| Course title | Scientific Writing for Experimental Biologists |
|---|---|
| Course code | KMB/622 |
| Organizational form of instruction | Lecture + Lesson |
| Level of course | Doctoral |
| Year of study | not specified |
| Frequency of the course | In each academic year, in the winter semester |
| Semester | Winter |
| Number of ECTS credits | 5 |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Status of course | Compulsory-optional |
| Form of instruction | Face-to-face |
| Work placements | This is not an internship |
| Recommended optional programme components | None |
| Lecturer(s) |
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| Course content |
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Rough schedule of lectures and assignments (subject to change) Week 1: Introduction. Anatomy of a figure Week 2: Flash Presentations of figures and constructive criticism of them. Week 3: Titles, Readability and Conciseness. Week 4: Anatomy of Manuscript Week 5: Hedging and Ambiguity Week 6: Student presentations of peer edited 'Results and Discussion' text. Week 7: Student presentations of revised 'Results and Discussion' text after peer editing. Week 8: Introduction section structure and Plagiarism and Paraphrasing. Week 9: Text flow and link words Week 10: Manuscript preparation and abstracts Week 11: Student presentations of revied 'Introduction' text after peer editing. Week 12 and 13: Catch up, One-on-one discussion, final test
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| Learning activities and teaching methods |
Dialogic (discussion, interview, brainstorming), Work with text (with textbook, with book)
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| Learning outcomes |
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The course is intended primarily for Ph.D. students of the Integrative Biology program who will get priority when the capacity of the course is exceeded. The goal of the course is to introduce doctoral students how to write scientific literature in English. This will be done mainly by writing assignments and peer editing of these writing assignments, plus lectures and in class exercises. As the students will be writing about their own data acquired via their PhD projects, it is strongly recommend second year students and higher register for the course (i.e. we discourage first year students who still have not acquired enough data to provide content for their assignments).
The course is supposed to provide doctoral students with basic tools and mind set needed for scientific writing, i.e. writing an article for a scientific journal in the field of biology. This approach will involve them choosing a figure at the begining of the semester and then writing about different aspects of the figure: e.g. introduction to, describing results of and discussion of the data in the figure. |
| Prerequisites |
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Active English and knowledge of basic English grammar with the equivalent of a TOEFL exam certificate. Intermediate to advanced knowledge of one or more of the following disciplines of experimental biology: molecular and cell biology; developmental biology; biochemistry; bioinformatics. Strongly recommended that the students are at least in second year of their studies, as they will be writing about their own data acquired during the realization of their PhD project.
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| Assessment methods and criteria |
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Analysis of student's work activities (technical works), Interview
Students will be required to write about data they have thus far obtained during their respective PhD studies. These writing assignments will be peer edited by their classmates and the overall process will be presented to the class. The final assignment is to write an abstract of the imaginary manuscript reporting the student's data. |
| Recommended literature |
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| Study plans that include the course |
| Faculty | Study plan (Version) | Category of Branch/Specialization | Recommended semester | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Infection Biology (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Molecular and Cell Biology and Genetics (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Physiology and Developmental Biology (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Physiology and Developmental Biology (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Molecular and Cell Biology and Genetics (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Infection Biology (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Molecular and Cell Biology and Genetics (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Infection Biology (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Molecular and Cell Biology and Genetics (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Physiology and Developmental Biology (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |
| Faculty: Faculty of Science | Study plan (Version): Fyziologie a vývojová biologie (1) | Category: Biology courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: Winter |