As a result of the skill students will be able to transfer their curiosity and observations into research questions, appropriate data gathering and reporting. Therefore the focus will be on research skills, communication skills and learning skills. The course is a good preparation for understanding academic articles and all real life situations you will run into in later life.

Starting point for the course is an activity that is common to all people: observations. Students, policymakers, consultants, managers, all try to understand the world around them. This could be the tutorial group, a country, a company, or a department and ask them self what is going on here? If you understand the world around you, you are able to take appropriate action.
In this specific course you will get an insight of how to understand the world around you. Based on your own curiosity and observations you conduct a small scale research, following the next steps: observations, start asking questions; start thinking about explanations, what is going on? trying to find patterns, theory building; answering the questions by observations. We will also pay attention to the advantages and disadvantages of observations.

We choose not to use difficult theories, research methods or statistical analysis, but rather to use your own interest, simple phenomena and simple research methods. This approach means that you can focus on your own thinking and research process, rather than be distracted by difficult theories or statistical methods. The acquired skills are useful for more advanced courses, papers and master thesis.

The skill is organized as follows. First, we will stimulate your curiosity by observations and thinking. You will ask yourself “What is going on”. Next, this will be translated to your own research question. So, you can follow your own interest. Subsequently, you will gather data by simple observations or experiments. We don’t make use of statistical techniques to analyse the data, but will prefer tables and figures. You will report your findings in a paper.
Completing the course with a good result will make you eligible for the marble programme.

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