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SuP 2015 bootcamp course syllabus
Tutors: Tobias Grohmann, Donal Khosrowi
Regular Dates: Tue & Thu 16-18 (S 136 / NW III)
Outline
This course is one of eight courses that students can join to acquire their SUP certificate. It is one of
two courses that will be held in English. Aside from language this course will differ from others
with respect to its aims and method. The idea behind this course is to provide you with a more
rigorous and systematic approach as compared to other courses. This is motivated by the fact that
we have received less than adequate training in the respective areas during our first semesters as
B.A. students. Consequently, both of us have long suffered from the fact that we had to acquire
these skills step-by-step, on our own and throughout all of our undergraduate studies. We feel that
providing you with more thorough training can accelerate this process. This way you will be able to
spot typical weaknesses in your writings, anticipate generic and obvious criticisms beforehand and
acknowledge and address these shortcomings accordingly.
This means that the workload in this course will be higher than in other courses. Not only will we
expect you to be more committed and to put more effort into your regular assignments but you will
also get two small extra assignments over the semester. However, there are clear benefits to this.
Subscribing to a more rigorous training early will save you lots of troubles and confusion with
almost all assignments that you will have to complete over the remainder of your studies. This
means that you will be able to take up a range of typical assignments much more efficiently and
effectively than other students.
Finally, to anticipate a number of possible worries, the fact that we will be more stringent does not
mean that the average grading in our course will differ from other courses. The idea is to give you a
thorough and effective training, not to discourage you by making it exceedingly difficult to obtain
good grades. This means that we will specifically focus on your differential performance between
assignments, that is, we will focus on how much you improve from one essay to the next and from
one presentation to the next. We take this to be the most relevant indicator of how effectively you
respond to our feedback and criticisms, and thus as the crucial measure of your performance in the
course. This approach has proven remarkably successful in our two previous bootcamp courses,
which is reflected by (1) significant between-assignment improvements to all student’s grades, (2)
higher than average overall grades compared to other courses as well as (3) an excellent course
evaluation average of 1.09.
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Aims and Method
The course aims to endow you with a set of basic writing, presentation and general communicative
abilities. Over the course of twelve weeks you will acquire a number of important skills in these
three core areas that are essential to any academic activity.
The first area is writing. You will be trained to (I) identify the general structure and key arguments
of academic literature, (II) extract, summarize and reformulate the central aspects of such writings,
(III) deliver a critical evaluation of the author’s points, and (IV) to develop well-structured and
cogent arguments addressing typical debates in philosophy and economics.
The second area concerns presentation. You will be familiarized with a number of important
desiderata regarding each the form, structure, content and style of your presentations. Mastering
these key elements is essential for giving engaging and convincing talks.
More specifically, regarding formal aspects, you will be provided with a set of memorisable
guidelines regarding for instance graphical clarity and overall accessibility of your screenpresentations. Regarding structure and content, you will be trained to identify and extract the key
arguments of the assigned literature and provide a compact assessment of them.
The third area concerns general communicative skills. This area will not only be covered by the
course routines, but will also be explicitly addressed throughout the course. You will be given
advice and feedback on a number of important communicative virtues, such as providing charitable
interpretations, anticipating objections, stating critical remarks briefly and clearly phrased etc.
By the end of the semester, you will ideally have acquired solid foundational skills in all three areas
from which you can then further develop your own styles. You will be able to take up a variety of
typical assignments with relative ease and approach essay writing as well as presentation
assignments in a well-structured and professional manner.
Organisation
Lectures, feedback and Q&A sessions will be held on our regular dates (Tue & Thu). Student
presentations will be held during two weekend sessions. Each session, two students will hold
presentations on topics of their choice. After each presentation there will be a short discussion.
Presenting students will be required to write and circulate a one-page summary of the readings they
discuss by at least one day before the respective seminar. All students will be required to read these
short summaries beforehand to acquire basic familiarity with the presentation topics.
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Schedule
Week 1
Wed 15.04.
Thu 16.04.
12h-14h (tba) General Introduction (Czaniera)
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Introduction Bootcamp 2015
Week 2
Tue 21.04.
Thu 23.04.
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Mini Presentations
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Lecture Writing & Presenting
Week 3
Tue 28.04.
Thu 30.04.
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Lecture Writing I
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Lecture Writing II
Block P1
Sat 02.05.
Sun 03.05.
10h-16h (tba) Presentations: P1
10h-16h (tba) Presentations: P1
Week 4
Wed 05.05.
Thu 07.05.
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Lecture Writing III
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Q&A S1
Fri 15.05.
No class! J
23:59 Deadline S1!
Tue 18.05.
Thu 22.05.
No class! J
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Feedback S1
Week 5
Week 6
No class! J
Week 7
Week 8
Tue 02.06.
Thu 04.06.
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Lecture Presenting
No class! J
Block P2
Sat 06.06.
Sun 07.06.
10h-16h (tba) Presentations: P2
10h-16h (tba) Presentations: P2
No class! J
Week 9
Week 10
Tue 16.06.
Thu 18.06.
23:59 Deadline Proposal S2!
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Feedback Proposal S2
Week 11
Tue 30.06.
Thu 02.07.
23:59 Deadline S2!
No class! J
Week 12
Tue 07.07.
16h-18h S 136 (NW III) Lecture: Feedback S2, Evaluation
Assessment
Two term papers: one in the first half of the term and one in the second, the first counting 1/6 and
the second 1/3 of the final grade. Deadlines: TBA.
Two presentations: 15 minutes each plus additional one-page summary of presentation topic. One
presentation in the first half of the term and one in the second, the first counting 1/6 and the second
1/3 of the final grade. Deadlines: TBA.
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Course registration
By Email: [email protected]
Subject: bootcamp SS15 REG
Body: Last name, first name, MATRICULATION NUMBER
Contact
If you have any questions regarding the specifics of this course please feel free to contact us via the
course email address or our personal email addresses:
Tobias Grohmann,
[email protected]
Donal Khosrowi
[email protected]
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