Course offers

Number of ECTS: 1
Target group: All Doctoral Candidates

The main aim of this course is to help students at the early stages of their doctorate to plan their thesis writing and produce early drafts. The course aims to boost writing confidence through learning about the expectations of academic readers and of writing conventions in their own field. It will also provide useful tools to support writing in English. Many tasks will be focused on the literature review and participants will be expected to write and revise parts of their draft text(s) during the course.

The course covers five main areas:

1. academic and disciplinary features in thesis writing;

2. research rationale and research questions;

3. boosting writing productivity and confidence;

4. structuring the literature review;

5. discovering your voice and taking a stance

By the end of this course, participants should be able to:

1) Read texts in their own field to become aware of the academic and disciplinary vocabulary and style used.

2) Apply this language and structure to their own writing.

3) Investigate the structure of writing in their own field to help inform the planning and writing of their own texts.

4) Produce and/or revise their research rationale and research questions.

5) Determine an effective structure for the literature review and attempt a first draft.

6) Use writing tools to help support writing in English.

7) Give critical and constructive feedback on the drafts produced by their peers.

Contact hours: 16; Preparatory work hours: 1; Self-study hours: 16 – reading and tasks to prepare for class and post-course work.

Number of ECTS: 2
Target group: All Doctoral Candidates

Teaching is considered such an integral part of academic life that the importance of course design and institutional frameworks is often overlooked. Indeed, the assumption that as specialists in their fields, scholars will be able to teach ‘naturally’ at university level is all but ubiquitous. As a result, many scholars start their teaching careers with little support or formal training, and few opportunities to discuss approaches and difficult classroom situations. This course aims to provide active guidance to early-career academics with no or limited teaching experience as they design their (first) course for the upcoming semester.

The course provides a set of introductory workshops addressing central, but often underestimated aspects of course design. You will be able to work with your own materials and the course will walk you through the complex interconnections between teaching, administration, and institutional requirements, their pitfalls, and their impact on course design and teaching practice.

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• Successfully DESIGN a student- and learning-centered course.
• ALIGN course activities and assessment with learning outcomes.
• CORRELATE the institutional and practical dimensions of teaching.

• Contact hours: 16
• Preparatory work hours: 12
• Self-study hours: 22
• Type of evaluation: Presentation (Workshop)

Number of ECTS: 2
Target group: All Doctoral Candidates

You might know R from data analysis. But, R can do much more than that for you!

R is a programming language that can be used to develop tools that can harvest the potential of the Internet, while it can help you in developing a holistic approach to the work routine. This series of workshops will introduce you to three of these possibilities.

The first two workshops are a gentle introduction to the R universe. The third and fourth workshops try to convince you of why automatization of reports can benefit you in the long run. The fifth workshop builds on the previous ones and show how you can self-publish your content on the Internet. Finally, the sixth workshop tries to convince you that web applications can be a powerful (and easy to implement) tool to have in your arsenal when communicating your research output (and not only).

• Participants will learn to engage with the R programming language beyond data analysis. Participants will have new knowledge and tools at their disposal to:
• enhance their self-promotion on the Internet,
• interact in a more dynamic way with the audience of their (research) output,
• contribute to open science and the replicability crisis in a more structured manner,
• understanding some of the software used by programmers.

Overall, this course will contribute to demystifying (a bit) the current trends in digital technology by becoming more aware of the kind of logic and thinking that goes into developing relatively simple digital tools.

Contact hours: 4 x 7 h; Preparatory work hours: 4 x 2 h; Self-study work hours: 4 x 2 h.

Number of ECTS: 1
Target group: All Doctoral Candidates

A PhD is more than a thesis, it is a personal learning journey, it requires that you know yourself so that you can manage yourself.

This workshop is designed to help you plan your PhD journey. In the first part, I will create a space where you can think and reflect on your career, and I will present theories and tools that can help you map out your journey. In the second part, we will work on learning strategies for specific skills: Time-Management; Managing your supervisor; Networking; Motivation. Finally, I would encourage you to continue the work through a peer-mentoring.

• Reflect on your career goals
• Become acquainted with tools to efficiently manage your professional development.
• Develop an individual career plan
• Build a peer learning group.

Contact hours: 12+ 0.5 individual feedback; Preparatory work hours: 4,5; Self-study hours: 8.