4304667: Scientific Writing

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Semester:SS 17
Type:Module/Examination
Language:English/German
ECTS-Credits:2.5
Scheduled in semester:2
Semester Hours per Week / Contact Hours:33.2 L / 25.0 h
Self-directed study time:50.0 h

Module coordination/Lecturers

Curricula

Doctoral degree programme in Business Economics (01.09.2008)
Doctoral degree programme in Architecture and Planning (01.09.2010)

Description

This course is designed to give first year PhD Students an aid for their academic endeavour. Just like in Research Design, the focus lies on methodological competences. At the same time, however, this course also aims at techniques rather than design strategies. The objective is to provide core compentences on how to craft a scientific text properly. Due to the concept of peer-monitoring applied in this course also social competencies will be trained.

During the first year students will be working on their academic writing style, they will be made familiar with normative writing styles and ways to publish tackling various kinds of genres, and they will help and learn from each other through peer-monitoring activities. As a base sample texts will be used and the texts students will be producing will be worked on. The course is built on four pillars:

  • Knowledge Management:
    Working with databases, literature management softwares, etc.
  • Publishing:
    How to write and publish various genres: abstracts, research papers, articles, data commentaries, reviews, project proposals, formatting, etc.
  • Peer-Mentoring:
    Giving and receiving feed-back, presenting and reviewing, considering peer-feedback, joint writing activities, etc.

Lecture Goals

Students will be acquainted with principles of academic writing, normative writing, publishing, and peer-mentoring.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course they will be able to make use of academic vocabulary, they will be able to discuss texts, tables, charts, and figures, and they will be sensitised about their personal and academic command of the English language.

They will be familiar with reference management systems, working with databases, formatting written texts, and academic values.

They will know principles of certain academic genres, like abstracts, research papers, articles, data commentaries, reviews, project proposals, etc.

They will be able to give and consider peer-feed-back, present and review, and they will be able to carry out joint writing activities, etc.

Qualifications

Lectures Method

Workshops, one-on-one and think-pair-share sessions, individual and guided e-learning.

Admission Requirements

none

Literature

Natalie Reid (2010). Getting published. Writing strategies for European social scientists. Nova, Oslo. Chapter 4-11

Exam Modalities

  • Creating knowledge base on your work: Provide a short description of your thesis (from research proposal or any equivalent such as doctoral consortium proposal which is an up to date description and communicate in written form via our online learning platform
  • Creating knowledge base on your discipline: Identify key papers of your discipline (fundamental to the discipline, well cited, etc.) and characterize them in forms of minutes from the class (communicate via our online learning plaftorm both collection of papers and minutes of discussion)
  • Identify the conversant for your first next research project (communicate in written form via our online learning platform - Moodle)
  • Participate in the discussion with our guest lecturers
  • Fulfill the role of an author to submit a manuscript and bring point to point answers to the written reviews that you received. In case of oral reviews, be ready to answer to the feedback in class
  • Fulfill the role of reviewer (written and/or oral) and submit your review to our platform or prepare speech if you are an oral reviewer
  • Revise your manuscripts and communicate the changes via Moodle

Presence:
  • From our 6 sessions please attend 5, this would allow for smooth exchange of course participants

Exams

  • PWW-DS_Scientific Writing (SS 17, in Planung)