Topic outline

  • Special assignment seminar

    Special assignment seminar is a required part of special assignments done at the Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering (NBE):

    NBE-E4600 Special Assignment
    NBE-E4500 Special Assignment in Human Neuroscience
    NBE-E4510 Special Assignment in Biomedical Engineering
    NBE-E4520 Special Assignment in Human Neuroscience

    In the seminar, each student

    1. participates at least two seminar meetings before the session, where the student gives their own talk.
    2. actively participates in feedback discussions, makes notes about the feedback (own opinions and summary of the discussion), and prepares her own presentation taking these notes into account.
    3. gives their own presentation after carrying out tasks 1 and 2.

    The seminar meetings are organised as part of NBE student seminar. To see seminar announcements, log on to MyCourses. To book a slot for your presentation or to subscribe to the newsfeed, enroll to the student seminar using MyCourses; you will get an enrollment key from your supervisor. In academic year 2023--2024, the seminar is on Thursdays starting at 14h in F227, Rakentajanaukio 2C. The first presentation starts at 14h15 sharp. Each seminar meeting can have up to two presentations. In addition to the meetings required for the special assignment, students are welcome to listen to any and as many presentations they like!

    The length of a special assignment presentation is 15 minutes. After each presentation, there is a two-part discussion session, chaired preferably by the supervisor or the instructor of the work. The first part is for scientific discussion about the presented research work, and the second part is for feedback on the presentation itself. The idea of the feedback part is to learn to give better presentations by giving and receiving constructive, supportive critique. In the feedback part, the presenting student should also reflect, how the presentation went, how they took learnings from earlier feedback sessions into account, etc.

    After agreeing on the presentation time with either the supervisor or instructor of the assignment, the student shall book a presentation slot using Seminar scheduler and make a seminar announcement via Seminar announcements page. The slot for the coming Thursday must be booked and the announcement made by noon of the Monday of the presentation week; as there are only two presentation slots per meeting, it might be a good idea to book early (especially for December and May).

    Note that the NBE Student Seminar contains not only special assignment presentations but also other student talks; only special assignment and MSc thesis presentations qualify for the special assignment seminar.

    Updated 5 September 2019 Matti Stenroos, 22 November 2023 Linda Henriksson