Weekly outline
- General
- 1. 8 September - 14 September
1. 8 September - 14 September
Course Introduction & A Navigator's Chart for a Master's Program
Introduction to course objectives and grading. Explanation of graduation requirements, academic ethics, lab safety, and culture.
- 2. 15 September - 21 September
2. 15 September - 21 September
Literature Management with Zotero
Hands-on tutorial: installation and setup, collecting references, inserting citations, creating bibliographies.
- 3. 22 September - 28 September
3. 22 September - 28 September
Your AI Assistant for Research
How to use AI (e.g., Gemini, Perplexity) for brainstorming, literature summarization, grammar polishing, and code generation. How to verify AI-generated content to uphold academic ethics?
- 4. 29 September - 5 October
- 5. 6 October - 12 October
- 6. 13 October - 19 October
6. 13 October - 19 October
Scientific Data & Visualization
Tidy Data principles, types of data (continuous vs. categorical), practice in data organization. The meaning and calculation of mean, median, standard deviation (SD). Introduction to box plots and bar charts.
- 7. 20 October - 26 October
7. 20 October - 26 October
Correlation, Causation, and the Ask a Good Question
Scatter plots, correlation does not imply causation, using the FINER criteria to evaluate research questions.
- 8. 27 October - 2 November
8. 27 October - 2 November
Seminar Presentation Skills
Narrative structure, visual design, oral presentation skills, and techniques for handling Q&A sessions.
- 9. 3 November - 9 November
9. 3 November - 9 November
Experimental Design: Controls and Variables
Positive and negative controls, independent variables, dependent variables, confounding variables. Introduction to sample size and statistical power analysis.
- 10. 10 November - 16 November
10. 10 November - 16 November
Hypothesis Testing and an Intuitive Understanding of P-values
The null hypothesis (H0) and alternative hypothesis (H1), the meaning and interpretation of P-values.
- 11. 17 November - 23 November
11. 17 November - 23 November
Research Ethics and Guidelines for IACUC / IRB Applications
Academic integrity, authorship principles. Animal experiment ethics, the 3Rs principle, application procedures and document preparation for IACUC or IRB.
- 12. 24 November - 30 November
12. 24 November - 30 November
Dissecting a Paper and Efficient Literature Search
The IMRAD structure, applying Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT) to literature searches.
- 13. 1 December - 7 December
13. 1 December - 7 December
Writing a Research Proposal (I): Introduction & Hypothesis
How to state the research background, motivation, and significance, and review key literature.
- 14. 8 December - 14 December
14. 8 December - 14 December
Writing a Research Proposal (II): Materials and Methods
Writing a reproducible experimental protocol.
- 15. 15 December - 21 DecemberThis week
15. 15 December - 21 December
Writing a Research Proposal (III): Preliminary or Anticipated Results
What kind of data is sufficient? What preliminary data can build reviewers' confidence in your ability to execute the project?
- 16. 22 December - 28 December
16. 22 December - 28 December
Research Question Clinic
Group discussions to strengthen each person's research concept (research question, hypothesis, IV/DV).
- 17. 29 December - 4 January
17. 29 December - 4 January
Final Presentation (I): Oral Report on Research Proposal
Students present their research proposals.
- 18. 5 January - 11 January
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