Admission requirements
Approval from the study advisor to be admitted to a BSc project.
Description
This is the 2EC version of the course Research Skills and Scientific Integrity for Astronomy students. The content of the course is largely the same as the 3EC version. However, in the 2EC variant, you will cover fewer topics.
This course will prepare you and support you in carrying out your Bachelor Research Project, which is the final part of your degree. A series of crash-courses and short sessions (run by local experts) will touch upon the core skills that are necessary for you to finish your research project successfully.
Additionally, this course offers the opportunity to share your research experiences with your fellow students. This can help you to tackle problems encountered during your project and it provides a broad overview of the research performed within the institute.
The course runs during the entire third year of your bachelor. It consists of a poster session during which you obtain information about the available projects, a week of crash courses preceding your bachelor project and biweekly meetings for the duration of your project. The sessions will cover:
Labskills & safety
Research skills
Communication skills
Personal & Professional Development
Scientific Integrity
Ethics
In the Scientific Integrity & Ethics part of the RSSI course we address two aspects of your participation in the scientific community, which are the code of scientific conduct, and that of your responsibility towards society in general. You might feel uncomfortable with those topics, yet you will for certain be confronted by both at some time in your career.
In order to pass you need to complete the Safety drill and the fire extinguishing drill, attend all sessions, turn in all assignments, and give the required presentations.
Course objectives
The goals of this course are threefold. The first goal is to let you acquire the soft skills as listed below. The second goal is to help you with difficulties that can occur during your bachelor project. The third goal is to give you an overview of the research being done in the institute.
Transferable Skills
After this course you will be able to:
Work safely and independently in a lab environment
Identify and relate with the key support departments of a lab
Manage a ~20 week research project
Perform a structured search for scientific literature
Efficiently obtain from scientific literature what you need for your research
Manage research data and write a data management plan
Analyze experimental errors
Write in proper Academic English
Present your research to a specialized audience
Identify when you or your colleagues do not handle your/their research according the code of scientific conduct
Identify when you or your colleagues do not handle responsible towards society in general
Timetable
For detailed information go to Timetable in Brightspace
In MyTimetable, you can find all course and programme schedules, allowing you to create your personal timetable. Activities for which you have enrolled via MyStudyMap will automatically appear in your timetable.
Additionally, you can easily link MyTimetable to a calendar app on your phone, and schedule changes will be automatically updated in your calendar. You can also choose to receive email notifications about schedule changes. You can enable notifications in Settings after logging in.
Questions? Watch the video, read the instructions, or contact the ISSC helpdesk.
Note: Joint Degree students from Leiden/Delft need to combine information from both the Leiden and Delft MyTimetables to see a complete schedule. This video explains how to do it.
Mode of instruction
See Brightspace
Assessment method
The course is Pass/Fail.
To pass, you need to:
1. Attend all sessions in the first week of February (full week)
2. Attend all subsequent sessions
3. Turn in all assignments
Reading list
None
Registration
As a student, you are responsible for enrolling on time through MyStudyMap.
In this short video, you can see step-by-step how to enrol for courses in MyStudyMap.
Extensive information about the operation of MyStudyMap can be found here.
There are two enrolment periods per year:
Enrolment for the fall opens in July
Enrolment for the spring opens in December
See this page for more information about deadlines and enrolling for courses and exams.
Note:
It is mandatory to enrol for all activities of a course that you are going to follow.
Your enrolment is only complete when you submit your course planning in the ‘Ready for enrolment’ tab by clicking ‘Send’.
Not being enrolled for an exam/resit means that you are not allowed to participate in the exam/resit.
Contact
Remarks
Software
Starting from the 2024/2025 academic year, the Faculty of Science will use the software distribution platform Academic Software. Through this platform, you can access the software needed for specific courses in your studies. For some software, your laptop must meet certain system requirements, which will be specified with the software. It is important to install the software before the start of the course. More information about the laptop requirements can be found on the student website.