Wednesday, Dec 3, 2008

We had an extra class on Nov 28, Friday. SUS had a International Symposium on Sports and Health during Nov 29-30. There were many experts came from all over the world for the symposium. Take advantage of this opportunity, we had invited three professors joined us at a long dinner for some very helpful discussion. Participants of the dinner and discussion had established friendly connections for further discussions too.

With the progress of the class, our discussion in our regular class getting more in depth. Wang Yan has presented a review paper, from which, we all learned lots of useful tips in reading and writing scientific review papers, especially in social and culture related fields.

We have talked about adding extra classes if we need to.

I urge everyone in the class to start writing your own review paper if you have not started yet.

At the meantime, as people in the west often say in the holiday season, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Wedensday, November 26

In addition to student presentations, we had discussed ways of searching, reading and understanding exercise science literature in English. One paper published on European Heart Journal (2003) had been used as an example. We had talked about how to read the introduction of the review paper and how the introduction should lead to the purpose of the paper.

We had also scheduled an extra class in Friday evening (7:00pm, Nov 28, 2008). We will meet with several experts in the field over dinner and research related topics will be discussed. Mr. Huang Sanbo has kindly take the lead and organize the session at the restaurant next to our campus.

November 19th class

I had trouble logging in to the blog last few days, so I am posting this message later than I should have.

The class decided that we will have this class as a pass/fail class. All master student who need credits from this class should have been registered with the graduate school. All the doctoral students who need credits from this class should provide the instructor the name and contact info (email and phone#) of your adviser. I will contact your adviser and submit your grade at the end of the semester.

We have also decided to add one class at the evening of Friday (November 28). The school of Kinesiology at SUS will host an international meeting on November 29 and 30. There will be experts in different research fields of exercise sciences gather here on campus. We will take advantage to the opportunity and invite a few of the experts come and talk to the class. The additional class is tentatively scheduled at 7:30pm Friday, location will be anounced. We will meet for this class at a dinner place, so it will be dinner and discussion.

We had about 12 people participated this class last Wednesday morning. The discussion were more in depth than the previous classes. At the end of the class, I have talked about internet literature search for a few minutes. I used two expaples to illustrated how to search and recongnize important literature in different filed.

There was a suggestion and I was asked to discuss sceitific journals published in our research fields in English. I will try prepare it and present that discussion next time.

November 12th class

We first discussed some organizational issues related to the class. Class participants were suggested to make sure they have registered for the class so they can get credit hours recorded on their transcripts. It was suggested that the class should be evaluated as a pass / fail class without specific grades.

The school of kinesiology will host a meeting on Nov 29th. Professor Weimo Zhu of University of Wisconsin will participate the meeting as a keynote presenter. It was suggested that I should contact Dr. Zhu and see if he could come to our class. There are some questions people would like to discuss with Professor Zhu. I have contacted Dr. Zhu and he has agreed on principle to meet with us. If we could find mutually convenient time, of course.

There were five presentations at different stage of the progress - idea, abstracts and selected literature review in this class. I have urged all the class participants to be active in the class. You can only learn if you are willing to do the work.

We will meet again next Wednesday, same place, same time.

Tuesday, Oct 28, 2008

We had our class in the evening of Oct 28 instead of our regular time of 9:00 am Oct 29 (Wednesday) because of the meeting room scheduling issues. We had good attendance. With the progress of the class, the discussions have went more in depth than the past. We had five presentations in three hours. All of the presentations were discussed in more details than we have ever seen in this class. It is a very good development due to we are more comfortable with the format of the class and with each others topic.

We will have our next class on Nov. 12 at 8am in the same room we have had classes this semester. Please note that you need to submit your edited presentations after it has been discussed in class. The first presentation for everyone is the initial research idea, then the 5 selected abstracts that related to your research topic. If you had finished the first two, then please choose a review paper (in English) on your selected topic, read the paper thoroughly, prepare a slide presentation, and present it to the class. Remember to send me your presentation the day before the class.

Li

Wedensday, October 28

We have had a good class today with about 30 in attendance. We have discussed research topics of 9 students in the class. There were lively discussions about each of the presentations. Please note the following items about our next meeting: First, we will meet on Tuesday afternoon 6:30 - 9:30pm, instead of Wednesday morning, due to scheduling problems; for those who have not presented your research topics, please send me your research topic slides and prepared to present next time; and last, for those who had presented your research topic, please prepare the next item on the syllabus - find five abstracts of research articles that related to your topic and present to the class. The abstracts need to be abstracts of research articles on related topics. Again, send me the presentations so I can thread them all together for the class presentation.

Summary of class on Oct 8, 2008

There are about 20 students participated the lively discussion on Oct 8 during the class from 8 to 11:30 in the morning. There were only three people submitted the required homework. We discussed the ways to overcome the potential obstacles of working on the homework.

1. We have discussed how to choose a topic. The end product of the class requires each student write a literature review in regarding to their self selected topic. It is difficult for some students in the class to find a topic. We have suggested the following points to ease the problem: with the adviser's permission, the student choose a topic that can potentially be the topic of their research during their graduate study; choose to study their adviser's research topic; or choose a topic according to the student's professional interest.
   
2. We have discussed how to justify your choice of the research topic when presenting to the class. First, the significance of the topic need to be established. Only the things that worth to do, worth to do well. Then present your understanding of the related literature - theories, concepts, methodology and potential applications.
3. We have also discussed how to search literature using online tools. We have focused our discussion on the use of Google Scholar - key word search, including the selection of key words, the use of the "cited by...", "related article" and "all xx version" tabs under each search result. In addition, we have discussed the use of Medline (the online database from nlm.nih.gov).
   

Please note that we will NOT have class next week on oct 15. I will attend the Annual Meeting of Chinese Association of Biomechanics in Sports next week. Our next class is on Oct 22. We might need to change the classroom if there were meeting scheduled in the conference room we have been using.

I encourage the participating students to use this Blog space to communicate with me and with each other.

Sept 24

Summary of Sept 24th class:

1. Class was met at 8am with more than 40 master and doctoral students from different department of the SUS campus;
2. We have discussed the syllabus, the intent, contents, structure and goal of the class;
3. We have agreed that: every student will prepare a presentation for the next time when the class meet; the presentation will include a brief statement of the presenter's current research project (about 5 slides): significance-theory-concepts-methods-applications, and summary of 5 abstracts of important published research articles.
   
4. The students will provide to the instructor the names and addresses of international experts in their own research field; the instructor will contact these experts for possible video conference via the internet with the class.
   

Welcome

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the class. Please read the syllabus carefully. Send your comments for class, the syllabus and the instructor to this blog page.

Your first assignment is to present to the class on the topic that you wish to write a literature review at the end of this class. Please discuss this with your adviser. Prepare a few Powerpoint slides (no more than 10 slides) for the class that show your current understanding of the topic, including: why is this topic important? relevant theories, relevant methodological issues and the potential applications of the selected topic.

A few issues about the class itself:
1). We have not decided on a class meeting time and location yet;
2). Should we require every one hand in your homework (presentations and writings) in English?
3). What language should we use in the class?

Please post your comments here on this blog.

Sincerely,

Li Li (李立）

Syllabus

INTRODUCTION TO MODERN RESEARCHES OF EXERCISE SCIENCE

Li Li, PhD, FACSM

Honorary professor of Shanghai University of Sport

Jo Ellen Levy Yates professor of Louisiana State University

Goal of the class: Through this class, students would gain 1). a better understanding of the contemporary research literature in exercise science; 2). a comprehensive understanding of theoretical and conceptual development in their subject of study; 3). a deeper appreciation of newly developed methodological issues on the topics of their concern; and 4). a renewed view on the application of their research projects.

Organization and Structure of the Class: The class will meet once every week for three hours every time. The class will be seminar style with instructor led discussion most of times. We will employ the concepts of “service learning” and “communication intensive”. Students in the class will learning how to search literature, how to identify important publications, topics, and researches on their self defined research topic; how to read literature reviews and how to write literature reviews.

Service Learning: Students learn the contents of the class through applicable service. Literature discussion in this class will be student specific. Each student should discuss with their advisors on the relevant topic he / she should focus in this class. The literature review generated in this class should be relevant to the research he /she is (or will) conduct as a graduate students of Shanghai University of Sport.

Communication Intensive: In addition to the discussion in and out the class between the instructor and the students, among the students, the following two types of communication will be strongly encouraged. First, the students should frequently communicate with their advisors in regarding the progress of this class. The class activity should be closely related to their research activity as defined by their advisors. Second, the instructor will facilitate class communication with international renowned experts on relevant research topics. This communication, wherever possible, will be carried out in the form of internet video calls via different internet protocols, such as Skype, MSN, Yahoo, etc.

Schedule of the Class:

September:

1. Organizational, introduction;

2. Each student will go back to their own professor and identify a topic within their field, which extensive English literature review can be helpful (SL requires learning with the objective of provide service to the community need);

3. Students present to the class what is the topic that they would like to work on; class discussion (SL requires reflection, CI requires extensive communication);

Students will discuss their presentation and class discussion with their advisor, and then hand in their edited presentations for class documentation.

4. Literature search use all the available means for the student. Each student will be required to come up with titles and abstracts of five most important papers about their topic;

5. Present search results to the class and class discussion, the selection of the research papers need to be justified (CI);

6. Go back to students discipline group and talk to the professors about their class work and collect the professors comments and suggestions (SL- reflection);

Students will discuss their presentation and class discussion with their advisor, and then hand in their edited presentations for class evaluation (CI, SL).

October:

7. Two objectives: 1). class discussion and identify potential direction/method for further literature search (SL- reflection); and 2). Each student identify 1-2 experts on their topic of research worldwide, Then the instructor will be responsible to set up video conferencing (webcam?) with these experts in the following weeks with the class. Have the experts talk to the class for 20-30 minutes in regarding the most important researches/researchers about the topic of their choice (CI);

8. Student should read the selected important literature reviews of their choice and discuss these papers in class and individually with the instructor (CI);

9. Each student will present 2-3 selected review papers to the class and participate class discussion;

Students will discuss their presentation and class discussion with their advisor, and then hand in their edited presentations for class evaluation (CI, SL).

November:

10. Based on the works of previous two months, students select 5-10 important modern research publications on their selected research topics;

11. Read and discuss the significance of the research topics in class;

12. Read and discuss theoretical and conceptual developments of the research topics;

13. Read and discuss the methodological developments of the research topics;

14. Read and discuss the important applications of the research topics;

15. Each student will present a summary of the research papers to the class and participate class discussion;

Students will discuss their presentation and class discussion with their advisor, and then hand in their edited presentations for class evaluation (CI, SL).

December:

16. Student will prepare a comprehensive literature review on their selected research topics. The review should include a testable hypothesis (hypotheses) at the end of the review, and all the evidences that support such hypothesis (hypothesis);

17. Present their literature review to the class and invited guests: professors of their discipline, fellow graduate students of their discipline, other professors and professionals who might like to come (SL reflection, CI);

Students will discuss their presentation and class discussion with their advisor, and then hand in their edited presentations for class evaluation (CI, SL).

January:

18. Based on their work, students should write a review paper on their selected topics (10 to 20 pages) and hand it in to the instructor.

Student performance in the class will be evaluated through the following method:

1. 15 points each presentation. 5 point on the verbal presentation (peer evaluation) and ten point on the material handed in; total 4 presentations and 60 points;

2. 40 points for the final review paper.

3. Final score of the class will be graded on a total score of 100.

Students are encouraged to communicate with the instructor at any time with any questions.