Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

Scientific and Technical Communication

Code

8278

Academic unit

Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

Department

Departamento de Informática

Credits

3.0

Teacher in charge

Pedro Abílio Duarte de Medeiros

Weekly hours

Total hours

Teaching language

Português

Objectives

The aim of this course is to develop or improve the individual proficiencies of expression and communication. These competences will have a practical orientation having in mind scientific research, the groundwork and writing of academic projects.

It will provide the student with the necessary methodology for the preparation and writing of scientific works – namely papers, communications, reports, and thesis. It is expected that each student will dominate research activities prerequisites, information retrieval and data management, as well as be able to use academic software.

It will train the student’s aptitude for evaluating other’s papers and thesis, as well as help him/her to organize and present his/her own professional CV, projects (pitching), and academic essays.

Objectives:

To Know

How to read, correctly interpret and critically evaluate theoretical texts and others.
To abridge, criticize, and rigorously reproduce the information retrieved.
To search for reliable documentation and systematize it.Rules for composition, citation, bibliography, and scientific and technical communication in general.
How to compose and write scientific and professional documents, namely thesis and reports.

To do

Organize individual opinions clearly and correctly in writing.
To write/edit technical and scientific documents – papers, reports, thesis.
To deliver oral communications and presentations (ppt, posters).
To evaluate other people’s technical and scientific papers.
To organize events of technical and scientific communications.

Soft skills

Good proficiency in analysis and delivering of oral and written discourses.
To organize and communicate individual or group thinking.
To recognize and use interpersonal communication rules.
To distinguish ethical problems and plagiarism.
To adopt good practices of scientific investigation and research.

Prerequisites

None.

Subject matter

1. Technical and Scientific communication essentials

a) Technical and scientific language features

b) Good practices for scientific research

c) Norms and rules to organize the work

- How to select a theme

- Information retrieval and its categorization

- Data preparation and writing

2. Knowledge sharing

a) The scientific paper

- types, characteristics, size, organization

- types of collaboration and writing styles

b) criteria for the refereeing of scientific papers

c) critical reading, analysis and observations

3. Dissertations and thesis

4. Ethical problems and Plagiarim

Bibliography

A. ALLAN, D. Glatthom, L. Randy, D. Joyner, (eds.). Writing the Winning Thesis or Dissertation : A Step-by-Step Guide. Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2005 (2ª.), [ISBN: 076193961X]
David P. BEACH, Torsten K. E. Alvager. Handbook for scientific and technical research. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1992, [COTA: Q180.BEA FCT 22473]
Robert DEES. Writing the Modern Research Paper MLA Update, Fourth Edition (Spiral-bound). Longman, Londres, 2003 (4ª.), [ISBN: 0321216369]
Hans F. EBEL, Claus Bliefert, William E. Russey. The art of scientific writing. Wiley-VCH Verlag Gmbh & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, 2004, [COTA: Q180.EBE FCT 57486]

Links

FCT – 2007-2008 Dissertation rules: http://www.di.fct.unl.pt/ensino/mei/0708/dissertacoes/
Research guide: http://www.tele.sunyit.edu/research_guide.pdf
Thesis Handbooks’: http://www.tele.sunyit.edu/ThesisHandbook.html
University of Kent learning materials: http://www.kent.ac.uk/uelt/learning/resources/links.html
Moral support (Death Thesis Society): http://http-server.carleton.ca/~felgar/dts/

Teaching method

Lecturing jointly with problem solving examples and/or exercises
Each student will have to produce an individual class or homework project per week
Type of exercises:

critical reading of a theoretical text or other
planning and writing of a theoretical paper
planning of a short memo/report
referee a colleague’s paper
prepare a ppt presentation and a poster
plan and prepare oral presentations and debates

Evaluation method

Each student will have to produce an individual class project or homework exercise per week – the projects will be presented/evaluated/discussed in the class
Final written exam (2 hours) – 2 groups of two theoretical phrases to choose one to comment / questions to be answered, (open book)
Each component represents 50% of the final mark

Courses

Engenharia Informática