How to present scientific information? A component in the Doctoral School at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium

Transcription

1 How to present scientific information? A component in the Doctoral School at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium Created to support a lecture at the international conference on The Preparation of Future Scholars: Rethinking Quality Assurance in Doctoral Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China by Paul.Nieuwenhuysen@vub.ac.be Vrije Universiteit Brussel Brussels Belgium

2 These slides should be available from the WWW site (note: BIBLIO and not biblio)

3 contents = summary = structure = overview Introduction & context Findings & recommendations!

4 Introduction / Context

5 Introduction Context Teaching experiments, experience gained, and lessons learned serve as a basis for recommendations»to professors/colleagues in a similar environment &»to the directors/managers of doctoral schools.

6 Introduction Context This author has been teaching for many years on subjects related to information literacy for academic students / scholars / researchers. For several years, teaching in this area has also been included in the general, inter-faculty Doctoral School of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, in Brussels, Belgium.

7 Introduction Context Teaching/learning subjects included»how to discover information to support scientific research?»how to present information in a scientific environment: live lecturing & creating a poster for a conference?

8 Introduction Context Here we focus on the topic presentation of scientific information The outline of the course as well as the study materials have been offered to the students online on the WWW site of the professor on the server of the university:

9 Introduction Context The study materials consist of 2 series of slides:»the first series deals with the subject images on computers, because images --such as photos & charts-- form a substantial component of slides, of posters and even of WWW sites that are created to support scientific communication: http: // /chapters/pictures.pdf

10 Introduction Context»The second series includes topics such as how to create charts, a series of slides, a printed poster, etc.: http: // /courses/chapters/present.pdf

11 Introduction Context The slides offer mainly guidelines plus demonstrations. Some slides contain also references to a few additional texts, even with a web link to the material, if it is available online on the same WWW site or elsewhere on the Internet. Furthermore, each series includes several slides with questions and with descriptions of small assignments, mainly to support and enhance the interaction with students and among students.

12 /

13 Teaching the course as described & experimenting with contents, teaching methods and methods to evaluate the performance and progress of students, have yielded some experience, that has led to the following recommendations:

14 1 Managers / directors of a doctoral school should investigate if there is a need to include these subjects in the curriculum. The importance of the subjects for scientists should be understood by everyone involved: managers, professors, students. Do the subjects receive the attention they deserve in the curriculum at Master level? If not then the doctoral school should include these.

15 2 The presentation of information is NOT considered by all students as an essential or important component of their university education, because it is not strictly a core part of the specific discipline that they have chosen. Most students have not yet experienced that scientific communication skills are important 1. to obtain a doctoral degree & 2. to support their further career.

16 2 we should demonstrate the importance of such a course & motivate students as soon as possible.

17 3 A presentation of scientific information is of course based on scientific content, on presentation skills, on a suitable format and so on. However, more fundamentally, the decisions to be made in the preparation of a presentation, in this context by the advanced student, requires also a sound understanding and view»on the basics of science &»on the expectations of the audience.

18 3 ideally, the professor who guides the students in creating presentations should 1. not only have experience in software, graphics, charts, formats and so on, 2. but also in scientific work.

19 4 Teachers on these subjects in a doctoral school should spend»less time on theory and methodology &»more time on challenging, practical exercises.

20 5 Students can be motivated and they can learn efficiently, when the professor / teacher shows the scientific posters that have been created by students in previous years. Then these posters can serve as a concrete basis for a group discussion that can include suggestions to improve the posters.

21 6 On the one hand, professors / teachers should offer a concrete, solid basis to the students, so that even unexperienced students can make fast progress. On the other hand, teachers should allow students a high degree of freedom regarding selection and usage of software, and even regarding the format of their scientific lecture and/or poster. Finding an optimal compromise here is a challenge.

22 7 The assignments (practical exercises) should ideally lead to deliverables that can later eventually be adapted, improved, extended and applied by the student in a real presentation of her/his research work,»during a conference or»during the presentation of their dissertation.

23 8 Different skills are required in different disciplines; for instance, posters are more often used to support a presentation in the natural sciences than in human sciences. The curriculum and aims should be adapted to the type of students.

24 9 On the one hand, group assignments and assessments offer advantages in comparison with individual assignments and assessments, at least in principle co-operative learning methods deserve to be considered by the professor for any course. In this context, an example is the creation by a group of students of one poster that clearly shows / visualizes some research project that has been carried out at the university.

25 9 On the other hand, in a general doctoral school, co-operative learning is hard to implement. Reasons are:»the diversity among students in their scientific background/discipline and motivation,»the difficulty of setting up physical meetings of groups of students, as their availability is restricted / limited due to their ongoing scientific research.

26 10 Evaluation of the performance of each student + feedback is needed, but this takes time this phase of the teaching should be turned as much as possible into a useful, constructive learning experience & should NOT be seen as an unavoidable, annoying waste of time.

27 11 On the one hand, the evaluation of the work of each student can be an interesting part of the learning experience of all the students present. On the other hand, the teacher should take care of respecting the privacy of each student.

28 12 Some students are embarrassed when their work is discussed and criticized in public in the form of a learning experience for all students involved; these students prefer more private, personal discussions with the professor, but this takes more time & is of course not interesting for the other students. Finding an optimal compromise here is also challenging.

29 13 The system of credits deserved after learning and delivery of assignment reports should be clear as soon as possible, for everyone involved, including the students and the professor. This seems obvious, BUT this can be difficult to achieve, when a program is new and starting or when the doctoral school program is established as a program that is friendlier and more informal than the other study programs.

30 14 = last one In general, it is recommended that students of a course should have the opportunity to evaluate the course (that means: contents, as well as teaching aspects and formats). A university can support and facilitate this process and can use the results to improve the quality of education. Also the doctoral school should be included in this process.

31 Questions Suggestions Comments are welcome

32 You are free to copy, distribute, display this work under the following conditions:»attribution: You must mention the author.»noncommercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes.»no Derivative Works: You may not change, modify, alter, transform, or build upon this work. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.