Who should write you a letter of recommendation?

[this was originally posted as a Medium article]

There are a few times every year when faculty members are bombarded with requests to write letters of recommendation for students. Sadly, we do not do a good job telling undergraduate students what kinds of relationships they should be building with faculty to ensure that when the time comes (e.g., applying for graduate school or medical school), there will be two or three different faculty who feel comfortable writing a recommendation letter.

A good recommendation letter must do much more than just verifying a grade in a class. Students applying for graduate school will be asked to submit verified transcripts, and so the veracity of reported grades will not be in question. Furthermore, if all a letter writer can do is verify a grade in a course, then that actually speaks negatively for the student because it indicates that the student could not find a letter writer who could supply a stronger message. In fact, some of the best letters are from faculty who can address why an admissions committee should overlook a low GPA or a poor grade. The best letters are not about grades, they are about people.

Students should keep in mind that every person that they ask to write them a letter will be given a form like the one below and an opportunity (which is expected that they will take) to write a 1–2 page free response reflecting on the student and their potential for the program for which they are applying.

Example questions from an actual recommendation letter form for a graduate school application (click to expand)

Although the forms for each graduate program have slightly different questions, they all ask questions very similar to the ones above. If a student asks me for a letter, and I have never had an office-hours conversation with the student before (let alone exchanged an e-mail), it would be very difficult for me to attempt an answer to any of those questions above. At a minimum, I need to understand a student’s career goals and motivations for graduate study. It is ideal if I have worked with the student on a project (e.g., undergraduate research), but often just one or two good conversations during office hours is enough for me to attempt answers to the questions above and even write a one-page letter that does much more than just confirm the reported grade for my course.

So, choose wisely when picking letter writers. The best letters are going to be very personal and specific to your case and will address any parts of your application that you think might make you look weaker than other candidates (e.g., a low GPA or low grades). How do you make sure you will be able to pick a good letter writer? Start early. If you have time, try to get involved in some projects with faculty so that they have experience working directly with you. But even if you can’t do that, just go to office hours and chat with the faculty member about your career goals. Ask questions about graduate school, and maybe you’ll learn something interesting.

If you didn’t know to do this during your undergraduate degree, it’s not too late to schedule a meeting with one of your old professors. Tell them that you are considering graduate school and wanted to ask a few questions and get their reflections about your chosen career path. Just ten or fifteen minutes in conversation is enough to turn a recommendation letter into something that looks like it was written by a robot to something that will go a long way to getting you passed the admissions committee.

Ecovacs Deebot OZMO T8 AIVI and Auto-Empty Station: It's the good kind of suck!

I think most anyone who has heard of a robotic vacuum cleaner has heard of the industry leader, iRobot. However, I've noticed that the offerings from iRobot have stagnated a bit and lag behind innovations at their competitors. One such competitor is Ecovacs. During COVID-19, my wife and I decided to add a new puppy (Dexter, cream-colored Golden Mountain Doodle pictured near the bottom of page) to our home after our old dog (Fritz, black-and-white Cock-a-chon pictured at very bottom) sadly passed on. Dexter has been wonderful, but his new limber legs and light shedding has meant more fur and leaves (we have a dog door) collecting each day. So we decided to check out the robo-vacuum market. As a control engineering/AI researcher myself, I was impressed to see vSLAM on most robots mid-range and higher, with some of the non-iRobot varieties incorporating other technology that is awesome to see transferred out of the research laboratory. Here, I take a look at the vacuum we ended up getting (after trying the iRobot version and returning it due to incompatibilities between it and our carpet and a lack of state-of-the-art features).

We bit the bullet and got the premium Ecovacs OZMO T8 AIVI and the corresponding auto-empty station that works with it (and some other models from Ecovacs). Here are links to them:

• Ecovacs Ozmo T8 AIVI Vacuum: https://amzn.to/37Q3EGH
• Ecovacs Deebot 2.5L Auto-Empty Station: https://amzn.to/2OMvcWv

As you can see below, after every vacuuming session, I get a report of where the robot has been and what obstacles it has encountered (so I can go and clean them up). In fact, I can even view it moving around on the map in real time while I'm away. Although iRobot models do multi-floor mapping (like this one), you have to wait to interact with the map afterward (and you cannot see exactly where the robot has been and what route it took). The Ecovacs models allow you to pause the robot in the middle of a session and add virtual barriers and no-go zones.

We set our vacuum to run every night downstairs at 2am, and we have a Hubitat Elevation Hub that ensures that the lights come on then to aid in the navigation of the robot (and turn off after it is done). So far, this has not caused any problems for us (or the dog) sleeping. When it finishes (1100 sq. ft. in about 65–90 minutes), it returns to the auto-empty station and empties its dust bin automatically. We then get told when to change the bag in the station. The nice thing about having to buy the auto-empty station separately is that it means I have a spare charger (that came with the main unit). So I've set that up upstairs. Then, on Saturday mornings, when we take puppy Dexter to training, I place the robot on its spare charger upstairs and let it go. It recognizes that it has been moved to another floor and vacuums according to that map (you can load up to two maps). When we get home, I carry it back downstairs, place it on the auto-empty station, and tell it to empty the dust bin (which would have been done automatically if it had docked in the auto-empty station as it does every night).

The Vacuum also has mopping features built in (if you load it up with water and the mopping pad), and there is an additional extension that you can buy that adds ultra-sonic scrubbing to the mop. I understand the potential downside to that is that it isn't always able to get docked when that attachment is connected. That was OK with us because we really got it to pick up fur, Arizona dust, and leaves brought in by the dog (through his dog door). It works well for that, and it adjusts its thrust depending on the surface it is on (we have carpet and tile) and resistance it feels. So we ended up not buying the extra mopping unit (but might someday try the mopping features of the base unit).

There are some geeky additional non-vacuuming features too. The camera (which faces forward and thus is not useful when the bot is docked) can be viewed from remote, and the bot can be driven around as well. You can even set it into "patrol mode" where it moves around and takes video and stores that video for later viewing. If you manually connect and drive it around, you can actually engage its speaker so you can, for example, talk to your dog while you're away.

You can cover up the camera (they give you an attachment for that, which is a little clunky) in case you are worried about privacy. Like most of these super-smart vacuums, it capitalizes on access to the camera for navigation ("vSLAM"). In other words, despite having LIDAR to find obstacles, it fuses both of them. So covering the camera makes mapping and navigation less efficient. Furthermore, it is best for it to vacuum in at least dim light, which is why I ensure the lights come on while it is vacuuming (as described above).

Looking for MediaAmp, Course Links, or Files in Canvas's "Enhanced" Rich Content Editor (RCE)?

Recently, my university has changed things so that faculty using Canvas LMS will now encounter the “Enhanced Rich Content Editor (RCE)” by default whenever they edit an assignment, announcement, etc. Strangely, this change was made in the middle of the semester, not giving faculty who were unfamiliar with the "Enhanced" RCE a chance to find everything they frequently used in the classical editor. So here's a list of tips (with screenshots) to help you get used to the new editor.

• ASU uses MediaAmp to host videos for streaming to students. If you’re looking for MediaAmp (to embed videos) in the new RCE, you have to click on the little “Plug-in” icon (looks like a plug) and possibly search for it under “View All.” 
  
  
• If you’re looking for course links (Pages, Assignments, etc.), you have to click on the “Link” Icon (looks like chain links) and then select “Course Links."
  

  
  
• If you’re looking for your Files, you have to click on the “Link” icon, then select “Course Links”, then in the pop-up “Add” window that comes up on the right, change “Course Links” to “Files."
  

  

  
  
  
• Alternatively, some of you might not see the wisdom of changing editors in the middle of a semester like this one. For those of you, you can go to “Settings” and “Feature Options” and then toggle “RCE Enhancements” OFF to get the old editor back (at least for a little while).
  

  

I hope that's helpful! I wish I could say that the Enhanced RCE is an improvement, but I think you can see how it adds so many extra steps to find things that used to be up front and ready to use in the old editor. Even though it looks a little nicer, it's a net downgrade from the old editor.  And it is still impossible to drag images into the editor to insert them or simply paste them in place. You get no functional benefits out of the editor, and you get a lot of extra drag.

Happy editing, faculty!