Overview
These working groups meet once a week to assess their progress, modify or update their short- and long-term goals, and assign tasks to participants. Research work is conducted between these meetings, either individually or in subgroups. Communication is often necessary between meetings and can take place through methods chosen by the group (such as emails or impromptu discussions).
The educational objectives of these workshops are to develop specific skills by applying them in a research-oriented setting. These skills are:
- assessing the state of the art regarding a problem or question: specifying the scope of the question, assessing what the main questions are and why they are important, difficult (or other adjectives), compiling the relevant literature, and organizing existing contributions historically.
- formally formulating a problem: choosing definitions, stating hypotheses to be proven or refuted, identifying subproblems or special cases, finalizing proven results either by extending or generalizing them, or by showing the impossibility of extensions, and finding connections with problems in different contexts.
- present (explain) a research result to colleagues: highlight what is easy and what is difficult, what is original, and what is standard; but also explain what remains uncertain (and why).
- understand why a research problem is important: identify the underlying issues, implicit motivations, potential applications, and future prospects.
- understand the rules of research (as a profession or a career): how to write a résumé, how to find a position, where to publish a research paper and how to write it, understand what plagiarism really is, where and when to obtain research funding, etc.
Practical Information
Description : Students will be enrolled either in a workshop spanning the entire semester (known as a “long” workshop, which allows for a more in-depth study of a research topic), or in two workshops, each lasting half a semester (allowing students to explore a variety of topics, experience different supervision styles, or join a different group of students).
Schedule : Each workshop has a scheduled meeting on Tuesday afternoons during the (half-)semester. Interactions outside of this time slot can be organized on an as-needed basis
Language : The workshops will be conducted in English, unless the entire group prefers another language (which may be French)
Assessment : Each workshop has its own rules and guidelines for evaluation. These will be specified in the workshop descriptions.