Scientific Writing & Oral Presentations
General context
The Scientific Writing and Oral Presentations course is designed for researchers who need to publish their research projects and/or present them to an international peer audience.
The course aims at enhancing the participants’ skills of communicating their research results in a persuasive and professional way. It will raise their awareness of the qualities of good scientific writing and speaking while at the same time give them the tools and resources to improve their written and oral communication skills in the long term.
Both Scientific Writing and Oral Presentations are interactive courses as they require active input from the participants. Places are limited (max. 8 participants).
The Scientific Writing course is built around the different steps an author takes in the writing process. Themes dealt with include: defining a thesis statement, reader-oriented writing, planning and organizing information, the contents and the structure of the different parts of a report from abstract to appendix, readable paragraphs, meaningful titles and headings, a clear and professional style, tables and figures, and referencing. Also, some important differences between scientific and business reporting will be pointed out. The course consists of three half-day group sessions and one-half day of individual coaching. The latter is based on an individual writing assignment.
Oral Presentations offers participants an up-to-date reference framework for making and evaluating presentations. It will help them discover and assess their own strengths and weaknesses in orally presenting research results. The course deals with the building of a presentation, the use of visual aids, the presenter’s qualities and the delivery. Ample focus is given on structuring the presentation, on making good use of PowerPoint and on making the delivery captivating. The course is split over two half-day group sessions and one full day of presentations by the participants themselves.
VIB PhD students and postdocs
Please note that this is not a language course, so proficiency in English is a basic requirement! During the registration process, you will be asked to submit an abstract in which you explain why you want to follow this course.
Please not that this is not a language course, so proficiency in English is a basic requirement!
- Participation is free for VIB participants.
- Note that upon no show without valid justification a fee of € 100 will be charged and you will be blacklisted for the VIB training program for 1 year. Click here for more information.
- Please upload a short motivation on why you want to follow this course during the registration process.
Trainers
Antoine Vermeire
Antoine Vermeire is Emeritus Professor at Gent University and a professional training and coaching consultant. Already for several years, prof Vermeire is successfully training VIB PhD students and postdocs towards writing excellent reports and giving memorable presentations.
Program
Scientific Writing
3 half-day group sessions and one half-day individual coaching based on an assignment
- The qualities of a good research report
- The preliminary phase: purpose, audience and contents
- Structuring a research report
- Parts of a research report
- Proposal writing
- Writing the research report of proposal
- Visual appearance
- Academic posters
Oral Presentation
2 half-day group sessions and one full day presentations by participants
- What makes a presentation memorable?
- How to prepare a presentation?
- How to build a presentation?
- How to end a presentation?
- How to use PowerPoint Effectively?
- How to be(come) a charismatic speaker?
- Some loose ends