Tutorial: Writing a scientific research paper/work

Administrative Information

Title	Writing a paper
Duration	3 x 60 min
Module	D
Lesson Type	Tutorial
Focus	Ethical research in practice
Topic	scientific writing

Keywords

writing,text plan,text structure,target audience,

Learning Goals

• Part 1:
  • student knows how to structure a text
  • student knows how make the structure of the text visible
  • student knows how to formulate key sentences
  • student has thought about the target audience
  • student has practiced making a text plan
  
  
• Part 2:
  • student can analyze a research paper
  • student knows the functions of all parts of a paper
  • student can write an abstract

Expected Preparation

Lesson materials

• Writing Advice

Instructions for Teachers

The Lesson Plan is organized as two tutorials. Follow the detailed description of the two parts.

Part 1: Learn to structure a(ny) text (60 min)

Preparation:

• Students read the document on writing: Writing advice

During the lesson:

1. In this tutorial, students will practice making a text plan, as described in the above document, that consists of themes, questions and answers from a project they are working on. Or the lecturer presents them with a case or an ethical question to work on. For example, the lecturer can use the following case:
   You are the programmer of a care robot. The robot works very well, but after a while the hospital sends it back. What is the case? The robot was assigned to Emma, a woman of 68 in bad health. She is an alcoholic and has several health issues. After a check-up in hospital, she was instructed to stop drinking, and to help her take good care of herself, the care robot was assigned to her. Emma refrained from drinking for a couple of days and unhappily sticked to her afternoon tea, but on the fourth day she instructed the robot: get me a whiskey. The robot's system crashed on the question whether to get the whiskey or not and is send back to you. Now you have to build an ethical rule into the robot to enable it to handle this kind of situation. What would you put into the algorithm: should the robot give the client the whiskey? Of should the robot refuse to bring the whiskey as it is unhealthy for the client? Make a text plan for a 2-page essay in which you write an argumentation for or against the robot getting the whiskey. First discuss the case from a Kantian and a Utilitarian perspective, then substantiate your own opinion.
2. Students are instructed to individually work on making a text plan for this essay, using only themes, questions and answers.
3. After they made the text plan, each student discusses their plan with another student and process the feedbcack.
4. Students start filling in the text plan with core sentences for each paragraph.

Homework:

• write the final essay using the advice from the document.

Part 2: Analyzing a scientific paper (2 x 60 min)

Preparation:

Students or lecturer choose a well-structured and relevant scientific paper to analyze during the lesson. Print it and remove the abstract.

During the lesson:

1. discuss with the students why we write research papers:
   1. what should a research paper do?
   2. what makes a good research paper?
2. students read the paper and are asked to analyze it:
   1. what is the function of each section of the paper?
   2. what is the central research question? Where do you find it?
   3. which subquestions can you distinguish? How do they influence the structure of the paper?
   4. Which parts of the paper the author elaborates more on than other parts? Why do you think that is?
   5. compare your analysis with that of your fellow student
   6. lecturer: explain the anatomy of a scientific paper:
      1. the rationale behind the hourglass model
      2. the different sections (abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion) and their function
3. Read the introduction very closely:
   1. where do you find the central research question or the hypothesis?
   2. where do you find the problem definition?
   3. mark with green the information that is known, mark with red the information that is still unknown: which gap does this research want to fill?
4. Writing an abstract:
   1. Mark the most important sentence(s) in each section of the paper
   2. write an abstract for the paper
   3. give the abstract to a fellow student for feedback
   4. rewrite the abstract
5. Now give the students the original abstract and let them compare it to what they wrote themselves. Contemplate on:
   1. how are the different sections from the paper reflected in the original abstract? How did you do that in your own abstract?
   2. Mark with different colors the sentences in the abstract that summarize the introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion and compare to the sentences you marked in the paper before. Compare to your own version.

Acknowledgements

The Human-Centered AI Masters programme was Co-Financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union Under Grant №CEF-TC-2020-1 Digital Skills 2020-EU-IA-0068.

Lesson plan on SURF

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