Hi everyone and welcome to UBC.
My name is Allan Bertram and I'm an instructor
of Science 300 at UBC.
Today I'm going to give you a quick overview
of this course.
Science 300 is a course that covers scientific
communications.
Students evaluate scientific literature and
present scientific issues to different audiences.
The course consists of two main parts.
The first is communicating scientific information
to scientists, the second is communicating
to non-scientists.
Here you'd be communicating with the general
public.
An example from the first part is peer reviewed
manuscripts, the review process.
An example from the second part is scientific
blogging and podcasts.
The components are listed here.
We have in-class worksheets and activities,
individual oral presentations, writing assignments,
blog posts and comments, a scientific investigation
project and a science outreach project.
These two projects are the main components
of the course.
Scientific investigation.
With your assigned groups you are going to
work in a team, you are going to formulate
a research question, investigate how it fits
with the current literature, then with your
team you are going to collect data, and you
are going to analyze, asses and interpret
the data.
Then you are going to present the findings
informally to class.
Then you are going to write up the results
formally.
So in this project you really are acting like
a scientist, carrying out real science.
The scientific outreach project.
With your assigned group you are going to
work as a team.
You're going to interview a scientist at UBC
about a recent piece of their research.
Then you are going to write a blog post in
journalistic style about this research.
Your blog post must include a podcast and
video.
So you are acting like a journalist.
I'll end with administrative details.
This is a third year course.
It's a required course for CMS at UBC.
It's offered in both terms.
On this note I will end and thank you for
your attention.
Welcome to UBC and I hope to see you in one
of my classes.
