To be or not to be...a scientist

Studying at a university has a lot to do with acquiring knowledge. In numerous lectures, seminars, practicals, tutorials, excursions, and of courses oral and written exams students fill their brains with all kind of details on their study field and topics of interest. When finished, they know so much about all subjects they were studying that they can rightfully call themselves academics.

But does this make them into experts? And even more important, does this make them into scientists? What many students actually do not learn (so much) during their time at the university - or at least not through academic teaching - is what „science“ means in terms of a concept for doing research, what it means if something is labelled „scientific“, and how they can use not only their acquired knowledge but also their gained skills and experience to become a good scientist.

Already since summer 2008 we are offering an interactive seminar called „Students going scientific“. It features lecture elements with large room for questions and answers, student presentations with time for feedback and discsussion, group works, metaplan parts, computer exercises, career talk with my boss Prof. Hollert. Topics include statistics, experiment planning, the publishing process, presentation design according presentationzen, scientific bias with a focus on priming, literature search and management (with Endnote).

We tackle the key question: What is your vision of science? Every student is invited to develop their own idea of scientifically sound research. The course only provides them different perspectives to aid in this process. Also, students get a chance to decide for themselves, if they actually want to pursue a career in scientific research.

The course is a success since nearly 10 years now. Evaluations are always fantastic, and many students gave the feedback that it really helped them in their studies and career building. But although I spoke with many colleagues from different parts of the world about the course and the necessity to support students to become good scientists, I still hear very rarely that something like this is included in a curriculum. I can only hope that this will change in future.

In 2017 we then started with an advanced course, called "Students running scientific", which will be introduced in a separate blog post.