Guiding master’s students in scientific writing

Our department of computer science has during the recent years increased its master’s level education. This has forced us to evaluate our scientific writing education process. In this paper I will describe our current plans of making the writing education on the master’s level more systematic. Our earlier process had a good balance between bachelor’s and master’s level education. Now, with the increase in the number of students on master’s level, one third of the master’s student do not have our own bachelor’s level education.

To balance the skill differences between our own bachelors and bachelors coming from other institutions all over the world, we are adding a special scientific writing course in the very beginning of the studies at our department. We exempt our own bachelors from this, because they have had a similar course in their bachelor’s studies. This course focuses on writing process from the research question and article search to paper layout and structure. Naturally, we do not forget the writing style and skill issues either.

The master’s education will continue with more writing tasks on several courses included in the degree and end up with a student capable of writing a master’s thesis as the final step in her education.