Instructions

  • Instructions

    Follow these general instructions when preparing/working on the learning diaries, project work, project work reports, peer-reviewing other students' (preliminary) project reports, and project presentations. 

    Learning diaries:

    • Prepare a learning diary from the selected three lectures (1-3) (or 1-4).
    • Learning diary for each lecture should be approximately 1 page long. Submit your diaries in PDF format. 
    • You can structure your learning diaries e.g. as follows. 1) Abstract: a very short summary of the lecture. 2) What did I learn, and was there something that changed my understanding of the topic? 3) What did I not understand? 4) Can you apply the techniques in your studies, in other applications, or to address some important scientific and/or societal questions?
    • Return your learning diaries 10 days after each lecture via the course web page, i.e, deadlines are: Lecture 1: 12.03, Lecture 2: 19.03, Lecture 3: 26.03


    Project work:

    • Form a group of two students (you can work on a project alone too). 
    • Choose one project work topic. Indicate your choice in the Assignment page. Projects will be/are posted on the Projects page. 
    • Lecturers can help you to solve problems during the project work. Instead of communicating via email (and blocking lecturers' email inbox), lecturers will arrange approx. weekly meetings to discuss about the project work. 

    Project work reports:

    • Each group will prepare a 5-7 page report
    • Suggested format for the report: Abstract, Introduction, [Materials], Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions, References. (Materials [optional] contains information about research materials, e.g. a brief description of experimental data used in your project work, if any.)
    • Writing style should follow that of scientific articles. 
    • Very good and useful hints for the writing style can be found e.g. from the course web page of CS-E4860 - Special Course in Bioinformatics II.

    Project work presentations:

    • Each group will prepare a poster presentation of their work
    • Alternatively, you can volunteer to give an oral presentation which should include both a briefly introduction to your project topic in general as well as presentation of your own work (approx. 10 minutes in total). Only one presentation per project topic is allowed and volunteers can contact the course organizer via email. If you give an oral presentation, then you will not need to prepare/present a poster. The first volunteer (per project topic) will get the presentation slot.
    • You can prepare your poster using any style. A preferred size is approx. A0. 
    • If you cannot print a full size poster, you can use e.g. this tool to split a large poster into multiple A4s that you can put together: http://posterazor.sourceforge.net
    • Your poster can have the same structure as a typical presentation, which emphasis on results. Try to avoid having too much text in your poster. 
    • In the poster session, prepare to explain your poster to your student colleagues and other visitors.
    • Poster stands and pins/tape will be available to hang up your poster


    Peer-review of other students' reports:

    • In this course, peer-review is done for two reasons: improve the quality of project reports, and help you to learn writing high-quality reports and scientific publications
    • Each student should peer-review two other preliminary project reports. I will send each student the reports that she/he needs to review. You need to submit your peer-review comments 1) directly to the other group (using the emails that are written on the first page of the preliminary report) and 2) to the course web page. 
    • In your peer-review reports give constructive comments on: 
    1. General structure of the report
    2. Methods (and materials) used in the project work: Are the methods appropriate for given problem? Clarity of the description of the methods
    3. Results and conclusions: Are all results clearly presented and discussed/analyzed? Are all conclusions supported by the data?
    4. Language and writing style: You can send comments on typos etc. but also comment if you find some parts of the text to be difficult to understand or otherwise unclear. You do not need to improve the text but specify which parts of the text could be improved. 
    5. Layout of the report: These are preliminary reports, but you can comment on the layout nevertheless)
    6. References: Are appropriate references used? Are they used appropriately?
    • You are encouraged to give positive feedback too, especially if you think that the report is already good in terms of many of the 6 criteria listed above
    • Your peer-review report can be between e.g. 1 - 2 pages

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