DOCU0462-1

Duration

15h Th, 15h Mon. WS

Number of credits

	Master in biology of organisms and ecology (120 ECTS)	3 crédits

Lecturer

Monique Carnol

Language(s) of instruction

French language

Organisation and examination

Teaching in the first semester, review in January

Schedule

Schedule online

Units courses prerequisite and corequisite

Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program

Learning unit contents

The objective of this course is to supervise the student in the acquisition of skills for the realization of the master thesis, including literature search. This course is aimed for students who already master the basics of documentary research. Support allowing you to get up to speed with the prerequisites is available on eCampus. The theoretical content is directly applied to each student's dissertation theme via guided exercises.

SUBJECTS ADDRESSED:

Preparing and organizing a master thesis
The scientific and technical discourse
Scientific writing and dissertation rubrics
Reminder of the basic principles of computerized documentary research
Reminder on the use of Zotero, a tool for managing bibliographic references
Reminder of the main bibliographic research tools
Reminder of the ethics of citing references (no plagiarism!)
Realization of a personal bibliographic research on the dissertation topic

REMARK:

As part of your university education, you can legally dispose of the materials made available to you (PDF Power Points, videos, podcasts, etc.) protected by copyright. These materials are intended solely to be used by students as part of their course at the University of Liège. No other use or distribution is authorized, under penalty of constituting a violation of the Law of June 30, 1994 relating to copyright. If the resources found themselves freely accessible on the web, the person responsible would be exposed to legal proceedings.

Learning outcomes of the learning unit

At the end of this course, the student will be able to:

Take ownership of a research topic
Construct a research question and integrate it into its context (problem statement)
Define scientific objectives in a coherent manner
Clearly present the context (introduction) and the research objectives
Plan your work
Determine and state useful documentary questions in the context of scientific research
Select appropriate information sources and bibliographic databases
Run a computerized literature search and access the full text
Sort information based on quality and relevance criteria
Integrate the results of a documentary search in the bibliographic databases with the other information available in its scientific environment
Manage collected bibliographic references
Avoid plagiarism
Structure a written report or an oral presentation that reports on your documentary methodology
Write a scientific text including correct citations and bibliography (format and relevance)

Prerequisite knowledge and skills

Passive knowledge of scientific English.

This course is based on the skills acquired during the student's previous training, with regard to the realization of a documentary research and an oral presentation using slides.

The course notes for these subjects taught at ULiège in BLOC3 of the bachelor's degree in biological sciences ("Training in the use of documentary resources" and "Training in scientific communication") are made available on eCampus.

This course must be taken at the same time as the master thesis. The student must have selected his dissertation topic before the start of the course. Exceptionally, with the agreement of the jury, the course can be followed when the student is already working on his thesis subject (to be presented it the following year).

Planned learning activities and teaching methods

Lectures

Tutorials

Workshops:

presentations
discussions
writing texts
exercises
short group activities
documentary research on computer
importing and managing bibliographic references in Zotero
citation of bibliographical references

Personal work

Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)

Blended learning

Additional information:

Most of this course is carried out face-to-face. Some personal work sessions are carried out remotely. A detailed timetable is provided at the beginning of the course.

Work placement(s)

Organisational remarks and main changes to the course

The presence of all students is required on the day(s) of the exam. If the number of students requires several sessions, the presence of students is required for the half-day of their presentation AND a half-day of their choice

The course takes place in a lecture room, and/or in the computer room of B7a ( https://www.campus.uliege.be/cms/c_1804841/en/b7a-grands-amphitheatres ), or of B41 (https://www.campus.uliege.be/cms/c_2328634/fr/b41-faculte-de-medecine-veterinaire-clinique-equine-et-imagerie-grands-animaux). If the computer room is unavailable, the student must bring his or her personal computer for class sessions.

The student can bring his personal computer and/or earphones (if he wishes to view tutorials during the tutorial sessions).

Students' username and password are required to access the set of electronic tools.

Improvements are made to the course each year based on the evolution of knowledge and formal and informal feedback from students.

Contacts

Office: by appointment only (email, discussion forum eCampus, phone, before/after lectures)

Prof. Monique Carnol

Laboratoire d'Ecologie Végétale et Microbienne, Institut de Botanique B22, Chemin de la Vallée, 4, 4000 Liège, Belgique (3rd floor)
Tel. 04/3663845 ; E-mail : m.carnol@uliege.be

Preparing a dissertation in the biology of organisms and ecology