
[00:38:35.790]and to go outside your area
[00:38:37.470]and read in journals you wouldn't necessarily read in
[00:38:40.530]just to make sure that you know what's there
[00:38:43.110]and you see if it's relevant
[00:38:45.060]and sometimes you find a whole new area
[00:38:46.950]and something you really want to delve into.
[00:38:50.280]And sometimes you go, "Well, yeah, that's nice to know,
[00:38:53.880]but it's not gonna end up in my writing."
[00:38:59.001](Guy and Nick laughing)
[00:39:01.620]I had a thought and then it left me.
[00:39:04.140]It's a problem, not caffeinated enough.
[00:39:07.110]Okay.
[00:39:07.943]So to wrap this up,
[00:39:08.776]one, also, this is not that kind of doctor,
[00:39:11.580]I'm Nick Husbye, an a associate professor
[00:39:13.860]of elementary literacy education.
[00:39:15.771]And I'm Guy Trainin, a professor of education here at UNL.
[00:39:19.320]Better late than never, right?
[00:39:22.140]So academics,
[00:39:23.790]like, do an incredible amount of knowledge work.
[00:39:25.680]Yeah. Both in manipulating,
[00:39:28.200]not manipulating,
[00:39:29.033]that's not the word I want to use,
[00:39:30.180]but, like, synthesizing existing knowledge
[00:39:33.690]but also creating new knowledge.
[00:39:35.820]And given just the information streams
[00:39:39.900]that are coming at us now, it's really essential for us
[00:39:42.570]to design systems that work for us.
[00:39:45.540]Yeah. Like, as researchers
[00:39:47.670]and as writers
[00:39:50.430]and part of what I feel makes those systems
[00:39:55.170]so useful is it frees up space to think,
[00:39:59.610]space to,
[00:40:02.670]as David Allen in "Getting Things Done",
[00:40:05.700]another weird classic talks about,
[00:40:09.540]like, use your mind to think about things rather
[00:40:13.170]than think of things, right?
[00:40:16.500]And having a system that feeds
[00:40:20.250]that process of thinking about things is really,
[00:40:23.910]really important.
[00:40:25.410]Also, thanks for helping me film a resource
[00:40:29.370]for my writing class.
[00:40:30.780]Excellent. I appreciate that.
[00:40:31.767]All right, So hopefully
[00:40:34.980]you have gotten some insights into systems
[00:40:37.230]that you can use in order to bring in
[00:40:41.280]and make reading both more efficient
[00:40:45.150]as well as more useful to you as you move
[00:40:47.250]from that consumption stage into that writing stage.
[00:40:52.680]And teaching.
[00:40:53.550]And teaching. And teaching.
[00:40:54.501]Yes, I do have a folder for teaching.
[00:40:56.670]Like, ooh, I wanna try that out.
[00:40:59.550]I had a lot of that this summer.
[00:41:01.020]Lots of that.
[00:41:02.430]I gotta say though, my students are kicking rump...
[00:41:06.660]All right This semester.
[00:41:08.400]Like, they are building some knowledge
[00:41:12.570]when they're like, "So talk to me about gradable antonyms
[00:41:16.500]and relational antonyms
[00:41:18.990]and how do I help students... Excellent.
[00:41:20.550]In elementary understand the differences
[00:41:22.230]between those two things.
[00:41:23.100]So like, I love the knowledge building that they are doing
[00:41:28.140]and also, like, it feels a bit like,
[00:41:30.210]okay, so those are some dividends
[00:41:32.010]Yeah. That are paying off
[00:41:32.850]from the reading that I did this summer
[00:41:34.260]and the changes I made...
[00:41:36.035]All right. In my teaching.
[00:41:36.868]So we'll see how that goes.
[00:41:38.610]All right.
[00:41:39.840]And so I'm Guy Trainin
[00:41:41.340]and I am not that kind of doctor.
[00:41:43.890]And I'm not that kind of doctor either.
[00:41:45.720]We'll see you in the next episode.
[00:41:47.550]Thanks for watching.
[00:41:48.971](upbeat music)

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Not That Kind of Doctor - Reading

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