Lectures
This course includes the following eleven lectures. Lecture 1 is held on campus and lectures 2-11 are available as videos on Canvas to watch whenever you want. Their place in the schedule is a suggestion of when you might view them.
- Introduction and scientific knowledge (26 minutes)
- Scientific inferences (59 minutes) (flipped classroom 1)
- Observation and measurement (76 minutes) (flipped classroom 1)
- Experiments (49 minutes) (flipped classroom 2)
- Models (62 minutes) (flipped classroom 2)
- Statistics (62 minutes)
- Explanations and causes (81 minutes)
- Engineering design (76 minutes)
- Qualitative methods (93 minutes)
- Research ethics (103 minutes)
- Anticipating risk in science and engineering (85 minutes)
From the second lecture onward, there is an associated quiz of 15 questions. If you complete the quiz with at least 14 points, you will get bonus points for the exam. You can attempt to complete the quiz as many times as you like until it closes. Each quiz awards you 0.5 points and most close at the end of the week when the lecture is scheduled; this is to incentivise studying throughout the course, rather than only at the end. Some quizzes are open the entire course to give you some flexibility. Bonus points collected during this period are valid for the exam and the re-exam belonging to this period (some scaling of points might occur fo the exam; see more under exam information). For lectures 2-5, you should also post questions for the flipped classroom sessions. These are posted in a separate discussion forum linked from the main page in the Canvas course room.
Flipped classrooms
There are two on-campus flipped classroom sessions, each based on two of the video lectures. In the flipped classrooms, the lecturer will answer questions that you have submitted beforehand to the discussion board, stating things that you found to be challenging or complicated in the video lectures. On the discussion board, you can see other students’ questions and vote on which of the questions you think are the most relevant and pressing. The lecturer will choose a few questions among those in the top and answer them during the flipped classroom session.
During the second part of the flipped classroom, you will be given an exam-style question to answer by working in pairs. After working with a partner for 10-15 minutes, you submit your answer on Canvas. You must submit an answer – even if it is the same answer as the one your partner submits. The lecturer will then choose an answer at random to go through. You will get feedback and tips on ways of thinking about answering the question. This exercise is about how to target a methodological problem and may be helpful to you in the project or essay part, as well as on the exam.
Participating and completing the tasks in the flipped classroom sessions gives you 0.5 bonus points per session. The points will be added to the lecture quiz bonus points and are valid for the exam and the re-exam of this period (some scaling of points might occur fo the exam; see more under exam information).
Seminars
The course includes these four mandatory seminars.
- Definitions, operationalizations and hypotheses (course week 3)
- Designing a scientific study (course week 5)
- Interpretation, analysis and evidence (course week 7)
- Risk and research ethics (course week 8).
For each seminar, there are texts to read and a quiz to complete before you take the seminar. You need 14 points on the quiz before attending. If you attend without having scored 14 points on the quiz, you are not sufficiently well prepared and will not be marked as attending. You can take the quiz as many times as you want before your seminar.
Essay part
The course includes three mandatory essay meetings. For each meeting there is a mandatory submission, and for the final two meetings there are also mandatory peer-reviews. Before the first meeting you submit an abstract where you describe a methodological problem you wish to write about. In the first meeting you present your first draft and get peer feedback. In the final meeting you present your final version.
Note that each submission has a strict deadline. If you miss a deadline you may not continue with the essay part in that period, but have to start over in another period (note that this doesn't affect the other parts of the course).
Outline of the essay submissions (detailed information in the Canvas course room):
Submission 1 - short essay proposal / abstract (100-300 words). Course week 2.
Submission 2 - first draft of essay (at least 3ooo words). Course week 5.
Submission 3 - final essay (3000-3500 words). Course week 8.
Expected workload
The expected workload is 10 hours per week. If the entire course is taken in one period, the expected workload is 20 hours per week.
Schedule
Schedule on: www.kth.se/schema. Choose "Course" and search for course code. The course shares seminars with several other courses in the theory and methodology of science, so if you have scheduling issues, there are usually other sessions to attend. Contact course administration after course start.