Lab Members: What to Post

Author(s): Brandy Perkl, Ph.D.

Style

You want to share as concisely as possible, without (1) losing your personality entirely, or (2) committing the typical student sins of downplaying the work and/or yourself. Be firm, confident, and honest in your summation. Don’t make excuses. You can write about what you learned in the process, but skip over writing about what you don’t know. Acknowledge who helped if need be but own your work (for my contribution you can just start with ‘Under the guidance of Dr. Brown…’ or something like that – that’s really a given, no need to dwell on it much).

Sometimes doing all of the above is easiest when you focus on writing in short, declarative sentences. This might be uncomfortable, but it’s good for you. So go do it already.

Posts: Content

Ok, so what should you write?? First think of our audience – they will be college level educators and students who can benefit from our work. Second remember if your work made it to the share point, it was good!

I suggest including:

1. What it is you made/what the project was + link/embed of the item. Don’t just tell, show with words!

2. The purpose of the item/project, here are some examples:

   • Educational tool – Include suggested uses for it

   • Marketing tool – Include the intended message and why the marketing is needed

   • Applied Project – Who it was for, how they will use the data/training/assessment/etc. you created for them

   • Research – The abstract and hopes for next steps

3. Cite your sources in APA if they are not cited in the actual item/project. (You can use something awesome like Paperpile to get your References section together…)

4. An APA citation for your item/project OR a link to https://www.citethisforme.com/ (including things like this makes it easier for others to use, always a nice and good thing).

5. Optional – Recommended: A short reflection on the project and your experience doing it. Good/bad? Helpful/not? Etc.?? This will help future lab students have an idea of the benefit of a project like yours and also can help educators/researchers see the benefit (or not) of a similar assignments to students.

6. Sign it! I suggest linking your name to your online presence. If in 5 years someone is impressed with something you did, they should still be able to find you.

Sharing with Others

Once you hit Publish it will create thepost as a whole new page on our site). You can then grab the URL from your address bar and send it out! I encourage you to do so wherever you feel it will benefit someone (that includes you). I will share these whenever they’re relevant with whomever seems relevant as well. 2020 Update: Don't forget to add the name and link to the Posts page too, since we're using a google site vs. a traditional blog.

If you have any questions, please request a meeting with me! Don’t forget you can always edit, so don’t stress too much about hitting that Publish button.