The class meets for one two-hour period per week throughout the Spring term.

Tuesdays

11:10 am to 1:00 pm

MP408

As graduate students, you have many opportunities to exercise your communication skills. These include writing reports, theses, and papers in scientific journals, presenting your research at conferences and in oral examinations, and interacting in the classroom as tutors and demonstrators. I have designed this course to provide support for these activities while you are in graduate school, and to lay a solid foundation for the development of the skills required to ensure that you will be effective communicators in your future careers, whether it be in the academy, the public, or the private sector.

Depending on your interests and the time available, our regular weekly meetings will include sessions on pedagogical methods, scientific writing, research in physics education, the teaching and communication of physics, and effective communication in the workplace. The assignments will consist of weekly short written papers and frequent short oral presentations; I will provide detailed written and oral feedback.

I hope that this course will be unlike most you have taken. Since communication, that most human of activities, can be learned only by experience, please come prepared with a strong personal investment and a willingness to interact and participate in class.

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