Prospectus

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Research Skills and Scientific Integrity

Course
2023-2024

Admission Requirements

Approval from the study advisor to be admitted to a BSc project.

Description

This course will prepare you and support you in carrying out your Bachelor Research Project, which is the final part of your degree. A series of crash-courses and short sessions (run by local experts) will touch upon the core skills that are necessary for you to finish your research project successfully.

Additionally, this course offers the opportunity to share your research experiences with your fellow students. This can help you to tackle problems encountered during your project and it provides a broad overview of the research performed within the institute.

The RSSI courses are mainly scheduled in the spring semester, when also the BRP starts. It starts with two weeks of crash courses preceding your bachelor project and regular meetings for the duration of your project. The sessions will cover:

  • Labskills & Safety

  • Project Management

  • Research Skills

  • Communication Skills

  • Personal & Professional Development

  • Scientific Integrity

  • Ethics

In the Scientific Integrity & Ethics part of the RSSI course we address two aspects of your participation in the scientific community, which are the code of scientific conduct, and that of your responsibility towards society in general.

In order to pass you need to complete the Safety Drill attend all compulsory sessions, turn in assignments, and give the required presentations. There is a consiberable choice of modules to create your own path and serving your needs.

The regulations for double students are largely similar and there where differences exists, these will be communicated during the BRP kick-off meetings in the fall semester.

Course objectives

The goals of this course are threefold. The first goal is to let you acquire the soft skills as listed below. The second goal is to help you with difficulties that can occur during your bachelor project. The third goal is to give you an overview of the research being done in the institute.

Transferable Skills

After this course you will be able to:

  • Work safely and independently in a scientific research environment

  • Identify and relate with the key support departments of a lab

  • Manage a ~20 week research project

  • Perform a structured search for scientific literature

  • Efficiently obtain from scientific literature what you need for your research

  • Manage research data and write a data management plan

  • Analyze experimental errors

  • Write in proper academic English

  • Present your research to a specialized audience

  • Identify when you or your colleagues do not handle research according the code of scientific conduct

  • Identify when you or your colleagues do not handle responsible towards society in general

Timetable

Schedule
For detailed information go to Timetable in Brightspace

You will find the timetables for all courses and degree programmes of Leiden University in the tool MyTimetable (login). Any teaching activities that you have sucessfully registered for in MyStudyMap will automatically be displayed in MyTimeTable. Any timetables that you add manually, will be saved and automatically displayed the next time you sign in.

MyTimetable allows you to integrate your timetable with your calendar apps such as Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and other calendar apps on your smartphone. Any timetable changes will be automatically synced with your calendar. If you wish, you can also receive an email notification of the change. You can turn notifications on in ‘Settings’ (after login).

For more information, watch the video or go the the 'help-page' in MyTimetable. Please note: Joint Degree students Leiden/Delft have to merge their two different timetables into one. This video explains how to do this.

Mode of instruction

See Brightspace

Assessment method

The course is Pass/Fail.

To pass, you need to: - Attend all compulsory sessions in the first two weeks of February (full week) - Attend all subsequent compulsory sessions - Acquire sufficient skills points - Turn in all assignments in time.

Within the semester you need to acquire 24 SP (skills points) for the Physics program (3EC), and 18 SP for the Astronomy program (2EC).

Reading list

Registration

From the academic year 2022-2023 on every student has to register for courses with the new enrollment tool MyStudyMap. There are two registration periods per year: registration for the fall semester opens in July and registration for the spring semester opens in December. Please see this page for more information.

Please note that it is compulsory to both preregister and confirm your participation for every exam and retake. Not being registered for a course means that you are not allowed to participate in the final exam of the course. Confirming your exam participation is possible until ten days before the exam.
Extensive FAQ's on MyStudymap can be found here.

Contact

Dr.ir. P.S.W.M. Logman Prof.dr.Harold Linnartz Prof.dr.Thomas Schmidt

Remarks

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