Academic competencies
Week 1
Academic competences is the gathering of skills, attitude and knowledge.
Knowledge: you have to know what it is, how relevant it is and how to become more competent.
Skills: when you are aware of your competencies you can assess your skills.
Attitude: before knowing this, you need an attitude to learn and perform.
Why of this course?
- Informational literacy: ability to recognize when information is needed to locate, evaluate
and use the information effectively.
- Scientific reasoning: reasoning by standing on the shoulders of giants
- Academic writing: transfer your information to others, written.
individual research proposal
After this course:
Formulate well defined problem statements
Draft relevant research questions
Find and synthesize research papers
Create a conceptual model to match a problem statement and research questions
Determine a basic research design
What is a thesis/paper?
Published papers are always good examples of master, as because it is peer reviewed multiple times
before publication.
Two types of published papers:
1. Empirical academic paper (they have research in them)
a. Introduction
i. Why topic is interesting (Discuss existing literature, what it is missed, or
where there is a conflict and why to address this)
ii. Exact problem statement (mostly giving away their findings, but in a master
thesis you only do this in the conclusions)
iii. What kind of data and method
b. Theory
i. In-depth overview of existing literature (crucial to increase quality of thesis)
ii. Goal to create best possible research
iii. Builds up to what will be tested
c. Method
i. Why this kind of data?
ii. Why this data origin?
iii. Why this method?
should be answered based on existing literature
d. Results
i. Actual empirical outcomes
ii. Tables and graphs (illustration of the text)
iii. Helicopter view
e. Discussion and Conclusions
i. Answer to problem statement
, ii. Reflection on unexpected results
iii. Implications and future research
Week 2
Search methods
Snowball method: in a good-fit article, you look at the relevant references the author(s) used
= backwards
Citation searching: you look at articles who used your good-fit article = forward
o Mind recent articles will not be cited often
Systematic method: (combined) search terms in search engines
o Expand (add search terms)
o Limit (exclude search terms)
o Filter on year of publication. You can use several techniques in the systematic
method
Develop search terms, refine by
- Field
- Quality
o A journal
o Citation
o Recency
- Evaluate the papers on relevance based on their abstract
Research paper vs review paper: a research paper is with regards to doing research and
analysing/acquiring results. There is a method/analysis/results. (in-depth insights into specific
research) Whereas a review article is comparing findings of existing literature. There is this meta-
analysis acting as an umbrella over the topic. (helpful to establish variables)
Synthesis vs summary (summarising you mention points briefly, with regards to synthesis you
combine the summary of multiple sources. You combine and analyse these summaries)
Summary vs abstract: abstract also describes the purpose of the writing, it specifies what it is about,
contribution elements and gives you an insight. Whereas a summary summarizes the points you
read.
Annotation vs summary: annotations are comments and notes you make. These are relevant for you
to make in every paper. Highlight, write down, or capture notations in endnote/mandaly/excel. To
establish a summary to synthesize.
Google scholar vs library database: library has the ambition to provide you with all credible sources.
Scholar has this intention, but cannot guarantee nor dive this deep to ensure credibility.
Scholarly articles contain the following:
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Article text/body
o Research articles have methods and results
o Discussion
o Conclusion (might be part of the discussion)
o References
Week 1
Academic competences is the gathering of skills, attitude and knowledge.
Knowledge: you have to know what it is, how relevant it is and how to become more competent.
Skills: when you are aware of your competencies you can assess your skills.
Attitude: before knowing this, you need an attitude to learn and perform.
Why of this course?
- Informational literacy: ability to recognize when information is needed to locate, evaluate
and use the information effectively.
- Scientific reasoning: reasoning by standing on the shoulders of giants
- Academic writing: transfer your information to others, written.
individual research proposal
After this course:
Formulate well defined problem statements
Draft relevant research questions
Find and synthesize research papers
Create a conceptual model to match a problem statement and research questions
Determine a basic research design
What is a thesis/paper?
Published papers are always good examples of master, as because it is peer reviewed multiple times
before publication.
Two types of published papers:
1. Empirical academic paper (they have research in them)
a. Introduction
i. Why topic is interesting (Discuss existing literature, what it is missed, or
where there is a conflict and why to address this)
ii. Exact problem statement (mostly giving away their findings, but in a master
thesis you only do this in the conclusions)
iii. What kind of data and method
b. Theory
i. In-depth overview of existing literature (crucial to increase quality of thesis)
ii. Goal to create best possible research
iii. Builds up to what will be tested
c. Method
i. Why this kind of data?
ii. Why this data origin?
iii. Why this method?
should be answered based on existing literature
d. Results
i. Actual empirical outcomes
ii. Tables and graphs (illustration of the text)
iii. Helicopter view
e. Discussion and Conclusions
i. Answer to problem statement
, ii. Reflection on unexpected results
iii. Implications and future research
Week 2
Search methods
Snowball method: in a good-fit article, you look at the relevant references the author(s) used
= backwards
Citation searching: you look at articles who used your good-fit article = forward
o Mind recent articles will not be cited often
Systematic method: (combined) search terms in search engines
o Expand (add search terms)
o Limit (exclude search terms)
o Filter on year of publication. You can use several techniques in the systematic
method
Develop search terms, refine by
- Field
- Quality
o A journal
o Citation
o Recency
- Evaluate the papers on relevance based on their abstract
Research paper vs review paper: a research paper is with regards to doing research and
analysing/acquiring results. There is a method/analysis/results. (in-depth insights into specific
research) Whereas a review article is comparing findings of existing literature. There is this meta-
analysis acting as an umbrella over the topic. (helpful to establish variables)
Synthesis vs summary (summarising you mention points briefly, with regards to synthesis you
combine the summary of multiple sources. You combine and analyse these summaries)
Summary vs abstract: abstract also describes the purpose of the writing, it specifies what it is about,
contribution elements and gives you an insight. Whereas a summary summarizes the points you
read.
Annotation vs summary: annotations are comments and notes you make. These are relevant for you
to make in every paper. Highlight, write down, or capture notations in endnote/mandaly/excel. To
establish a summary to synthesize.
Google scholar vs library database: library has the ambition to provide you with all credible sources.
Scholar has this intention, but cannot guarantee nor dive this deep to ensure credibility.
Scholarly articles contain the following:
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Article text/body
o Research articles have methods and results
o Discussion
o Conclusion (might be part of the discussion)
o References
