Vak: Research & Professional Skills 2 credits: 5

Overview

This course comprises several separate activities that are organised by the institute or the student(s) themselves. They all revolve around the strengthening the students’ ability to function as a critical, independent and effective scientific researcher.  

Research (3 EC)

In the first semester students were stimulated to think in terms of possibilities and opportunities, applying unrestricted creative thinking. In this second semester, this is followed up by critical thinking to differentiate the viable approaches from the dead ends, allowing them to focus their efforts on promising research questions and designs. This critical thinking is also applied to question the validity of choice of methods and results of own research, as well as that of others. Background theory about the Scientific Method and Experimental Design is provided in (guest) lectures, whereas Critical Thinking is developed using active forms of learning, including teacher-guided peer-to-peer discussions. As an explicit aspect of critical thinking concerns ethical, legal and societal implications (ELSI), these are included in this module and will be made the topic of a workshop.

Professional Skills (2 EC)

Project management: Students learn to work project-based in a series of lectures. Students learn to set up and structure a project plan and how to scope the project. They learn to make a realistic planning related to time and personal and financial resources. Previous knowledge about collaboration and effective communication will be integrated in the course. 
 

Context learning line

All professional and research competencies are particularly trained and developed by the completion of the graduation project. During the research and professional skills modules students will develop these competences during the workshops, (peer) feedback and discussion sessions and in the project modules.  The emphasis of this semester is conducting a research project in a team effort