Research – Related Skills
Course Coordinators: Z. Lygerou
The aim of the course is to provide graduate students with complementary skills necessary for their future careers, both in academia and in the job market, and to facilitate their familiarity with solving complex research or applied problems.
Educational Objectives
The course aims to:
Facilitate students’ familiarity with solving complex research or applied problems. How do we synthesize the knowledge we already have to approach an unknown topic? How do we purposefully gather additional information? How do we critically analyze the information available to us?
Provide students with complementary skills useful for their academic and professional careers:
- How to write (and review) a scientific article
- How to write (and review) grant applications
- How to behave in an interview, how to write (and review) a CV
- The ethical rules that govern life in the laboratory
- How to present science to society
- Help students become familiar with analytical/synthetic work in teams.
- Teaching Methods
The course employs the following educational approaches:
Problem-Based Learning (PBL): Learning through problem-solving. The course is completed in two sessions and is based on solving a hypothetical problem or scenario in small groups of students (5-6 members), with analytical-synthetic-critical work primarily done during the class sessions.
Practice in Complementary Skills: In writing and critiquing scientific publications, writing and critiquing grant applications, writing a CV, conducting interviews, etc. These lessons include an introductory presentation by the instructor and assignment of specific tasks to each student, which are submitted to the instructor within a reasonable timeframe, followed by a session for commenting on the assignments and presentations.
Role-Playing: Students are assigned specific roles, such as grant proposal reviewer, job interview panelist, journal article reviewer, etc.
Course Content
- What is a PBL
- Writing Articles
- PBL1: Grant Applications – Short-Term Fellowships
- PBL2: Article Review
- PBL3: Science and Society
- PBL4: Ethics of Publishing
- PBL5: CV Writing – Interview