Qualitative Researchers! Give feedback to ITS

Thank you for expressing interest in UNCG’s Qualitative Data Analysis Software Evaluation project.  As a campus researcher, your input on selecting software to meet campus qualitative data analysis (QDA) needs is critical to us.  Your input will help guide the selection of QDA software for the UNCG network, and related training & support services available from Information Technology Services (ITS).  

UNCG/ITS has invited Paul Mihas, a qualitative research consultant at the Odum Institute at UNC-CH to present overview sessions of 5 qualitative software options: MAXQDA, Atlas.ti, NVivo, QDA Miner, and Dedoose. The primary purpose of this email is to get feedback on the best date to schedule Paul’s visit to UNCG. One of the sessions will be recorded so those unable to attend will be able to view it later.

To respond with your availability for these sessions, please complete the following poll:

http://doodle.com/cy4ipewbgzr2nd7m

This is an early step in the evaluation project . The project team’s goal is to provide the most useful software feasible within a limited budget. We recognize that many qualitative researchers at UNCG are unsatisfied with the capabilities of NVivo and Atlas.ti, yet we also recognize that dropping either or both licenses could create difficulties for some researchers. We need YOUR INPUT to guide the future of QDA support at UNCG..

We will consider all input, whether or not you attend one of these sessions.  Input will be collected via a web survey following the overview sessions.  Thank you for your time and willingness to help us improve ITS services.

Grad students!! Financial Literacy Workshop Thurs Feb 5th

Had to share this news - I've heard that the Graduate School and the Office of Financial Aid are sponsoring a workshop for graduate students next Thursday -

To Buy or Not to Buy: An Interactive Workshop on Financial Literacy

This workshop will use online budgeting tools and on your feet performance based exercises to promote dialogue and increase financial literacy for graduate students.

Participants will create their own personal budget individually and then collaborate in small groups to explore real time financial decision making.

Topics include Budgeting, Debt Management, Investment, and Lifestyle choices.
Pizza will be served at noon prior to the presentation, which starts at 12:20

Link to registration and more information

Pronunciator language instruction database has health care!

Pronunciator provides online language lessons - over 80 languages!

Each language comes with

• audio lessons
• interactive quizzes
• music and movie

AND a 6 week healthcare course designed to teach front-line providers to communicate more effectively with non-English speaking patients and families.  Learn phrases for greetings, etiquette, body parts, health care terms, and more.

A free account is required (in addition to your UNCG computer account if you're off campus), and a web browser with Flash and with Javascript enabled.  The company also provides apps.

Want to practice offline? The company allows each patron to download up to 90 mp3 audio lessons and 10 e-Phrasebooks per month.

ReferenceUSA Business Directory has healthcare!

The ReferenceUSA business directory has a U.S. healthcare section with basic information on 855,000 doctors and dentists.

• Custom Search to search by details of the practice (specializing in anesthesiology, ob/gyn, etc) and geography
• Download and print results

We recently started two years of access through the NC LIVE library consortium, so enjoy!

The library is taking over the faculty center! Friday 1/23, 3-6 pm

Faculty, please join us for a lively discussion of library services that can help you!


Faculty Center Takeover: The Library Reimagined Friday, January 23, 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm, Faculty Center

• Co-hosted by UNCG Provost, Dr. Dana Dunn and University Libraries
• Mark your calendars for wine, food, and informal conversation about library programs and services to meet the demands of a changing campus community, including some with which you might not yet be familiar!
• Supported by the Office of the Provost, University Libraries, and University Teaching and Learning Commons

NEW sources! Natural Standard, ProQuest journals

We've just gotten two years of access to new health science content through the NC LIVE library consortium. Great sources!  This is the most info excitement that I've had in years.  Steve Martin, how about you?

Natural Standard

• Summaries of effectiveness and safety of dietary supplements, herbs, and integrative medicine
• Browse by condition (osteoarthritis) or by substance (chondroitin) or therapy (reflexology)
• Includes a Sports Medicine Database - lots of ergogenic aids and some very substantial overviews such as "Sports Performance."
• Includes interaction checker and nutrient depletion checker!

ProQuest Central
Searches many PQ databases. Huge collection of academic journals, professional journals, reports and other sources on many topics!

Like other subscription databases, you'll need your UNCG computer account information for off-campus access.

Open Science Framework - Free research project management and data storage

I just watched a interesting webinar on Open Science Framework, an open access research project management and data storage web platform.  One of the developers wrote a nice introduction to the system here.

"Helps individuals and research teams organize, archive, document, and share their research materials and data" (Nosek, 2014).

Workspace can be kept private. Data can be shared selectively (with collaborators, funders, or publishers) or publicly (as a registry to create a public record of a hypothesis/research design at the outset or share materials farther downstream).

The system was advertised to accept any type of file up to 128 MB with workarounds available for larger files. 

The file versioning, wiki capability, and forking look interesting. Integration with Dropbox, GitHub, Dataverse, Figshare and Amazon S3 sound useful. Apparently there will be discussions with Databib and Databrary and various Earth Science collections, to streamline the search for and deposits to repositories.

It doesn't sound like OSF offers long term preservation and curation.  Also, they advise users NOT store personal, financial, or other sensitive data.