Friday, September 7, 2012

An Update

It has been quite a while since we posted here, so I thought I would give you an update. We have been busy. We now have a paper from our oldest old study in review:

Stadtlander, L., Giles, M., Sickel, A., Brooks, E., Brown, C., Cormell, M., Ewing, L., Hart, D., Koons, D., Olson, C., Parker, P., Semenova, V., & Stoneking, S. (In Review) Independent Living Oldest-Old and Their Primary Health Provider: A Mixed Method Examination of the Influence of Patient Personality Characteristics. Journal of Applied Gerontology.

And a paper in review on the lab:

Stadtlander, L., Giles, M. & Sickel, A. (In review).  Research Efficacy, Research Knowledge, and the Student Experience: Three Quarters in a Virtual Lab. The American Journal of Distance Education

We presented posters on the lab at conferences in August:
 
Stadtlander, L., Giles, M. & Sickel, A. (2012, August 24). The Student Experience: Three Quarters in an Online Laboratory Poster presented at Walden University Summer Session, Minneapolis, MN.

Stadtlander, L., Giles, M. & Sickel, A. (2012, August 10). Graduate student researchers' knowledge/efficacy: Results from a virtual lab. 28th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning, Madison, Wisconsin
I have been thinking about research in general. I recently started working with a colleague on a grant proposal and I realized how integrated research is into my thinking. It felt very natural (and actually fun) to think about a new project in a totally new area. It was exciting to consider the various ways the project could be done and what variables would be interesting to play with.

Which brings me to the point I wanted to make to new researchers. Learning to do research is a new skill, it is something that takes years to develop, you would not expect to learn the piano by reading about it, why would you expect that you could learn to do research by just reading about it? Be patient with yourself, it is going to take time and energy to learn this skill. But it is worth it, if you want to be researcher or an academic; it will eventually be second nature to you and feel like it is part of who you are. And yes, someday it will actually be fun!

Lee Stadtlander

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