Masterclasses Freshwater and Marine Biology

Course manual 2025/2026

Course content

Communicating research results, participating in scientific discussions, receiving and responding to feedback, and organising or participating in scientific (outreach) activities are essential skills in scientific communication. The Masterclasses Freshwater and Marine Biology offer a platform to learn and practice these skills through a number of assignments. During your 2-year program, you will build a personal portfolio, consisting of a collection of these assignments. You can access and build your portfolio in eJournal.

The assignments consist of mandatory components, such as providing feedback on student presentations, reviewing a draft report of a peer, and responding to this review, and optional components, such as additional scientific activities.

Objectives

• Presenting the content and results of a Research Project in an understandable, structured and transparent way relevant to an audience of peer students and teachers using adequate, attractive and convincing presentation materials.
• Participating in scientific discussions in a respectful and constructive manner, by combining theoretical and empirical knowledge and developing a critical view on the arguments put forward by others.
• Applying generally accepted rules of providing, receiving and responding to feedback from peer students, teachers, and other professionals when participating in scientific discussions and in response to written work.
• Creating a portfolio of all mandatory components with the option to add additional components for additional credits.

Teaching methods

• Seminar
• Self-study
• Presentation/symposium
• Working independently on e.g. a project or thesis

During the seminar, you will listen to presentations of peer students and learn to develop a critical attitude and learn to formulate scientific questions by providing feedback on some of these presentations through an online form.

Providing peer review on the work of others is a crucial component of the scientific process. It serves as a kind of self-regulation that helps to maintain quality and integrity standards and provides credibility. Carrying out peer review will help to improve the clarity of the work of others, while you learn new things you can apply (or avoid) in your own writing. You are expected to peer review a complete draft version of the research report of a fellow student as part of self-study. 

When you want to publish a scientific paper, you submit it to an academic journal. The editors send your manuscript out for peer review by fellow academics in the field who provide (anonymous) feedback. You reply to this feedback in a response letter, in which you demonstrate that you have carefully considered the reviewers' comments and made the necessary revisions to address their concerns. To practice this, you will respond to the feedback you received from the peer review on the complete draft of your research report as part of self-study.

There are many academic and outreach activities that require scientific communication. For example, organising symposia or poster sessions, (co-)writing a scientific paper, attending and presenting at a scientific conference, giving an interview, blogging or podcasting about your research, participating in or organising a beach-cleanup, etc. You can also earn credits by participating in these additional activities if you can motivate why and how they contribute to your academic skills.

Learning activities

Attendance

Additional requirements for this course:

You are invited for all Masterclasses, but since your portfolio must contain a minimum of 10 feedback on presentation forms, you must attend at least 10 Masterclasses during your two-year program.

You pass the course when you have acquired 20 points through completing a number of assignment. 

Assessment

To pass the Masterclasses FMB, a portfolio with all mandatory components should be completed. The mandatory components of the portfolio consist of a minimum amount of completed feedback and response-to-feedback forms. The portfolio can be complemented with additional feedback and response-to-feedback forms, or a number of additional scientific activities (e.g. organising symposia or poster sessions, (co-)writing a scientific paper, attending and presenting at a scientific conference, etc.). With the completion of these different components you can earn credits. You pass the course when you have acquired 20 points. Each point equals about 4 hours of study time.

Inspection of assessed work

Each finished assignment should be uploaded to the students' portfolio in eJournal. The course coordinator will check new submissions monthly and approve the submission or disapprove and give feedback on the submission.

Assignments

To earn 1 point for giving feedback on presentations, you should give feedback on the presentations of two students within 1 Masterclass. You can choose any 2 presentations, but you are only allowed to fill in 1 feedback form for each Masterclass. In order to acquire the minimum of 10 points for feedback on presentations, this means that you must attend at least 10 Masterclasses and fill in 10 presentation feedback forms. You can supplement your portfolio by attending additional Masterclasses and filling in additional presentation feedback forms.

You are expected to peer review a complete draft version of the research report of a fellow student. The peer review of the research report consists of filling in an online form in eJournal in which you assess different components of the research report based on a few criteria. You earn 2 points for each peer review you carry out. Reading and assessing the research report equals 8 hours of study time.

You will also receive a peer review on a complete draft version of your own research report. You are expected to respond to this feedback in a professional way similar to how scientist respond to feedback on a manuscript they have submitted for publication. You earn 2 points for each response to feedback you carry out. Reading and responding to the the feedback equals 8 hours of study time.

There are many academic and outreach activities that require scientific communication. For example, organising symposia or poster sessions, (co-)writing a scientific paper, attending and presenting at a scientific conference, giving an interview, blogging or podcasting about your research, participating in or organising a beach-cleanup, etc. You can also earn credits by participating in these additional activities if you can motivate why and how they contribute to your academic skills. You can earn 1-5 points (equal to 4-20 hours of studytime) for additional activities. The amount of points you earn depend on the time invested in the activity. Note that you first have to ask permission to the course coordinator to check whether the activity is eligible for points.

Fraud and plagiarism

The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

Course structure

Additional information

You will not receive a grade for this course, you pass the course once you have acquired 20 points.

Contact information

Coordinator

• dr. Jolanda Verspagen