ASTR 8500 Announcements

ASTRONOMY 8500
ANNOUNCEMENTS

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4/27/2020:

Hi ASTR 8500 Students:

We'll Zoom into our LAST meeting at 3:30 tomorrow (4/28).

The last three optional topic presentations will be:

Xinlun: "Help! How Do I Manage My Time?"
     Kyle:  "Navigating Group Science"
     Nick:  "Elements of Persuasion"

Again, the optional presentations should be aimed at about 10-12
minutes each, allowing about 5 additional minutes for questions.

Please forward the slides (PDF formet) from your talk to us
afterwards.  [Only one person has done this yet!]

Please also remember to include a list of online (or other) resources
for your topic in the file, since we will post the files for
(potentially) worldwide consumption.  [Yes, the student presentation
files are regularly viewed by outsiders.]

After tomorrow's meeting, please forward your text file of evaluations
for the optional topics talks.  We'll get the results out to you this
week.

Remember, the default grading option for this course will now be
CR/NC.  If you wish instead to receive a letter grade, you can make
that change using SIS through this Friday, 5/1 (we think).

Best of luck with finals in your "real" courses.

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4/13/2020:

Dear ASTR 8500 Students:

We'll Zoom again tomorrow at 3:30.

The plan is to finish the VSGC presentations (Samer & Xinlun), then
move on to, say, two of the optional topics presentations.  The
optional presentations should be aimed at about 10-12 minutes each,
allowing about 5 additional minutes for questions.

Again, you should agree on the order of the optional topic talks and
forward the list to us.

For reference, the list of optional topics and speakers is at:
https://faculty.virginia.edu/rwoclass/astr8500/s20-optional-topics.html

Please remember to consolidate your individual evaluations of the VSGC
talks into a single plain text file and forward those to us after
Tuesday's meeting.

Also forward your VSGC proposals and slide files if you haven't
already done so.

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3/30/2020:

Dear ASTR 8500 Students:

We hope you are all well and not yet too bored with the situation.

In tomorrow's (Tuesday 3/31) meeting we will devote about 40 minutes
to considering a final set of ethics case studies.

Then we will hear presentations from three of you on your Virginia
Space Grant Consortium proposals.  Please send us a list of the
speakers for tomorrow.

Students will be acting as evaluators for the presentations.  Attached
to the email is a standard evaluation form together with a list
of items that should be considered in writing the evaluations.

We ask all the non-speakers to evaluate each speaker using the forms.
We intend to forward the (anonymous but unedited) evaluations to each 
speaker after we read them.  To minimize the file exchange problem,
we ask you to do the following;

Make a fascimile of the evaluation template in the form of an
     plain ASCII (*.txt) file with dashed lines across the page at top
     and bottom.

Fill out an evaluation file for each speaker.

Then concatenate the files for a given day and forward
     them to us.

After class, the speakers should forward us PDF files of both
their written proposals and their presentation slides.

See you tomorrow at 3:30.

Cheers   --- Bob & Ed

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3/20/2020:

Dear ASTR 8500 Students,

This Tuesday, March 24 (and again for the first half of class on March
31) we will be discussing the Ethics Case Studies produced by the
American Physical Society. I have attached a copy of the Case Studies
to this email and have also placed a copy in the course Collab site
under resources. You will want to have a copy of the document
available during our discussion on Tuesday so that you can read the
case studies.

The general format will be that we take a minute to read a case study
and then discuss the associated questions. In general, there are not
"correct" answers for the questions. The goal is to hear everyone's
perspective, and try to formulate strategies to deal with the
situation presented in each case.

If you get the chance to look through the document before class, let
me know if there are any case studies you are particularly interested
in discussing.

Sincerely,

Ed Murphy

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3/20/2020:

Dear ASTR 8500 Students:

Hope all is going well with you and things in your new normal are
settling down into a routine.

You should have just received an automated invitation from Collab to
join our online meetings using Zoom, which start on Tuesday, 3/24 at
3:30 PM and will continue at the normal class meeting time to the end
of the semester.

The invitation specifies a 3-5 PM EDT time window, but the meeting
will actually start at 3:30.  The extra time is just a buffer to get
things up and running.

To join the meeting, log into the course Collab site at:

https://collab.its.virginia.edu/portal/site/c515afc0-eca0-4895-a9e9-94def1fd05b4/page/64001b4f-4f74-4931-b294-3e623343b3b6

and click on "Online Meetings."  You should see a list of meetings
   -- just click on the current one.  We expect most of you are
   familiar with the Zoom controls.  Your microphones and video cameras
   will be turned off to start, but you can turn them on at any time.
   Zoom sessions to date in other venues have worked very well, so we
   expect that round-table discussion sessions like the next two class
   meetings will go smoothly.

Let us know if you have any problems with accessing the online
materials or the meetings.

The revised topic/meeting schedule is posted on the course homepage.

Things for you to do:

Pick an optional topic by next Tuesday, and send us an email with
    your choice.  The list of topics is here.

https://faculty.virginia.edu/rwoclass/astr8500/s20-optional-topics.html

We will discuss ethics cases during the next two meetings.  There
    is a link to the "Ethics Case Studies" booklet on the schedule
    page.  You might peruse these to get a flavor of what will be
    covered.  (We won't go through all of them.)

Finish your VSGC proposals.  The first VSGC proposal presentations
    will start on 3/31 -- only a week and a half from now.
    You should decide for yourselves the order of
    presentations.  Prepare for an 8-10 minute presentation with
    slides.

Start background research into your optional topic.

Stay safe.

Cheers   --- Bob & Ed

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3/14/2020:

Dear ASTR 8500 Students:

Well, you've presumably heard that UVa has suspended all in-person
classes at least through mid-April and is recommending that classes
continue with digital technology.  Online classes will start on
Thursday, March 19.

We think this is a sensible and appropriate decision by the UVa
administration, but it will cause you some difficulty and
inconvenience.  That's more true in your other courses and research
than in ASTR 8500....but here's what we're proposing to do for ASTR
8500:

We will communicate with you mainly by email, and any additional
    information will be posted on the existing public website
    [https://faculty.virginia.edu/rwoclass/astr8500/]

The course will continue at the regular time on the pre-existing
    schedule, except for the following changes:

1) No meeting on Tuesday 17 March.   First online
        meeting on Tuesday, 24 March.

2) Half of The 31 March meeting will be devoted to the
        Ethics discussion and half to the first set of
        your VSGC proposal presentations.

3) Half of the 14 April meeting will be devoted to
        the last of the VSGC proposals and the first
        of your optional topic presentations.

Students will join the class meeting remotely from their
    computers using the "synchronous" Zoom online meeting system.
    This supports both visual presentations and verbal discussion.

Experience with Zoom to date has been good --- the only question
    is whether UVa/Zoom has the capacity to conduct hundreds of
    simultaneous sessions.  We're lucky that ASTR 8500 is at a time
    with less competition from other courses.

We will send out instructions later on how to join the Zoom
    sessions.

We will record the sessions so that people can replay them later;
    but we encourage everyone to participate in the live meetings
    because discussion is a key element of the upcoming topics.

Ed has placed copies of the booklet "On Being a Scientist"
    in your mailboxes --- but, obviously, we won't expect you
    to have perused them!

We know some of you are staying in Charlottesville -- but
    we are not allowed to hold regular face-to-face class meetings
    with you.

You should:

1) Choose your optional topic by the next meeting.
      Available topics are listed here:

https://faculty.virginia.edu/rwoclass/astr8500/s20-optional-topics.html

2) Write up your VSGC proposal and have it and your slide
      presentation ready to go by 31 March.  Details on the
      assignment are given here:

https://faculty.virginia.edu/rwoclass/astr8500/s20-proposal-assignment.html

We expect all this should go relatively smoothly, but to paraphrase
the guru Donald Rumsfeld, you never know what you don't know.

Cheers,

Bob & Ed

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