Personal Websites (critiques?)

[cwasson]

Hey guys, 

I have been reading tons of blog posts on how important it is to have a personal website now-a-days when it comes to getting jobs or promoting your research. Do any of you guys have your own personal websites? If so, I'd love to see them. I just made one today so maybe some of you could critique it on what I can add to make it better? 

Thanks! 

here's the link: http://cameronwasson.weebly.com  (for some reason you have to paste it in your URL bar to make the site load otherwise it loops back to this post, weird :/)

Edited May 13, 2014 by cwasson

[TakeruK]

I think it looks pretty good--much better than a lot of other academic websites out there. I'm just going to be super critical because I hope I am helping, but remember these are pretty much all minor points and some of them may just be opinion Also, I am coming from the point of view of an academic audience (e.g. as if I was a colleague in your field that just met you at a conference or saw your name on a paper and want to know more). If this is not your intended audience then modify my comments as necessary of course!

 

1. I would say to get a more academic URL instead of the commercial URL. Can you host a website on your MSc program's department server? In my opinion, I feel a webpage for an academic is stronger if the URL is something like "www.physics.school.ca/~yourname" or "www.yourname.com" instead of "www.yourname.random-commerical-company.com". It more strongly links you with your department and your role as a researcher in the school. But this might also be field dependent.

 

2. I think the auto-play snippets on your front page advances too quickly. I can't read all of it before it moves forward. I would recommend that you don't set it to autoplay and allow the user to click left/right arrows to advance them as they choose.

 

3. I also don't understand the context of these snippets that appear on the first page. They read like summaries of research questions, however, I am not sure what your involvement with them are. That is, I am not sure if these are topics you are interested in but have not done any work on so you have summarized what is on your mind, or if these are current projects you are actually working on, or if they are projects you have already completed. In any case, you should make it more clear why I want to read what this snippet is, and then also add:

 

if it's your research interests: Explain why you are interested and what you plan to do with it.

if it's your current projects: Explain what your involvement is / what your project is studying / what are some possible results

if it's your past work: Explain what you actually did yourself and list publications or presentations that came out of it

 

Basically, make it more about you!

 

4. About Me looks great! I like that you have links to the people you are working with, but your undergrad advisor appears to be missing one (or this person doesn't have a webpage?)

 

5. Your Resume page should have an easy PDF download link, in my opinion. Embedding it in scribd is cool, but personally I do not enjoy scrolling through a small window like that. I would also remove the entire Customer Service and Communication section for an Academic CV. Similarly, for an academic CV, I would also remove all non academic work experiences. But, for a CV for other job applications, you might want to include some things to show that you have experience working outside of an academic context. Finally, for an academic CV, I would reorder your sections to be:

Education

Research Experience
Honours and Awards

Teamwork and Interpersonal Skills (which I might rename to "Other Experience" or "Teaching and Outreach")

Summary of Skills/Qualifications -- but remove the first three things which don't really mean anything in an academic CV (I feel like these terms are just filler words that people learn to use to pad CVs in high school)

 

6. So I now see that your home page snippets came from your "Research" page. I think the same comments apply here! Also, make your files available in PDF as well as docx. You can also make the references become hyperlinks to the journal's page for that article.

 

7. Your contact page should provide actual contact information, not just a web form. I think you should provide your email address and usually people put their office number, school address and office phone if you have one. At the very least, you should have an email address listed and also your school affiliation. I think when I want to quickly look someone up, I go to their website, click through the pages to see the pictures and most importantly, I look for their contact info to find out where they physically are. I'd say to make your contact page more like what you would find on a business card.

 

8. Overall, I would also say you should add image credits to all of the images you use. Even for the pretty headers at the top (but to not diminish the layout, perhaps you can just add it as a footer on the bottom of the page).

 

Again, these are just my opinion and as I said above, I viewed your website with an academic perspective!

[cwasson]

Hi TakeruK! 

I want to thank you so much for taking the time to do what you did, I really appreciate it! Not many people would take the time to go through each segment bit by bit. I will take all your advice to heart and definitely agree with everything you said. I will make the changes shortly. Thanks so much

[juilletmercredi]

I like it!  I agree that it's way better than most academic websites I see out there - clean and smple while still visually interesting.  It made me want to click around and see more, and it made me really interested in your work.  Lots of PhD supervisors are going to really appreciate this.

I agree with TakeruK's posts - those were also the first critiques that came to mind.

1. I half-agree.  yourname.weebly.com is kind of - unwieldy.  And I've always disliked the way weebly sounds, lol.  Can you get webhosting with a different server and/or buy your name as the domain name?  Hosting it on your department's server may not be the best idea because when you graduate...you'll have to move it all off, but owning your own domain is a good idea because you can also change the content as you progress through your field.

2. In your header, you might want to put "Your Name: Amateur Neuroscientist" instead of "...Amateur Neuroscience."

3. I honestly don't like the auto-play snippets at all.  I agree that if you have them at all they need to go more slowly, but I've never been a huge fan of anything auto-play on websites.  I think users should be able to browse the page at their own speed.

4. In addition to that...you may want to translate your snippets to non-jargon, non-neuroscientist speak.  I know that the main audience will probably be other neuroscientists, and this may be a stylistic preference.  But you never know who else might be using your site in the future - interested undergraduate students who want to understand your work; search committees who aren't 100% familiar with your specific field, even though they might also be neuroscientists; news media who are interested in reporting your work elsewhere; etc.  THis is especially true because you clearly have research interests that are quite distinct from each other (song control systems in songbirds; the effects of oxytocin in homophobic people; pain management).  For example, I automatically understood what you meant by "the implicit measure of the IAT" and "naturally occurring neuropeptide" because I'm a social psychologist, but I was totally lost on the songbird one, lol.  So you may want to reword the snippets so that they are a bit less "conference abstract language" and more written in every day language that anyone could understand.

5. You have some grammatical and mechanical/structural errors in your "About Me" section.  For example, after Ontario in the first sentence, you don't need a semicolon - you should just use a comma.  It also reads a little clinically; you can use simpler language and diction.

I grew up in a small town of Keswick, Ontario - colloquially known as "cottage country" and renowned for its ice fishing. Throughout high school I had wildly fluctuating future ambitions; I wanted to be everything from an English teacher to a physiotherapist.  Unsure of what to do, I attended the University of Western Ontario, where I majored in kinesiology and psychology.  I became fascinated with neuroscience during my second year of undergrad, while taking Introduction to Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience. There I learned the fundamentals in the study of the human brain. I was hooked!  (I would later learn this addictive behaviour to be a product of my mesolimbic reward pathway.)*  From then on, I sought opportunities to further study neuroscientific concepts and improve my research skills.  I graduated from Western Ontario in 2014.

*Here, you should probably insert a more specific research interest in a sentence or two.

The first sentence of your next paragraph is not a complete sentence - the issue is the "where" in the second clause.  Just get rid of it.

5. I thought the exact same thing - I like to open PDFs in my own PDF reader in my browser, or download them into Adobe.  So I think you should have a PDF download link for your resume.

6. Agreed about the contact page - include your email address, and if you have an office phone, your office phone number.  I would also list a business address (your department should be fine; most departments forward information to students if necessary).

Oh.  BTW, I found your research on oxytocin in homophobic individuals suuuuuuuper interesting.  My research focuses on the consequences of homonegativity/homophobia on young gay and bisexual men so they intersect that way.

[cwasson]

Hey Juillet! 

Thanks so much! I can't believe what great advice I'm getting from everyone . I am making a list of things i need to fix based on your recommendations! 

Also Juillet, my paper's unpublished and the research hasn't been conducted. Let's collab ;D

[TakeruK]

I guess whether or not hosting it on your dept server really depends on how much control you have over it. For me, at every department I've been in, all students are given accounts on the department servers so we actually directly access the files that make up our websites. Updating the page is just a matter of either changing the file directly on the server, or editing my own local copy and then uploading the file to the server (all this I would do myself, no need to ask the administrator). So, when it's time for me to move, I just copy all of my website files and put it on the next department server. And all of my previous departments are happy to keep my old accounts active and I replace my old website there with a page that redirects users to my new department's website. But, if you don't have this level of access and control, I agree that purchasing your own domain and hosting it yourself is much better!

[Cookie]

You might want to correct the misspelling right in the title of your blog "amatuer"

[danieleWrites]

A few critiques.

1. Responsive design. Open up Firefox, click tools, click web developer, click responsive design and you can have an approximation as to what your site will look like on something other than a computer monitor. Approximate because it's still Firefox reading the code. Wordpress offers mobile optimization (responsive design) tools in site building; these are also built into some wordpress themes. Weebly offers mobile website building tools, you should use them to build the site. Don't make your site app-dependent.

2. The pictures need credit. If you took them from the internet, make sure they have an open license and make sure you credit them to the owners of the license. If you made them yourself (took the pictures and then used photoshop), you should still have photo credits and date. Academic integrity should show up on your website. If you do not have permission to use the image, don't use the image.

3. The resume should be a curriculum vitae, in my opinion. You're creating a research focused site, not a "hire me" site. There is a difference between the two that will be far more impressive, even to potential employers. Instead of expanding on irrelevant work history, you'll be able to expand on your academic and research history. Also, the colors in your resume don't mix well with the colors in the image above it. I agree that you should have an easy .pdf for download.

4. The picture of you is a good picture. It works well to show who you are and it matches the site.

5. Get rid of the word "amateur" in the cover image. Pick a different word that gets at your humor and personality. I would recommend against "self-proclaimed," as well. Neuro-nerd is fine. Probably. I'm not sure about the sensibilities of the discipline, but I do know the discipline gets a lot of grant money for research, which indicates a sense of professionalism. We in literature are sublimely jealous, FYI. Showing a sense of humor is good, but not irreverence or self-deprecation. Amateur is not generally self-deprecating, but in this context you're saying that you aren't actually a real neuro-scientist. This is not true. You are. You have a have masters of science degree in neuroscience. Don't contradict your qualifications!