Grad School Essentials: A Crash Course in Scholarly Skills
“Grad School Essentials: A Crash Course in Scholarly Skills” is a new two term, 1-credit, fully online course sequence offered by the ECE department.
The purpose of the course is to make students better scholars to successfully complete a M.S. or PhD thesis. For PhD students, the course will be a preparation for their Research Proficiency Exam (RPE).
Course offerings:
- Fall: ECE 563, Grad School Essentials: A Crash Course in Scholarly Skills I. 1 credit, online, asynchronous.
- Winter: ECE 564, Grad School Essentials: A Crash Course in Scholarly Skills II. 1 credit, online, asynchronous.
Prerequisites/Co-requisites:
- All students must be proficient in written and spoken English before taking this course.
- The ECE faculty voted to make this course sequence a requirement for both ECE PhD and M.S. thesis students.
- You should not take this course sequence in your first term at PSU.
- You should not take this course sequence if you do not have a thesis advisor and a research topic yet.
- Ideally, you should have done some initial research for your thesis before you take this course sequence.
Description:
The purpose of the course is to make students better scholars. Scholarly Skills I focuses on the foundations while Scholarly Skills II focuses on more advanced topics. Topics covered include research tools, choosing and planning a research project, conducting a literature review, research methodology, writing, referencing, editing, designing a poster, delivering a presentation, and writing a research paper. At the completion of the course, students should be familiar with the tasks and activities for successfully completing a M.S. or PhD thesis.
Student learning outcomes
Scholarly Skills I (Fall):
- Capable of using research tools, including AI tools
- Capable of managing research projects.
- Capable of formulating a research question and/or hypothesis.
- Capable of answering the Heilmeier questions.
- Capable of performing a literature search.
- Capable of reading and annotating literature.
- Capable of using the library and search catalogues.
- Capable of citing sources and generating bibliographies.
- Capable of recognizing and avoiding plagiarism.
- Understanding ethical and moral considerations and obligations in research.
- Capable of organizing, scaffolding, and outlining your thesis.
- Capable of writing focus statements.
Scholarly Skills II (Winter):
- Capable of organizing and writing a research paper.
- Capable of producing high-quality visualizations.
- Capable of editing and revising texts.
- Capable of delivering a research presentation.
Course format:
The course will be offered online in a fully asynchronous way. Mini-lectures will be pre-recorded. The course will require 2-4h of homework per week.
Credits:
1
Grading:
Graded only
Required texts:
None