Immunology This course will be taking up most of your time during the first part of the semester. The content is quite wide and covers several areas without going to much in depth. The lectures are short, about one hour long, and give a brief overview of the chapter the student is expected to study outside of class. Each chapter can feel overwhelming since they usually cover a mean of 150 pages which must be read and studied in one or two days. The intention is for the student to learn how to navigate large pieces of information and sort out the important passages. Luckily, the course provides a very detailed study plan to follow, giving exact instructions for each chapter and provides relevant questions to study. These questions must be prepared from home and then presented in smaller study groups in mandatory seminars. Come well prepared, otherwise the instructor might get upset.
The course ends with an open book exam of three hours. Even if the student is allowed to bring the course book to the exam little time should be wasted to look for details. The exam has many questions that require extensive, which in turn requires an overall understanding of the topic which cannot be found on a specific page of the book. Study and prepare well.
Biomedical Academic Scientific Training
This course has very few lectures and consists mainly of work outside of class. You will be divided into a group of students which will write an extensive paper about a specific field of research. The body will consist of an introduction, two interviews and a reflection. Each group will have a specific topic but all papers will discuss how biomedical research is conducted outside of the lab. That is, everything that effects research ranging from the researcher's educational background to global politics and funding.
This course was a true delight and gave a great opportunity to have a meaningful interviews with influential researches and project leaders and PhD students. The students get almost the entire semester to write this report and each group was given an instructor to help them with anything they could think of.
Communication in Science
This is another course that will be given alongside the larger courses, much like BAST. It focuses on the academic language and aim to prepare the students in academic writing and presentation, both digitally as well as orally. Different project will be given which are related to topics in the larger courses. This ties the skill of academic training to the theory of this semester and aids in the other presentations of other courses.
The best part of the course was the individual feed back the student received after each assignment. It was a combination of teacher assessment and peer review and the feed back was always followed up in the next coming project.
Applied Electrophysiology
This course was short but intense for a small period of time. The teacher holding the course was very invested and made the whole content very interesting. The student will acquire skills to interpret a standard ECG and to identify several pathological conditions based on deviating patterns. The course wraps up with a large paper on a chosen topic that must be related to the core content of the course.
The course was, as stated, very interesting and a good "breather" from the immunology.
Infectious Agents
Immunology lays the base of this course which continues on in the same area of study. Now focus will be on the different pathogens ranging from bacteria to virus and parasites. The course aims to target different pathological pathways of different pathogens and the understanding of the human immune response to these.
This course did not feel very different from Immunology but was a natural continuation of the newly acquired knowledge of the immune system. The lectures were the same one hour long overviews and the the study time was mostly dedicated to reading, answering the questions in the study guide and presenting the answers in the smaller study groups.
Applied Physiology
Once again this course followed the same study plan ad the other larger courses; short lectures, a lot of self study and much time spent in small study groups.
Teaching Methods
The self study, guided by the study book, combined with presentation/discussion of the themes in the small student groups resulted in an organized and framed learning method. If the student is comfortable in being led, this system is optimal. If the student is more inclined to free studying, one will likely experience that the time will not be enough. The questions for the study group must be answered and they leave little space to study other chapters etc.