BIOS5115 ¨C Current Research in Natural History

Course content

This research-oriented special syllabus course, onducted at the National History Museum (NHM), combines reading, presentations and discussions on current research topics in natural history. The course consists of seminars with in-depth discussions of selected state-of-the-art topics within the biological and geosciences, including emerging research directions and recent publications.?

Learning outcome

After completing the course, students should:

• Be able to effectively present scientific research. As part of the course students will attend a training course in scientific communication, attend scientific talks that they must critically review a subset of, and give formal presentations on their own research at an NHM-wide organized symposium organized specifically for students and non-permanent research staff.

• Be able to extract relevant information from research not directly in the student¡¯s own research field. By attending a variety of different seminars and scientific talks, students will be introduced to research beyond their specialization and challenged to consider how these talks and papers may have direct or indirect applications to their own research. This could be through the methods or theories introduced, or the systems and scientific questions presented that may also be relevant to their line of research.

• Gain experience in leading scientific events. By organizing seminars with the support of other Principal Investigators (PIs) at NHM, the students will gain experience in leading scientific paper discussions.??

• Learn efficient and critical scientific reading. Develop the scills to read scientific papers for their stated hypotheses, assess whether the methods chosen are appropriate for exploring these hypotheses, and critically analyze the data interpretations and conclusions drawn from these.

• Learn how to give and receive productive feedback on each others work.

Admission to the course

Students admitted at UiO must?apply for courses?in Studentweb. Students enrolled in other Master's Degree Programmes can, on application, be admitted to the course if this is cleared by their own study programme.

Nordic citizens and applicants residing in the Nordic countries may?apply to take this course as a single course student.

The courses BIOS5115 and BIOS9115 have joint admission. Applicants are ranked by the following criteria:

1. PhD students and master's students at the MN faculty who have the course as part of their approved curriculum. Students at NHM and IBV will have priority.

2. Other PhD students and visiting PhD students.

3. Students with admission to single courses on master¡¯s level and exchange students

Applicants are ranked by credits in each group, with all applicants within 1st rank considereded before applicants in the 2nd rank, and so on. If admission is limited to a fixed number of participants, admission will be decided by drawing lots for students who are ranked equally.

Overlapping courses

• 5 credits overlap with BIOS9115 ¨C Current Research in Natural History.

Teaching

• Attend 10 seminars. These can be Tangled Bank seminars, STADIS sub-topic meetings, SNAC meetings, or seminars and meetings at NHM's facilities at ?kern or at UiO within the thematic area.

• Write a review. Students will write one review on a presented paper or scientific talk (approximately half a page in length) that is on a topic mainly outside of their field. This review should discuss the overall content and proposed conclusions. Students will be instructed to reflect on and propose connections between the research in these papers or talks and their own research projects, such as interesting methods that could be used in their own research, or how their own expertise could contribute to exploring aspects presented within the chosen paper or talk.

• Give a talk. Present at the NHM MSc/PhD/Postdoc Days during the Fall Semester, or at a national or international scientific conference pre-approved by the professor responsible for the course, Prof. Micah Dunthorn.

Examination

• Seminar Attendance. Attendance at 10 seminars must be approved to receive the final grade in the course.?

• Assessment. Participants will be assessed based on (I) seminar discussions, (II) paper reviews, (III) presentation feedback, and (IV) the oral research presentation. All four parts must be passed separately to pass the course.

It will also be counted as one of the three attempts to sit the exam for this course if you sit the exam for BIOS9115 ¨C Current Research in Natural History.

Language of examination

English

Grading scale

Grades are awarded on a pass/fail scale. Read more about?the grading system.

Resit an examination

Re-scheduled examinations are not offered

More about examinations at UiO

• Use of sources and citations
• Special exam arrangements due to individual needs
• Withdrawal from an exam
• Illness at exams / postponed exams
• Explanation of grades and appeals
• Resitting an exam
• Cheating/attempted cheating

You will find further guides and resources at the web page on examinations at UiO.