 Welcome to all of you. Professor Fartuck has really set the stage up very well for starting the technical sessions of this workshop. So, this is session two and before we begin the actual session, let us briefly look at the goals of this workshop. Let us say the practical goal of this workshop is to improve the chances of getting your conference paper accepted. It is a very material practical goal. However, this practical goal actually serves a much deeper goal and it goes, the deeper goal is something which a number of people have said that writing improves thinking, writing improves research. This should mean that if you write well, if you learn how to write well, you will learn how to think better, you will learn how to do better research. And as teachers and faculty members in educational institutions, these are very important goals for us and for our students. So, learning how to write effective research papers is a skill that goes much beyond simply getting the paper accepted. However, it also gives you the additional benefit that you will be able to convey your ideas more effectively to your colleagues and other people in the scientific community. So, what we will begin by is by looking at what is a research paper and all that we have to say whether me and my colleagues at this point holds equally well for research papers that you might think of sending to a journal or to a conference. For the most part of this workshop, what we say is common to all kinds of research papers. The brief differences we will discuss in one of the later sessions. So, let us begin by examining what is a research paper and we will make full use of A view and the interactive software that we have to try to answer this question. So, here there is a short abstract of a research paper. What I would like all of you to do first is simply read it. And then I will say what to do. So, all of you please read this participants in the remote centers. If you could please raise your hand and vote whether you think this is a research paper or not. Just raise your hand within and coordinators if you could please convey the majority answer through the chat window, we will be able to get feedback here on what the majority of the participants think. So, I am going to switch over to the chat window, but I would like everybody in their centers to just take a guess. It is ok if you are not sure. Ok, we are getting some answers, number of answers. Excellent. So, I have got at least 10 answers so far and most people say that no this is not a research paper, this is not an abstract for a research paper. Most of the majority says that. And the reason is that a research paper is not simply compilation of existing solutions or existing technologies. If you go back to the abstract back here, you will see that this resembles lecture notes. It is a summary of what exists. It is not at all clear here as to what contribution, what key idea has the authors, have the authors try to convey. So, the first point we learn here is that compilation of existing technologies is not a research paper and a research paper should not look like lecture notes or a summary of a book or several books that you have read. Let us look at one more such example and we will do the same thing. Here is another abstract and I would like you to vote, participants please vote. If you think this is an abstract of a research paper and coordinators please convey through chat. Ok, so large number of answers are coming in from the chat window and here again I would say the majority very seriously say that no this is not the abstract for a research paper either. Even though here it looks like the authors have done something and have tried to convey key idea. You are right again the reason this is not a research paper is that what we just saw is looks like a report of your work. A straight forward reporting of your work again is not a research paper. So, that leads us to ask the question if research paper is not simply a report and it is not simply a compilation of what exists. So, what is a research paper? So, what we will do at this point is look at some key aspects that must be present in a research paper. We are not saying that this is the exact order or this is the section in which you must write your paper, but we are looking at the key features key aspects that you all need to have in a research paper. And if you note here I have underlined the word research. So, which means you have to start with an enquiry a problem. So, research paper has to very clearly state what is the problem that you are addressing. However, it is not sufficient to simply address this problem say that this is the problem I am addressing because you have to explain to the reader why this problem is important? Why is it interesting? Why is it relevant for the reader? Who would be the target audience that might be interested in this problem? So, along with stating the problem you also have to clearly articulate why the problem is important. Again it is research you cannot talk in vacuum you have to situate your work in the context of the knowledge that exists. So, you have to talk about what have others done to solve this problem. You also have to talk about how you went about solving this problem. So, you have asked your question here you have said why is your question important what others have done and now what is your answer. And then you also have to convince your reader that your solution is believable why is your solution valid. What we are saying through the slide is these are the bare minimum points that research paper must have and throughout this workshop we will add few more points here and we will also expand on many of these points. However, a paper that does not have any of these will not be considered as a research paper by a scientific community and it is not going to help you improve your research skills. There is a role for writing a paper which is a compilation of existing solutions. If done very rigorously and very thoroughly it can become a good survey paper. But for this workshop we will only be concentrating on research papers for conferences where you have to talk about some work some that you have done. So, let us now look at the main purpose of a research paper that you know what you want to put in it, but in a way we are asking why are you writing this research paper. So, let us do the same thing if all of you could please vote in your respective remote centers here we have more number of choices and all of these could be true. So, I did not put an all of the above right here. But I would like you to think about what is the primary goal of writing the paper. I see a large number of answer ones coming in and a few twos. So, let us actually discuss these two and I am quite happy that I do not see a three or a four yet even though for a lot of us it is important, but you are right that we should not be writing a research paper only to serve purposes three and four. So, our claim is that the main purpose of a research paper is to convey your idea. In the process of doing it, you will need to describe either the technology you have implemented or some new strategy that you have tried with your students or a proof of a theorem that you have discovered and so on. However, the reader may not be interested in this technology, the reader may not even know what this technology is, they may not have access to this technology. So, what you need to do, what you need to keep in your mind while writing your paper is that conveying your ideas are the key thing you need to do. Once you remember this, then the clarity there is a much greater chance that you will be able to convey your ideas more clearly. Professor Fartuck also mentioned this in his session just before that when we are reading somebody else's writing, we do not have them in front of us to guess to ask what they are saying, we have to guess what they are thinking based on what they have written. We do not have their body language to guess at what is going on in their heads. So, the only means, only vehicle of communication between you and the reader is the writing and that should be all that you are focusing on. So, let us look at why you should write a research paper in a slightly different angle and I did mention this at the beginning of this talk that several people, several wise thinkers around the world have said the following things that when we start writing, it forces us to think clearly and I think most of us also have had this experience when we start, let us say when we start planning a paper or maybe even when you start planning your lecture for the next morning. The moment we put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard, we realize that well there is something that we do not understand and we have to go back and learn it. Writing helps us learn how to learn unknown things, learn how to clearly think through known things and if you are in the game of doing research, writing is an integral part of research. It is how you share your ideas, it is how you refine your own ideas. So, when you think of writing a conference paper, it goes much beyond simply writing it for a given conference. There are several models as to how you should begin writing and when you should begin writing and a traditional model is that you first do the research and then you write the paper which has a lot of truth to it. However, there have been some people who have said that well you start writing the paper and in the process of writing the paper you will realize what research you need to do, what you still need to learn. So, even if you have an idea of what you would like to do, I would like to encourage all of you to start planning a paper and I would like you to take these two days to in fact just put into practice all the skills and the guidelines that you will learn in order to translate that plan into an actual draft. So, let us spend the next few minutes looking at what constitutes effective research papers because that is the title of this workshop. Again there are a number of questions. So, the first question is and we will use the chat window as you did earlier it seems to be working quite well. I received more than 20 submissions for each of the questions close to 30 for the initial ones. So, the first question is when you are writing a paper you can you have to make claims you can make different kinds of claims. So, here are two possible claims. What I would like you to evaluate is which of these two claims helps the reader focus better. So, if you were the reader which would help you read the rest of the paper better? Which do you think is more effective? The answers are coming in and even though I see a mix of A and B's I would see that most people have chosen B. However, there is a huge problem when you write B or let us first look at the advantages of B. It looks like the people the authors who have written claim B seem to have done a lot they seem to have done more than what people have done with A. However, if you write a claim like B the reader or the referee of your paper does not know whether she should focus on the novelty or the cost effectiveness or the fact that it is better or the fact that it is efficient or the fact that you have open source tools and please remember every claim has to be justified and validated this is a very important aspect. So, the reader is left to wonder how you have managed to validate each one of these. If you have not validated some of these the claims are quite useless and your paper is not perceived in a good light by the reader or the referee. So, good piece of advice that referees of important conferences give and people with a large number of years of research experience give is that keep one key focus in your paper. It is a little counterintuitive because two does seem like there is a lot going on maybe you can have two focuses two four side do not spread your reader's attention across multiple properties multiple characteristics that they have to keep track throughout your paper. It is also difficult for the author to write a paper where he is able to address each one of these describe each one of these with figures and diagrams write results for each one validate each one write a sound methodology for each one prove each one it is very difficult for an author to do all of it and also you have you also have a paper length at constraint for the number of words that you write. So, rather than spread your efforts all over the place thereby reducing the reader's attention keep one keep focus and throughout the paper keep hammering at it all sections of your paper must keep talking must keep validating and talking and explaining about the new standard what are its different features and why it is a good standard. I hope that makes things clearer let us look at one more question. So, what I will do here is give you two statements or two sentences and I would like you to judge which you should put first in the paper both might be there, but which should come first a or b ok. This time most of you seem to have the right idea here indeed b should come first because b is talking about the overall idea and more importantly b is talking about an illustrative example. The illustrative example and the overall idea given intuitive sense to the reader of what you are thinking. Once the reader has an intuitive sense she is able to follow what is written in the details. Moreover if the reader cannot follow what is written in the details it does not matter too much so long as they get an intuitive idea of what you are trying to say. So, even though I see a unanimous choice of b you would be surprised at how many research papers that get submitted to conferences actually begin with a. So, when you are writing your own paper make sure that write in the beginning give your overall idea and use an example right at the beginning. You can give a definition, but I would say give your example and then give your definition. This makes the reader happy. This makes the author happy because the author's ideas are immediately clear to the readers. Next we look at two ways of stating your contribution and let us say you are now the referee of a paper and you are looking at two papers with contributions written in two different ways. What I would like you to say is which to you as a reader. So, now I want you to put on your reader's hat which is clearer as a reader a or b. Again most of the answers from the remote center say that a states the contributions clearly. This is supremely important when you write a research paper that the reader should be able to find your key contributions easily. Do not make it hard on the reader to figure out to identify what exactly you have done. You may have done all of two. However, it is not clear by reading this what exactly is the contribution of the actual paper. So, state your key contributions clearly. State them early on. We will come to this especially in the practical session. Make sure that the reader is not left wondering what the paper is about. So, in this session so far we have just looked at a few key aspects that must be present in a conference paper and we have also looked at a few tips on how to write effective conference papers. So, what I would like to do is just walk you through the rest of the day and the rest of tomorrow rest of the workshop where we will be expanding on all these points. We did talk about. So, here are the various points of well written conference papers, well written research papers whether they are for conferences or journals. We talked about a key focus. We talked about a clearly stated contribution. We will come back to that in the practical session. A well written research paper also has a logical flow. The problem must be set up well. The importance of the problem must be explained that is the why. You must say who is the target audience for the problem? Who would be interested in reading the solution? You have to describe or explain what your solution is all about and then you also have to defend it. You have to explain it before you can defend it because unless the reader understands what you are trying to do, they will not be interested in your proof of it. So, again these things my colleagues, professors Gautam Dey and Kandan will talk about it in session 3 parts of it. We will come back to it in the practical session number 5 and in tomorrow's session number 7 which I will be conducting again we will look at how to set up a logical flow. When you are describing your results or your method, graphics are a very powerful tool. So, professor Gautam in session 3 will explain how you should use the most powerful most relevant graphics when you are explaining your methodology or when you are explaining your results. Most referees after they read the first 2 or 3 lines of the introduction will flip through the pages and look for the graphics. So, it is in your best interest to make sure that you have accurate and relevant graphics and well presented graphics in your paper. We already talked a little bit about illustrative examples and the general case and we will be looking at more examples how exactly to do this in today afternoon's practical session. There are some practices you have to follow regarding good writing style, language and formatting and tomorrow's session 8 on writing style by Dr. Mukta Atre would cover these aspects and you may be doing an excellent job in all of these different aspects. However, even if you have accidentally or unintentionally borrowed, that is the strongest word I will use right now, borrowed words from somebody else, your paper will be treated as a fit word playgatherist. You may not have meant it because you may just have borrowed somebody else's words to report what somebody else has done. Unfortunately, that is not sufficient. So, what we learn in session 6, the first session tomorrow morning is how to rephrase, how to paraphrase other people's work because by now we know that we have to discuss what other people have done. In addition to these, we have another very important session on scientific presentation skills. It does not appear on the slide because here we are talking about writing skills, but presentation skills are complementary to writing skills. Most of the times when you write a conference paper, you would also be making a presentation on it. Professor Sunoj will talk about effective scientific presentations at I believe 1245 today. So, to conclude this session, what I would like all of you to notice is that most of these points here do not talk about English. They do not talk about writing. There is a little bit here, but I would say 90 percent of the aspects or characteristics of well written research papers are not about the English. And Professor Fartek mentioned his beautiful experiments. He also gave you a challenge. He spoke at great length about how it is not exactly the language that matters the English, but it is about the ideas and the flow of the ideas and the coherence. So, that will be the focus of this workshop over both of these days. In all sessions, I would like you to be paying more attention to the structure. What should come first? Should you remove something? Have you stated your contributions clearly enough? Should you add something? So, let us focus a lot on the structure. The English or the language is the vehicle to implement this structure. That is the first point I would like to make. The second point I have already made a little bit that all these characteristics of well written research papers are whole true for conference as well as journal papers. And I would say that to a large extent, they would hold true to most disciplines. So far we have not made any distinction between how papers in engineering should be written, how papers in computer science should be written or math should be written or education should be written. But these are common aspects that should be present in most research papers. And that brings us to one uniting characteristic of all of you. You may think that all of you are from different engineering disciplines. So, how can a workshop benefit everybody? But there is one common theme or one common characteristic that all of you share and that is that all of you are teachers. So, what we would do, what I would like to do is have you or I would like to suggest to all of you that set a personal goal for this workshop where you take some teaching practice and learn how to convert that teaching practice or how to convert the idea that you have of either a new teaching practice or a new tool that you have developed into a research article. We will spend a few sessions explicitly doing it, but since all of you are teachers that is the common platform that all of you have and that is also perhaps a passion that all of you share. Plus most teachers that I know have all have all developed some interesting innovative teaching and learning practice teaching and learning strategy or a tool. So, why not take that idea that you have that is your idea and convert it to a research article. Exactly how to do this? We will begin in session 5, this afternoon session. There will be a short homework assigned on this and then we will carry we will we can even decide to carry on this theme of taking a taking an innovative idea in teaching and learning and helping you refine the draft. In fact, we do have a conference coming up it is called technology for education where the theme of the conference is to discuss either technological tools or pedagogical strategies for teaching and learning. So, if you decide to take your idea and convert it into a research article based on all these rigorous characteristics you can even consider submitting your article to the conference. I will give you more details about the conference in one of the later sessions. So, I think I would like to conclude the session for now. Thank you.