Admission Requirements
Science Journalism is a 13-week course which is part of the Science Communication and Society specialisation. This course is also available in Dutch for native Dutch students as 'wetenschapsjournalistiek'.
The course is open to MSc students from the Faculty of Science and to MSc students in the Biomedical Sciences programme of LUMC. Other students who are interested in following this course, should contact their own study advisor for permission.
NOTE:
There are unfortunately no spots left for students who want to follow this course as an elective course and are not following the entire SCS specialisation.
Please apply for this course through this registration form.
Description
In this course, you will learn how to write a good story about science news and you will learn how to choose the most suitable genre of journalistic writing for a particular story. You will write and revise various types of articles. The aim is to produce articles that are fit for publication. We will also discuss writing for social media. Moreover, you will learn how to conduct a good interview with your sources.
Course Objectives
After completion of Science Journalism, students are able to:
Write science journalism texts: news items, interviews and feature articles
Select what is newsworthy and how news is presented in news articles
Organize, prepare and conduct an interview
Produce, suggest or select photographs that support their message
Know how to explain scientific information to a general audience
Present themselves and their skills in a competitive (online) market
Revise their own text by adequately incorporating other students’ feedback
Timetable
Preliminary schedule: Classes will take place on Thursday afternoon 13:15 – 16:00h from September 7 – November 23, 2023. Room schedule will follow. On October 5, 2023, a guestlecture will be given from 09:15 - 12:00h.
You will find the timetables for all courses and degree programmes of Leiden University in the tool MyTimetable (login). Any teaching activities that you have sucessfully registered for in MyStudyMap will automatically be displayed in MyTimeTable. Any timetables that you add manually, will be saved and automatically displayed the next time you sign in.
MyTimetable allows you to integrate your timetable with your calendar apps such as Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and other calendar apps on your smartphone. Any timetable changes will be automatically synced with your calendar. If you wish, you can also receive an email notification of the change. You can turn notifications on in ‘Settings’ (after login).
For more information, watch the video or go the 'help-page' in MyTimetable. Please note: Joint Degree students Leiden/Delft have to merge their two different timetables into one. This video explains how to do this.
Mode of Instruction
Lectures, in-class activities, self-study
Assessment Method
This course will be assessed through assignments. The assignments will be evaluated according to checklists that will be handed out in class. The final grade for this course will be the average of all the grades for the assignments. This average may be adjusted positively or negatively depending on your adherence to deadlines and on the quality of your feedback on other students’ texts.
Reading List
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Registration
Please apply for this course through this registration form. You also need to register via MyStudyMap (uSis).
From the academic year 2022-2023 on every student has to register for courses with the new enrollment tool MyStudyMap. There are two registration periods per year: registration for the fall semester opens in July and registration for the spring semester opens in December. Please see this page for more information.
Please note that it is compulsory to both preregister and confirm your participation for every exam and retake. Not being registered for a course means that you are not allowed to participate in the final exam of the course. Confirming your exam participation is possible until ten days before the exam.
Extensive FAQ's on MyStudymap can be found here.
Contact
For any information regarding this course or the SCS specialisation in general you can contact our department through: infoscs@biology.leidenuniv.nl.
Remarks
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