Thursday, September 3, 2015

Welcoming our new students

A message from Orientation.

Orientation kicks off this Friday, September 4 and runs until Saturday, September 12.

First-year international students will be the first to participate in activities with International Orientation starting tomorrow. This refreshed program offers events and opportunities in advance of Orientation to support these students as they adapt to their new home.

Move-in weekend for all other new students is Sunday, September 6 to Monday, September 7. A big thank you to all of the staff and faculty who have volunteered to help.

Targeted Orientation programming begins Monday, September 7 for all new students, including first-year students, transfer students, exchange/study abroad students and graduate students. Parents and family members of first-year students have also been invited to participate in events during move-in weekend.

How you can help

With many new students on campus, comes many questions. If you see a student who looks like they could use a friendly ‘hello’ or help finding a building, please reach out to them. Not sure how to answer a question? You can always send a student to the Student Life Centre, multipurpose room for Orientation headquarters, or encourage them to log into their Student Portal to check their schedule and access directions to different on-campus locations.

Attend a preview of Single and Sexy

Single and Sexy, an Orientation favourite, is a play that explores the situations and issues many students face when living away from home for the first time. Single and Sexy is written by Waterloo students and alumni and has been applauded as a model peer-education program. Register to attend the 2015 Single and Sexy premiere.

Questions about Orientation?

Contact orientation@uwaterloo.ca, and follow along during the week on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

Investigation finds psychology studies difficult to replicate

Fewer than half of psychology studies published can replicate their original results, according to University of Waterloo researchers involved in the most comprehensive investigation ever conducted on the rate and predictors of reproducibility in a field of science.

Published recently in the journal Science, the Reproducibility Project: Psychology found that only 35 of 100 attempted replications produced the same findings as the original study. The project, launched nearly four years ago, asked 270 researchers around the world to replicate studies published in Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. All of them are prominent psychology journals.

“Error correction is central to science moving forward in the pursuit of new knowledge and innovation,” said Professor Michael Barnett-Cowan, of the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, who replicated a study as part of the project. “While reproducing all scientific experiments is not feasible, sciences such as psychology need to occasionally take stock and question previously published results."

The study reports that failure to reproduce does not necessarily mean that the original research was incorrect. Researchers involved in the project noted that even though most teams worked with the original authors to use the same materials and methods, small differences in when, where, or how they conducted the replication study might have influenced the results. The replication might have failed to detect the original result by chance, or the original result might have been a false positive.

Science is unique from other ways of gaining knowledge by relying on reproducibility to gain confidence in ideas. The Reproducibility Project: Psychology is the first project of its kind to make the data and replication reports public.

“Research that is novel and innovative is most likely to be published in prestigious journals, which benefits the scientist’s career," said Professor Denise Marigold, of Renison University College, who also replicated a study as part of the project. “Research reporting the precise conditions under which other scientist’s findings do or do not replicate doesn’t earn the same kind of recognition, but is necessary to move science forward as a whole.”

In recent years, many journals have taken steps to improve reproducibility by improving transparency of original research materials, codes and data.  An increasing number of publishers encourage researchers to submit reports of replication studies and share their results through open-access initiatives and archiving data. At Waterloo, many researchers develop built-in replications as part of their projects.

“This study sounds a cautionary note to researchers and those on editorial boards who ultimately choose what gets published,” said Professor Michael Dixon, chair of the Department of Psychology. “This landmark study provides clues about the factors that promote reproducibility, and will hopefully spur editorial boards to reward researchers who take concrete steps to ensure that their findings meet this basic tenet of science.”

Take back the night with Waterloo

This is the latest in a series of #UWCommunity stories that feature Waterloo in the community.

On Thursday, September 17, students, staff, and faculty are invited to join together and represent the University of Waterloo in the annual Take Back the Night march. From 6 – 9 p.m., the Kitchener-Waterloo community meets at Kitchener City Hall to march.

Individuals march as a symbol of the basic human right to be where you want, when you want, how you want, and without violence. The march also acts as a gesture to say that women, children, and trans*people of all ages and backgrounds should be able to exercise mobility rights without being escorted by men. Take Back the Night provides an important opportunity for members of our campus community to increase awareness about and call for an end to violence against women, children, and trans*people.

Participants will meet on campus, before collectively heading down to Kitchener’s City Hall. Men are encouraged to attend the opening rally, line the marching route, and join the marchers afterwards. More details can be found on the Take Back the Night (TBTN) event and Facebook page.

UWaterloo’s Federation of Students, The Glow Centre for Sexual Health and Diversity, The Women’s Centre, and Community Relations will be supporting this initiative organized by The Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region.

We hope you will join us.