A. Overall:

Do you think this course is useful for training graduate students and postdocs?

[32] Absolutely!
[ 8 ] I think so.
[ 0 ] No, this is a waste of time.

Do you think this course is useful for:

[12] Graduate students.
[ 5] Postdocs.
[ 3] Faculty members (from a teaching point of view).
[24] All of the above.

How would you rate this course?

[31] Excellent - I enjoyed it very much.
[ 9] Good - I think its okay.
[ 0] Not very good - This is a waste of my time.

B. Individual topics: How do you feel about each of these 5 lectures?

Introduction

[23 ] Extremely useful.
[15 ] Sort of useful.
[ 1 ] Not particularly useful

Experimental Design-How to Get Lab Techniques to Work

[32 ] Extremely useful.
[ 6 ] Sort of useful.
[ 0 ] Not particularly useful

How to Read Papers-How to Take Notes-How to Choose a Project

[30 ] Extremely useful.
[10 ] Sort of useful.
[ 0 ] Not particularly useful

Scientific Writing-How to Prepare Figures and the First Draft

[27 ] Extremely useful.
[ 8 ] Sort of useful.
[ 0 ] Not particularly useful

Oral Presentation

[29 ] Extremely useful.
[11 ] Sort of useful.
[ 0 ] Not particularly useful

C. Handout:

[32 ] Excellent; I think it's a good collection of useful articles.
[ 6 ] Good; nice decoration on my bookshelf-may come handy someday.
[ 0 ] Junk; I think I will throw it out.

D. Achieving the goals?

Have we achieved our goal of "defining Scientific Methods, sharpening some of the tools, and inducing sufficient interest in you to possibly do further reading on this subject?"

[28 ] Absolutely! I think I now know a bit more about the research as a process.
[12 ] I think so - to some extent.
[ 0 ] I am as confused as before, if not more so.

E. Future:

Should Sackler offer this course again in the future?

[32] Absolutely!
[ 8] I think so.
[ 0] No, forget it!

Do you think a course like this will be useful for recruiting graduate students to Sackler? [see Other Comments]

[14] Absolutely!
[25] I think so.
[ 0] No, I think this will drive them away.

F. Your background:

How many years have you been doing research?

[ 4] 0
[27] 1-5
[ 9 ] 6-10
[ 0 ] >10

G. Other comments [Dr. Sun's responses]:

The course is an excellent idea. I am much more comfortable with the idea of doing research and confident that I will be successful. Thank you!!

[Great.]

While the Introductory lecture may not be "useful", I think its very interesting. I'm very interested to read Cajal's book. I think this lecture is very important. Many of the presenters I've heard and professors I've had can really benefit from the lecture on how to give talks.

[You must get a copy of Cajal's book, which is truly inspiring.]

I think one of the reasons this course is very effective is that there are a lot of stuff I already knew but didn't pay attention to or realize, and this course stimulated some of that dead knowledge and stressed the importance of always keeping that knowledge at the back of my mind and thinking process.

[That is exactly what we hoped to accomplish with this course. Great.]

The lecture on reading papers, in my opinion, was more useful for the more experienced readers in the group than for those of us that are just starting out. Maybe next time you could suggest a good science dictionary for the beginners :). In the lecture slides on How to Give an Oral Presentation there was a spelling mistake: temper not tamper-tamper is correctly spelled but it's not correctly used. Spell check doesn't catch that type of mistake.

[I know that you will find it a bit hard at the beginning to adopt the strategy of active, rather than passive, reading. But I hope you will give it a chance and try it. If you pause and think after you read the title, summary, and introduction, and if you try to guess what is the next figure, even if you don't always guess right you will certainly learn much more and come out with a much deeper understanding of the paper. And this doesn't mean it will take a longer time. It's a habit, and a powerful one. The earlier you adopt it in your graduate career, the better off you will be. Regarding spelling, thank you very much for pointing out the typo-I will correct it right away. You are actually making an important point here. You cannot just trust spell check; you must read your slides carefully, or to rehearse your talk with people like yourself.]

I think this is an excellent course to dispel rumors and fears of the laboratory environment for new graduate students like myself.

[Great.]

Great series. I think that more faculty and PI's should do the course, so they can teach the people who pass through their labs the useful techniques. So often, these things must be learned through trial and error, or you have use intuition.

[Great.]

Many of the topics might be better later in our career in graduate school.

[I know some of you may think that your immediate concern is about your course work. But you will soon learn that that is only a relatively small, and transit, part of your graduate education. Although you will not be writing paper or giving formal presentation soon, you are much better off to know what are coming. We hope this course, and its handout, will provide you with a roadmap so that when you encounter these needs in the future, some of the things that you have learned from this course will come back to you, and that you will know there is a great deal of help that is readily available. It is true, however, that many of the things that I talked about will strike a cord more readily with people who have been "burned" before, than with the beginners. If we offer this course annually, you may want to come to some of the lectures again in the future.]

Thank you very much, Dr. Sun, for your great talks!

[My pleasure.]

Not sure how will go over with graduate applicants. Will show Sackler tries to help with all levels, but perhaps they want a sample course lecture more. Second lecture dealing with experimental design in more detail would be nice.

[The question I posed: "Do you think a course like this will be useful for recruiting graduate student to Sackler", was not well worded. I didn't mean to give this whole course to our applicants. What I meant was "Would the fact that Sackler offers a course like this impress future applicants?" Sorry about the confusion. Like you pointed out, however, this course demonstrates clearly Sackler's strong desire and commitment to help our graduate students.]

Some faculty members need help in doing presentations. Since as a graduate student, experimental design is the most important concept to learn, I think we should discuss the subject more. Maybe it would be a good idea to explain how to thoroughly research the experimental design, how to get those original papers that discuss the experiments, and who to talk to when people in your lab can't help. Also, how to trouble shoot more when experiments don't work would be helpful. Overall, the course was very helpful.

[I am glad that you recognize the critical importance of experimental design, which can be a major bottleneck for many beginners.]

A lot of graduate students have thought about the key ideas in some of the lectures, but may not follow them in real life. A course such as this reinforces their own ideas and encourages them to focus on self-improvement. A very rewarding course.

[Great.]

This course is good.

[Good.] I really enjoyed it!

[I am glad.]

"Handout" should correlate directly with lectures...outlines of lecture, in separate chapter.

[This handout covers many broad areas, some of which I did not have time to cover in my lectures. Conversely, many of the important and practical things I talked about, such as the N+(N-1) rule for experimental design, active vs. passive reading, note-taking, figure- and slide-making, are not covered by the handout. So my handout is meant to be a supplement for the lectures. I do hope, however, that you will find many of the articles in the handout interesting and useful. I also hope you will take advantage of the list of recommended books at the end of each chapter. Many of these are outstanding books that I am sure you will enjoy.]

The oral presentation lecture was absolutely perfect.

[Glad that you liked it.]