IRF Uppsala

Space Plasma Physics

Anders Eriksson
Publications
Cluster
...EFW
...Quicklook
...Operations
Rosetta
...LAP

Litterature course in cold magnetospheric plasmas and electrostatic probe measurements

Anders Eriksson
Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, and
Department of Astronomy and Space Physics, Uppsala University

When Erik Engwall started as PhD student in 2004, we defined a litterature course for him as a means of quickly getting into his research project. This worked out very well, and the report he wrote as part of the examination could be reused as a large part of his licentiate thesis 18 months later. Other PhD students have expressed interest in the course concept, so I put up the course material here as an example of how such a course can be organized.

Course goals:
  • Provide background for the student's research project
  • Give skills and confidence in finding, reading, assessing and discussing research papers
How we did it:
  • We planned the course together, and I defined a list of 26 papers to read (course plan, PDF)
  • Erik read the papers, 1-7 at a time
  • We met six times to discuss the papers he had read since last time
  • After each discussion, Erik wrote about these papers in his report
  • The examination consited of the discussions and the completed report (PDF)
  • Erik and I both wrote evaluations of the course (in Swedish, unfortunately -- I never thought they would end up here!)