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This is an overview meant to provide context and guidance for working in the Language and Cognitive Neuroscience lab, tailored to the projects I'm currently running. The goal is to familiarize you with the purpose, methods, and expectations for tasks. You may work on one or more projects, by yourself or with other Research Assistants, graduate students or PIs.

Project

A project is defined broadly by a research question, and will contain a series of experiments that often share the same method. Each experiment will go through stages of design, experimenting, analyzing, and reporting results. The amount and nature of work at each stage depends largely on how similar the study is from something that's been done before, either in or outside this lab. Each of these phases can happen as quickly as a week, or last as long as a semester.

Folder access

The structure of a project folder reflects the general flow of stages and experiments. Each experiment is a separate folder, containing folders for each stage (design, experiment, analysis). Your access to folders will be at the broadest level relevant to the task at hand. So, if I ask you to help me design experiment 4 in a project called "Word Choice", I'll share the design folder inside the experiment 4 folder, with you.

Each project contains a single _README.txt file. It looks like this. This file contains all instructions and notes related to the project. Familiarize yourself with this document and use it to document anything that happens with the experiment that isn't already documented, including problems, solutions, changes and updates.

Expectations and Responsibilities

Much of your work can be characterized in terms of independent tasks. A task might be to find 20 pictures that contain kitchen objects, to compare two columns of data between spreadsheets, or to watch and code video files. They might take twenty minutes and be due the end of the week, or they might take months and be due after finals, this semester. You should always have a fairly clear idea of what is expected of you for a given task. If you don't, do not hesitate to ask for clarification from whoever is overseeing the project. It is their job to make sure this is communicated clearly. The time to clarify is anytime you realize you're uncertain. The best time to clarify is immediately when you receive a task.

Receiving a task

The key to successfully working on your own is effective communication skills. Whether in-person, email, or on slack make sure that you have a good idea of what is being asked of you. Take the time to ask yourself the following questions as soon as you can (in the moment, if possible). Receiving the task, means you understand what's expected of you. You'll work with your project manager about how best to do this (Currently I'm experimenting with a slackbot called "To-Do", which will help define task receipt, deadlines, and completion.) Here are some questions to ask yourself or your supervisor.

• What is the letter and spirit of the task? You'll want to know the rules and instructions you're supposed to follow (letter), but a good sense of the important outcome we're going for (spirit) will help you know if/when you should modify the instructions, ask for clarification and generally handle unforeseen circumstances. Understanding the spirit of the task takes time and experience, but it is also the aspect of task completion that will give you the most growth/experience. By gaining an intuition for the spirit of experimental design, you can think about how to improve a method, or consider alternatives.
• How do I know when I'm done? Some tasks in the design phase need to be just good enough for us to play around with, so that we can get an idea of how useful the method is. Others, like data entry, need to be double and sometimes triple checked so that there are 0 errors. Understanding this will avoid needless hours of work, or having to re-do a task.
• When should I complete the task? Be sure you know about how long it's going to take (hours or weeks) and when you're expected to be done.
• How high of a priority is this? Some tasks need to be done before anything else can move forward, while others should only be done if everything else is complete. Make sure you have a sense of what priority each task has.

Task Transfer

I'm a forgetful person. If you are too, that makes two of us. To maximize clarity and met expectations, here's how we'll keep track of tasks. The entire process is one of specific hand-off.

• Description: I'll describe the task verbally, on slack/email. This will usually come at the same time as the task assignment. Ask if any of the basic expectations (those described above) are not clear.
• Assignment: I'll create a "To-Do" task on slack associated with the description, assign it to you, and set a completion date. "To-do" is an app in slack that generates task events associated with users, deadlines, and other things. It lets us track complete/incomplete assignments.
• Receipt: Once you've understood the task enough to start working on it, put a 'thumbs up' on the slack /todo. Otherwise contact me about what needs to be clarified or changed. For example, maybe I forgot you'll be gone for a week, or that it's finals week.
• Progress: Once you've acknowledged and received a task, document (in appropriate readme files) and keep me updated on anything that went outside our pre-specified terms. A rule of thumb is, if you've had to make a choice, record and let me know what you chose. For tasks longer than a week, update me before the end of each week in a sentence or two on slack with 1) how far you've gotten 2) changes of plan.
• Challenges: Do your best to solve problems on your own. If you're at an impasse, use one of the templates below for requesting information or help. I want you to be able to solve the task, and am always willing to help. But I want you to show me that you've tried, and thought about the issue, so that, while I'm helping you, you're also building skills for tackling the next unforeseeable problem.
• Completion: Mark the "To-do" task as 'complete' when you're done. At the same time, send me an update describing the completed task, sharing relevant files, or other.

Meetings

Generally, we will have an initial meeting for any major project. This is a great time to be asking questions. For longer work, or if there is significant training/clarification needed I will initiate a meeting, however you are welcome to request meetings as necessary.

Clarification

Receiving tasks is the best time to clarify questions, but you may not know what to ask, or even that you have questions until you get started. Other times, questions or problems might come up that not even the project manager would have foreseen. Always, you're strongly encouraged to use your judgment and try to solve the problem in the moment as best you can with the resources you have available. This is where understanding the spirit of a task really pays off, and is also a great way to show your ability to work independently. It's better to ask forgiveness than permission.

However, if there is not enough information for you to go forward for whatever reason, do not hesitate to ask. Task completion is far more important that work being stalled by a complicated problem. Whether another RA, Grad student, or PI, we all strive to maximize communication so that work can be done efficiently. Minimize the time you spend thinking about whether or not to ask or how to ask. This is so important, I'm outlining a template here that you can copy/paste/modify as you like. Short and to the point is ALWAYS a good email/slack message.

How to ask for help, information

I've been working on TASK A. I successfully did some of the steps. I can't do the next step because of a thing. I tried doing A, B, C, I googled "J K and L" and it seems to be a problem specifically about this thing. What should I try next?

How to get something you need from someone else Gently, briefly, and quickly send reminders as needed. If you're working on task A and another person, whether an RA or a PI, is responsible for information or task B, and it's holding you up, send the following:

Dear X, I'm working on task A. Just wanted to see where we were at with task B. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help and/or when I should expect it, so that I can plan accordingly. Thanks, Me"

Continue to Project Overview to learn about methods for project stages.