New course “Development of soft skills and better academic perspectives”
Professor Igor Adameyko offers the new course “Development of soft skills and better academic perspectives”, with focus on writing research papers, presenting at conferences, attracting funds, and interpersonal interaction and social aspects in the lab. The target audience are senior PhD students, postdocs and junior PI’s at FyFa.
The course aims to train attendees in scientific writing (manuscripts and grant applications) and oral communication (conference talks). It is expected to be highly interactive, empowering and practical, containing lectures, practical exercises and invited speakers sharing their experiences.
“We try to understand the needs of the target group and then fill that gap effectively by blending the compressed theory with practical exercises during the course.”
The course provides a new window into effective science communication and inspires participants to stand out in terms of energy flow, density of information and engaging format in all forms of knowledge transfer. The main take-away idea is that participants shall put a significant amount of effort into shaping, planning, and polishing their manuscripts, grants and presentations. During the course we cover every step and every aspect of this tedious work.
“I was motivated by my role as an Academic Editor at Science Advances, where I handle quite many papers. I often see that the authors cannot effectively communicate their ideas and data. Also, most of the conference talks are monotonous and unengaging. I decided to devise a course that will help people to write and sound in a more interesting and functional way.” Igor explains.
The attendees are shaping the course in a unique way when entering the dialogues and discussions. By facing those formats of interaction, we develop better understanding of our experiences, which helps modify the course to better suit the attendees needs.
“The practical training part is really important. To my own surprise, some practical things that I teach during this course appeared to be eye-opening to many attendees. Also, some attendees shared very valuable insights. Those will be incorporated into the updated version of the course. Some of those stretch into a domain of intercultural communication and leadership in a research lab environment, which might be the next branch of my course in a year or two.”