Prospectus

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New developments in knowledge production

Course
2013-2014

Additional Information

Admission requirements

A propedeutic exam of any Bachelor’s program.
Elective students: please contact the study advisor of your Bachelor’s program for information on enrollment.
Course 1, Science as culture (CWTSmi01).

Description

This final STiS course explores recent socio-technical developments that shape how scientists produce knowledge, collaborate, collect and share their data, and how they are being assessed. The course builds on the four previous modules but is also accessible for students that only took course 1, Science as Culture. The course will be practice based. Each student will formulate a specific question about new trends in research, which will then be studied using both the web and the library. This will lead to an essay which will be the final assignment in the course.

Course objectives

  • To be able to put current developments in science in a historical perspective;

  • To understand the role of information technology in scientific research;

  • To grasp the interaction between science and technology;

  • To understand the role of scientific instrumentation;

  • To understand the new forms of big data as the basis for scientific discovery.

Timetable

  • 10 working group meetings 2 hours (week 11 – week 20)

  • individual assignment (24 hours per week)

Assessment method

  • Obligatory attendance of the lectures and work groups;

  • Writing assignment: essay on a specific question about new forms of knowledge production;

  • A short presentation (together with 2 other students).

Blackboard

Next to Blackboard, the website Research Dreams will be used as a writing and publishing tool (www.researchdreams.nl)

Reading list

Paul Wouters et al., Virtual Knowledge. Experimenting in the humanities and social sciences. (2013) MIT Press 250 pp.
Hey, T., Tansley, S., & Tolle, K. (2009). The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery. (Tony Hey, S. Tansley, & K. Tolle, Eds.). Microsoft Research. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/contents.aspx 250 pp

Registration

Registration for the courses in usis will open in January.
Students from other universities will need permission to register. Please send an e-mail to Sarah de Rijcke at s.de.rijcke@cwts.leidenuniv.nl.
This also holds for Exchange and Study Abroad students. For more information please see the “Prospective students website”:
http://www.prospectivestudents.leiden.edu/programmes/study-abroad/ .

Contact information

Dr. Sarah de Rijcke, coordinator StiS, s.de.rijcke@cwts.leideuniv.nl, 071-5276853

Remarks