Week 7: |
Lecture at
1315 on Wednesday 13th December. And now for something completely different: Ethics, from Ancient Greece to spam
mail and Wittgenstein. (slides) |
Exercise No new exercises; revise your summary if your TA
requires it. |
John Hughes
(rjmh@chalmers.se)
· Inari Listenmaa (inari.listenmaa@cse.gu.se)
·
Jonatan
Kilhamn (jonkil@chalmers.se)
Jonatan is leaving us after the
break, so if you need to ask anything, email one of the rest of us.
·
Simon
Robillard (simon.robillard@chalmers.se)
· Linda Hamp (hampl@student.chalmers.se)
·
Joel
Gustafsson (gujoel@student.chalmers.se)
· Frederik Hanghøj Iversen (hanghj@student.chalmers.se)
· Lamiya Yagublu (yagublu@student.chalmers.se)
·
Ibrahim
Fayaz (fayaz@student.chalmers.se)
You will
learn the skills to find, use, and explain relevant ideas from the scientific
literature—in both speech and writing—and you will, as a part of the course,
develop a Masters thesis proposal which you may
re-use for your own thesis. The course has a new teacher this year, and will be
taught a little differently from previous years as a result; expect this web
page to develop as the course progresses.
Lectures
are at 1315 on Wednesdays in HB2. Here is the schedule
in TimeEdit. There will be lectures most weeks, but
not all. They will be announced on this page in advance. The slides will be
posted here, but note that my slides are
not intended to be self-contained—they will not mean much to you unless you
attend the lecture.
Most of the
work in the course is in the exercises. Each week this page will specify the
work you should be doing; expect it to take around half your time. You pass the
course by completing the exercises satisfactorily. It is important to keep to
the deadlines for submitting the exercises, because your submissions will form
the basis of your small group tuition.
New for
this year, there will be small group tuition sessions. Each student will give a
presentation in one session, and take part in a writing workshop in another.
There will be a (limited) choice of times for your small group session, at the
following times:
·
Presentations:
November 16, 20 and 21.
·
Writing
workshops: November 23, 24, 27.
Each
session will be two hours and limited to five participants plus a tutor. A
doodle for you to book your session will be made available from each exercise
description page.
Week 1 |
Lecture at 1315 on Wednesday 1st November The
Scientific Literature (slides). Birgit
Grohe will talk about preparing for your Masters
thesis in the second half of the lecture. |
Exercise You
should carry out a small literature survey,
using the methods discussed in the lecture. |
Week 2 |
Lecture at
1315 on Wednesday 8th November Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking (slides, and some
accompanying notes). |
Exercise You should prepare a fifteen-minute presentation for your
class-mates on the papers you have studied. |
Week 3 |
Lecture at 1315 on Wednesday 15th
November How to
write a paper (slides). |
Exercise You
should write a summary for your class
mates of the papers you have studied. |
Week 4 |
Lecture at
1315 on Wednesday 22nd November Reviewing a technical document (slides); writing a
proposal (slides). |
Exercise You should review two summaries written by other
students—see part 2 of the summary exercise
for details. You should also write the first draft of a Masters
thesis proposal. |
Week 5 |
No lecture this week. |
Exercise The deadline for your first draft thesis proposal is
on Wednesday. Please make sure also that you send your own reviews
of other students’ summaries on time—your classmates need your input. During the coming week you should complete the final version of your own summary (see
part 3 of the exercise). |
Week 6 |
No lecture this week. |
Exercise The deadline for completing your summary is on
Wednesday. You should also receive feedback on your draft Masters
thesis proposal. During the coming week you should complete the final version of your Masters thesis proposal. Note that this is a different lab in the Fire system: make
sure you submit to the right one! |
Week 7: |
Lecture at
1315 on Wednesday 13th December. And now for something completely different: Ethics, from Ancient Greece to spam
mail and Wittgenstein. (slides) |
Exercise No new exercises; revise your summary if your TA
requires it. |
You should
read Joseph Williams’ book, Style: toward
clarity and grace (chapters 1—8), which is a tutorial on technical writing.
Beware: Williams wrote several other books with similar titles—make sure you
get this one. The book is out of print, but you will be able to find copies.
For example, it is available from amazon.com (but you will need to wait for
your copy to be shipped from the USA).
For presentation
stills, I heartily recommend Praktisk Retorik by Göran Hägg, to students who can read Swedish. It isn’t necessary to read this book for this
course—and it’s focus isn’t particularly on technical
presentations—but it is both hugely enjoyable to read, and hugely influential
on all presentations you will make afterwards. Unfortunately, there seems to be
no English translation, which is a real shame—it’s a gem.