Compulsory course

The course belongs to the USP-300 module

Course is not available for students from other programmes.

Appropriate Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, default for USP programme students.

After the course the students

• can apply the basic academic skills, such as concept analysis, searching for and critical reading of literature, forming research questions, choosing suitable research methods, and scientific argumentation,
• can judge the relevance of research in different disciplines for urban studies and planning, to support them,
• are able to carry out research according to the rules of responsible conduct of research, without even unintentionally breaking them.
• have a practical capability to use different research methods

Recommended time for completion: first year

The course is offered in periods 1 + 2.

• Formulating a research idea and questions
• Analysing the concepts used
• Formulating pre-understanding and hypotheses
• Searching for research literature and doing literature review
• Critical reading of research literature and other texts
• Selecting suitable methods and assessing what they can give you
• Producing and analysing data
• Quantitative methods
• Qualitative methods
• Drawing conclusions and discussing the results
• Writing and publishing academic texts
• Following the ethical standards of good scientific practice

TBA during the class

The course is based on weekly lectures and assignments. Lecturers are scholars who have practical experience in the skills that will be experimented through the assignments. Each assignment is introduced with a short text and supporting literature, and students receive feedback on their submissions.

Only the final portfolio (where all earlier assignments are collected, along with reflection) is graded, the weekly assignments receive written comments in the online course system. This is to lower the threshold of submitting the assignments, which can be developed within the learning portfolio. The grading scale is integers from 0 to 5.

The course is completed through a series of weekly or bi-weekly assignments, in which the basic skills in research are practiced. In addition a final learning portfolio is written.

Jani Vuolteenaho; jani.vuolteenaho@helsinki.fi

Teemu Kemppainen; teemu.t.kemppainen@helsinki.fi