News for WS 2015/16

 Oct. 6: I initialized the website for the new seminar during WS 2015/16

Target Audience

Elective Course for students in a Bachelor program starting at 5th semester. The course is listed in the "FIQ" list of the B.Sc.EI course program.

Language

Englisch, participants should have a good command of English language

Dates

Thursdays, 15:00-16.30 Uhr, Z995 (Seminar room@LDV), first meeting 19. October 2017.

Content

Writing is more than just communicating the results of a project, it is actually a powerful thinking machine. The seminar tries to tab into this point of view and help students to a glimpse of the thinking power coming out of writing. The seminar will address practical aspects of writing such as how to begin, when to write and how to manage a productive writing process all the way on recognizing on when to stop writing. 

Further goals of this course are to learn and practice simple principles and techniques, which shall help to improve the participants' writing skills. The emphasis is to achieve clarity for a text of scientific subject matter. The presented form of writing principles and techniques is particularly tailored to the needs of engineers, who prefer a systematic and measurable process of getting things done. Besides prose text we also address how to handle mathematical expressions in a text as well as how to deal with references and citations.

The course is based on team work and joint discussions. That means that all participants shall analyze existing texts, which they discuss and which they subsequently re-write. Bedsides this, the participants will also be asked to write short original texts, which they will then discuss in the group. Beyond writing skills we will also touch upon a few effective techniques to improve the oral communication skills. Home assignments are of course also part of the course.

Literature

If you are interested to read more on the subject of the course, the following books provide additional material. The course presents a subset of the material covered in those books.

• William Strunk, E.B. White. The Elements Of Style. 4th edition, Longman, 2000.
• Joseph M. Williams. Style - Towards Clarity and Grace. The University of Chicago Press, 1990.
• Robert Boice. Advice for the New Faculty Members - Nihil Nimus. Alyn & Bacon. 2000.
• Kate L. Turbian. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations. 7th edition, The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
• Nicholas J. Higham. Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences. SIAM, Philadelphia, 1998.

Grading

Instead of a final exam the participants will receive a final home writing assignment, which they have to complete within a given time span (3-4 weeks) and deliver the result.