LCA-1020 - Academic Communication for Master´s Students (o,w), Lecture, 2.5.2024-6.6.2024
This course space end date is set to 06.06.2024 Search Courses: LCA-1020
Topic outline
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This course invites you to expand your English and academic communication skills by working with a topic of your choice: one topic from your field of study (or your minor, or a closely related field) that you feel excited about and would like both to explore further as well as educate your fellow students and teacher.
It can be a topic that you are already familiar with, such as your Bachelor’s thesis, any new intriguing area of research that is of interest and use to you, or your possible or actual Master's thesis focus. Through process writing, you will compose a literature review (aka state-of-the-art article, summary article, or review report/paper). Step-by-step, you will also first craft, then practise, and finally deliver an oral presentation with slides on the same topic as your review paper.
To support the learning processes at different stages, we have prepared different assignments and other tasks for you. These include activities, such as giving and receiving feedback with guidance, watching videos, reading selected materials, and writing reflections. For your convenience, we have posted a preliminary week-by-week workflow with deadlines on the course opening page (titled "Course outline"). A preliminary outline with weekly focuses can also be found on this page.
List of course assignments:
Final written assignment: State-of-the-art review paper 25 pts
Final presentation 25 pts
Online modules 10 pts
Preparatory tasks 40 pts:
(1) Assignment 1: Learning portfolio 5 pts
(2) Assignment 2: Brainstorming potential review paper topics 2 pts
(3) Assignment 3: An annotated bibliography 3 pts
(4) Assignment 4: Review paper outline with topic description 5 pts
(5) Assignment 5: Review paper intro 5 pts
(6) Assignment 6: Peer feedback on intros 5 pts
(7) Assignment 7: Review paper draft (full) 5pts
(8) Assignment 8: Presentation outline 2 pts
(9) Assignment 9: Self-evaluation of rehearsal presentation 3 pts
(10) Assignment 10: Final learning portfolio reflection 5 pts
Written Assignment
What is a state-of-the-art review paper? A review paper summarises recent and most current research on a particular research area. This paper surveys all the on-going arguments and debates. It requires an understanding of prior research and sometimes has to include an explanation of earlier research findings and their possible limitations.
You will write a similar report of 800-1000 words (excluding the reference list) on the topic of your choice; your paper will imitate an academic article in its simplest form. Keep in mind that the scope will be narrow and you will not be expected to read dozens of articles for your background reading. However, you will be required to find at least three references and, in addition to that, possible books or other reliable sources. To integrate these sources properly into your text and presentation, you will be asked to use correct referencing style.
Spoken assignment
In the second half of the course, you will divide your time between polishing the final version of your written paper and expanding your knowledge of how to successfully design and deliver an oral presentation on academic contents to an audience primarily unfamiliar with the topic. This presentation should be based on the same topic as your written assignment. Starting basically Week 8, you will first study how to structure your presentation for certain types of audiences, how to present your data, what kinds of points you should consider when delivering your speech, and how to design effective visuals. After this, you will have the opportunity to rehearse your presentation including giving and receiving feedback. Finally, the course ends with your final presentation. The length of the presentation should be 10 minutes.
Grading:•Grade 0-5•5 = 93-100 pts•4 = 85-92 pts•3 = 77-84 pts•2 = 69-76 pts•1 = 61-68 pts
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