Engaging with research from home
Over the summer break, it’s important to take time to rest and relax; however, it can also be an opportunity to engage with research, especially this year when many of us will find ourselves stuck inside much more than we had hoped to. There are lots of ways you can stay up to date with or get involved with research, all from the comfort of your home.
Engaging with research might not be top of your list of leisure activities; so why do it?
The first and most obvious reason for engaging with research is the subject specific knowledge that you can gain. Widening your general knowledge of the field in which you study can help to consolidate your learning, and this can be greatly beneficial when it comes to critically analysing your work, as you will become more aware of common strengths and challenges encountered by researchers in your topic area. Putting your work in a wider context strengthens your understanding of concepts too.
Getting actively involved in the scientific community can introduce you to a great bunch of people too! But to get involved with that community, it may involve overcoming the dreaded barrier of networking. Networking is something that makes many of us uneasy, and the thought of approaching a senior researcher at a conference to start up a conversation certainly makes my toes curl. However, engaging with research remotely can be a valuable way of building connections in a slightly less intimidating format. If you can find ways to network, it will be a fantastic resource for staying up to date about new discoveries in your field, and to make sure you’re first to hear about research or job opportunities.
Even if you are not planning on continuing into academia, engaging with research can contribute to development of transferrable skills – and if you can evidence this, it can provide a worthwhile boost to your CV too.
So now you’re sold. How can you engage with research?
The first thing you may want to do is to set-up a professional or academic social media page. Twitter is the most valuable social media platform for this and there are lots of resources for helping you to get set up. It can be a good idea to have a separate professional and personal page; however, you can have a little more fun with it compared to more serious academic sites such as LinkedIn and ResearchGate, so don’t be afraid to share the odd meme. Just make sure to remember that your followers will also see tweets that you ‘like’ in their feed – try not to spam your academic followers with Love Island memes like I did circa 2018.
If you ever go to a conference, remotely or in person, you will often see there is a conference hashtag (Research Away Day 2020 quickly becomes #RAD2020). These can be a really valuable way of connecting with other researchers in your field – even if you are unable to attend yourself, you can see some of the key themes discussed and identify people who might be worth connecting with. Note that in the midst of the current pandemic lockdown, lots of conference are running online and there may be options for students to join without an entrance fee, so it’s worth seeing if you can join one over the summer.
Seminars and workshops are also great ways of learning remotely. There are lots of different websites you can try: Eventbrite hosts a range of free seminars you can search through, or you can find more through ASCB. You can even attend a Harvard seminar. Similarly, you may want to look out for virtual journal clubs, as these can be a great way of enhancing your critical analysis skills.
If you want to try something a little more involved, why not check-out free online courses. EdX, Coursera, and FutureLearn all offer courses in a range of topics – so you can brush up on your stats skills, subject-specific knowledge, or you might want to try something completely different and lean about Hadrian’s Wall. If you want to learn the ultimate desirable skill of coding, then there are plenty of free courses to choose from, across lots of different programming languages. If you are interested in learning RStudio, then you can download it for free and install swirl, which will take you through the basics within the programme itself (and it is the ultimate cheerleader, with lots of praise for each line of code you successfully complete!).
A more passive way of keeping up with research could be through podcasts. Science Magazine and The Naked Scientists cover a whole range of topics. Or you may be more interested in something subject specific; whether you’re studying anything from virology to geology to stats, there's a podcast for (almost) everything.
And as always, the best way to learn something is to teach it. If you are looking for some extra work (and cash) that you can do remotely, then why not check out Tutor Ninjas or similar sites.
Given all this, please still do remember to give yourself a break over the summer too! Holiday plans may be out the window, but we all still need some time to shake off the semester.
Thank you to Sonya Frazier for providing research for this article.
Written by Kirstin Leslie, GTA for LEADS