🆕 Research suggests a conference poster format that outperforms BOTH the "journal article on a wall" and #betterposter formats. The “Complete assertion headings” poster format! 🤔 Yeah, they should have workshopped the name a little more. 1/2

I’m glad Chicago has been getting some good attention lately. It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned the rest of the country/world apparently had a really bad impression of our city? I always found that odd. Chicago is a pretty cool place to live, relatively speaking.

Everyone in the past was neurotypical, which is how we got things like this single-author, eight-volume encyclopedia of ferns

Admin and EdTech folks: Stop suggesting that teachers use AI for teaching and grading and start giving teachers space and tools to actually help do our jobs.

Step 1 towards making more engaging presentations is to use more photos. But...you need to make sure you format them so they don't look weird. That's where cropping comes in. I put together a (hopefully) fun video about this to help. #EduSky www.echorivera.com/blog/crop-it...

Happy 10-year anniversary to my all-time favorite tweet.

You’re not starting over. You’re moving forward—with a PhD and a lifetime of skills behind you. My free webinar helps you build what’s next. Sign up here:

People I respect tremendously are saying really nice things about my co-edited forthcoming book! press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

I just released a new YouTube video (my first in years!) 🙌 My way of coping with all this chaos is to create things. I already have the next video ready, so that will be posted soon! If you want to clean up your presentation slides, here are the first steps 👇 #AcademicSky youtu.be/UEYnf_qncxo

When people Google your name, can they find what you want them to know about you? #AcademicSky You deserve a digital footprint that shares your research, teaching, and what you value as an academic (if you want one). Find resources to help you on The Social Academic theacademicdesigner.com/blog/

AI images in your presentations are not worth burning the planet. Also, they aren't good.

I've started offering short private program tours to give faculty members, postdocs, and other PhDs ready to leave academia more info about my PhD Career Clarity Program and how (or not!) it will help them land their next meaningful job. If you're on my list, you got info about that earlier today!

Academic and professional writing doesn’t have to be dull. Helen Kara’s new book Writing Creatively for Work or Study shows you how to use creative writing techniques for this purpose. Now available for pre-order

So. You’re realizing federal funding for your research is not as stable as you thought. Let’s talk crowdfunding. 🧵

My free workshop on Feb 5 will give my best tips for surviving the peer review process for scholarly books. There are important differences from the journal peer review process that all aspiring book authors need to understand. Register at Courses.manuscriptworks.com (recording provided)

When I tried to do this, my subscription was cancelled and I never had a chance to downgrade to classic. I tried to find a way to contact someone to see if I can still subscribe to the classic but couldn’t find a way. Oh well, guess I lose my office subscription soon. 🤷‍♀️ *downloads libreoffice*

hey cool all my Bad Religion albums came true

So while on holiday I’m playing a lot of Animal Crossing in Japanese, even though it’s way beyond my current level. I use Google translate a lot and…somehow I don’t think this is quite right 🤣

Doing a book club in 2025? Webster & I are reading *The Present Professor* by @liznorell.bsky.social & *Learning Student Names* by @michellemillerphd.bsky.social: new releases from @ou.edu Press. www.oupress.com/teaching-eng... Save 40% with code 18HLDY24, too. Got a book idea? Let's connect!

@thomasjtobin.bsky.social oh hello! Nice to see you on here 👋

I shared in my newsletter that I'm giving away several of my handknitted items to raise funds for TransLifeline and other orgs that support LGBTQ+ youth. I'll be matching all donations and raffling off items to those who give. Get all the details here: newsletter.manuscriptworks.com/posts/giveaway

I am taking some of my annual leave time to create dataviz templates for my slide design course members, and I'm super enjoying how intuitive Excel/PPT is. 😑 Apparently Excel/PPT defines "solid line" differently than I do. So much fun. Really. Truly. Having the time of my life here.

One thing that all professors have in common in that we weren't trained for our jobs. Now that I've been doing this for a few decades, I'm starting an occasional series called Professor School. It's not advice, just bunch of ideas and information to make things easier. 🧪

Wow this video is 20 years old now 🥹 I remember watching it on ebaums world. Anyone else remember that site? I feel ancient now. www.reddit.com/r/TwentyYear...

I feel a little lost without a good open world game to play, but I am giving animal crossing a try…in Japanese. It’s beyond my level but I’m pushing through anyway.

Every piece of AI-in-education hype I've seen fails to go beyond this logic:

TECH EVANGELIST: You know AI creates garbage images, right? DEAN: Go on. TECH: What if we used it to take lecture materials… DEAN: *nods* TECH: … and create a textbook we hail as visionary and then slap some AI Slop image on it for the cover? DEAN: So I can fire professors now, yes? TECH: *nods*

I’m looking for people who also enjoy talking about or learning about slide design & creating nice presentations 🙌✨ I spend almost all day every day hanging out in PowerPoint or other creative apps & would love to connect/share ideas! #AcademicSky #SciComm #AcademicChatter

The ability to detach a post from a quote repost is a lovely feature 🤌✨ thank you for that, bluesky!

If you’re writing a 20 skeet explainer thread about your newest paper, copy it and make a blog post about it, too. An explainer has value being just the first few days of publication. Blogs create a more stable archive of those explainers that grows in value over time. #AcademicChatter

Betrayed, angry, and disheartened by the dystopia of it all

On my semi-urgent to-do list: update my personal website! Because it's really embarrassing to realise how out of date it is when someone reads it out loud as a means of introducing you before a talk/workshop... 🙈 #academicchatter

Yay happy Friday to me, which marks the start of my annual winter leave (a big perk of running my own company!) I finally finished Burning Shores, which completes Horizon Forbidden West. Got 250 hours out of this one 🙂‍↕️ Sadly, I have no open world game to play now 😫 😭

I did a search for that figure about Elon's proposed cuts because I'm particularly worried about NIH and headstart and haven't found the sources for that figure. I even did a reverse search of the figure, but everything I found with the graph was from that person's posts. Here's what I did find.

Congratulations to all of you out there who: - submitted grad apps! 🎉 - submitted fellowship apps! 🎉 - submitted letters of rec! 🎉 - submitted your grants! 🎉 - submitted your paper! 🎉 Just making it through the process is a triumph. I complain about failures- but we must celebrate the wins too. ❤️

Is there a movie or TV show where the main character loses all their powers, and they need to get them back or regain them by starting from scratch. (Like Link in both BOTW and TOTK?) idk a good hashtag to use. All my friends are in #AcademicSky though 😂

This fascinating study would explain why people “vote against their own economic interests”. One thing I keep hearing is that ppl who voted R in this (and other recent) US election(s) will come to regret it when their SS, medicare, other state assistance goes away. 1/

Hey #AcademicSky I have not yet seen a compelling example where AI was helpful or more efficient for any part of the presentation process. ❌ Not the script, ❌ Not the design, ❌ Not even for custom images It seems more trouble than it’s worth & the outcome seems goofy. What’s your experience?

Meanwhile in Tokyo, 👀 www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/n...

Phewww I am exhausted. This week was packed with helping clients on their research/evaluation communication projects & presentations ☺️ It was fun spending the week helping people take dense, text-heavy info/data & turning it into visual, digestible chunks.

Hey do you dread working on presentations? Why do you think that is? What’s going on? #AcademicSky #AcademicChatter

Day 1/25: Need accessible color combinations that actually look good? This fantastic colour generator by @erikdkennedy.bsky.social helps you create beautiful, WCAG-compliant colour pairs in seconds! Try it here: www.learnui.design/tools/access...

They have found yet another way to ensure that people go bankrupt or die instead of receiving lifesaving medical care.

Here’s the full publication I did with Claire and Sam et al that was transformed into the frontiers for young minds article quoted below! #SciComm #AcademicSky 🧪🐡 j-stem.net/index.php/js...

Bocchi the Rock: every scene where she melts or glitches. I’ve never related more to any show in my life. 😂 #AnimeSky

Calling freelance illustrators who have been paid for work: pls take a few mins to answer an anon 7-question (multiple choice) survey re: how you found paying work? illustrator-promo.paperform.co Researching for my #SCBWI wkshop at #scbwiNY25 + will share aggregate results publicly. Thank you!

This is a cool idea!

Hey just FYI: If you are showing a graph on a presentation slide, don’t use vertical or diagonal text. Horizontal text ✅ Vertical text ❌ Diagonal text ❌ Your audience shouldn’t be tilting their heads to read your slides. #AcademicSky

You know how when you read a book you never see abbreviations and acronyms? Probably because it makes it a bear to read. And yet, you can't get through one page of a scientific paper or grant without getting bombarded by them.