The first run of the online course “Research and Publish with ease” just finished and I am still full of thoughts and feelings. It was a very nice experience. The course was running for 4 weeks (21.2.-20.3. 2022) in a closed LinkedIn group. Before I forget how it was going, I wanted to write down some insights.
I promised the participants that in the course, they will:
🪶 clarify their goals in the research
🪶 learn how to present their contributions
🪶 practice how to present their research to the public
🪶 learn how to write and structure the paper to please the reviewers
🪶 learn about the criteria they should care for to become a senior researcher
Biggest takeaways of the participants
Based on their main takeaways from the course, the participants did learn all of that and also something on top. See the list below:)
How did I promote the course?
I was promoting the course on Facebook and LinkedIn, and sending the invitation to researchers I know around the world to share the information with their students. In the end, 81 people enrolled, and from that 60 joined the LinkedIn group.
It was a real challenge for me to get in contact with people, motivate people to join the group, and make them actively participate. Being many of us deadline hunters also didn’t help :-D.
Who were the participants?
Before I started the course, I wanted to know which country were the participants from and what type of research they are doing. As you can see below, most of the participants were from CR, followed by UK, Slovakia, and Germany. Altogether participants from 20 countries were involved.
As for the field of research, the most participants were in Robotics, Engineering (including electronics and electrical systems), Psychology and social science, Economics, and Material science. Anyway, the range of the research topics is really big covering fields like Economics, Marine science, Natural language processing, and Architecture.
How was the course structured?
I prepared for every week on Monday prerecorded materials (approx. 30 minutes) that I uploaded on LinkedIn. On Thursday we had a live Zoom call for answering questions and digging deeper into the topics, followed by live breakout rooms, that the active participants really enjoyed as they could train with other people to present parts of their research and get feedback.
I was running the course in a LinkedIn group and it worked quite fine. For better organization of the materials, I might the next time consider some other platform. Also, LinkedIn has a restriction that you can upload a maximum 15 minutes video – not that great for tutorials. Next time I will definitely put the videos on YouTube and just link them. StreamYard live streaming to LinkedIn sounds also like an interesting option.
How did the participants like the course?
How did the course meet the expectations of the participants?
Finally, I would like to share some of the participants’ reviews with you:
I am happy, that the participants liked that “the course will equip you with the essential tools to tackle publishing from A to Z”, gave them “useful tips” in “short, well-structured tutorials” and found it “systematic”. What made me the happiest was, reading in the feedback, that they “got confident, motivated and inspired to navigate my research” or “get the confidence to put yourself out there”. Because that was one of the underlying goals of the course.
I was a bit unsure if to make the course for all of the fields of research. But I decided to give it a try. It seemed, that putting together people from different fields and stages of research was beneficial and people appreciated the interaction a lot: “The best thing about it is the community and the experience shared on it.” or “The opportunity to present your work to others and getting feedback is very useful!” Nevertheless, as with everything, it had some negative sides. For example, in breakout rooms, it was sometimes difficult (especially for younger researchers) to give feedback to other participants if they were from totally different fields.
Improvements? Next run? My takeaways.
I have to say, that I was quite happy with how the course went, that people exchanged information and that I also already see some new collaborations and connections between people created (although I hoped for way more, but let’s keep it for next runs :). I just have some small improvements I want to do for the next rounds, like improving the sound of the videos, and adjusting timing as well as some of the assignments for interactive sessions in breakout rooms to make sure that people can always present their research and also get valuable feedback.
If you are interested in the next run of the course, or you know anyone who might benefit from it, you can sign up for the waiting list here: Sign up for the waiting list. I plan to run the course most probably again in the summer (June-August) but have not yet decided on the exact dates.
My three main takeaways are:
- I really enjoy to work with motivated smart people and share the knowledge with them. I love the motivation I get from these interactions.
- Focusing on one thing at one time really helps to achieve whatever you want.
- Anytime you feel demotivated or hopeless, just go on! The diamond might be just one dig further…
Already looking forward to the next run of the course!
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If you are interested in the next run of the course, or you know anyone who might benefit from it, you can sign up for the waiting list here: Sign up for the waiting list.