Scientific Writing
About the course
The course can be taken as a single course. Students belonging to Master in Electrical Engineering are prioritised, while other students can sign up provided available supervision capacity.
This course will introduce scientific writing skills, as a preparatory course for writing a master thesis. Scientific writing as communication form to peers will be introduced and put into historical context together with ethics, plagiarism, proper use of references, and methods to perform a literature study. Relevant writing tools like Word, LaTeX, Endnote and artificial intelligence assisted tools will be introduced and discussed. Popular science writing has a different target audience, but still important for communicating science to the public and will be addressed as well.
The course output will be a pre-project report with a literature study and a plan for a master thesis within the same topic. Methods for organizing and planning research projects is therefore included in the course and will be a part of the pre-project report.
Admission requirements
A relevant undergraduate Bachelor Engineering program with minimum 25 credits mathematics, 5 credits statistics, 7,5 credits physics.
Application code: 9371
Objectives of the course
After passing this course, the student shall have the following learning outcome:
Knowledge:
The candidate will have:
- The candidate has knowledge about the historical background and current practice of scientific publishing and writing.
- The candidate will have insight to the ethics of science.
- The candidate have insight into the use of scientific databases and proper use of references.
Skills:
- The candidate can perform a scientific literature review on a defined topic.
- The candidate can search for and critically assess scientific literature.
- The candidate can individually write a scientific text and present results according to scientific standards in the field.
- The candidate can from research questions and hypotheses based on a defined problem description and a literature study.
- The candidate can define and plan a research project in the form of a master thesis within a defined topic and scope.
- The candidate can describe their scientific work in a simplified popular science text
General competence:
- The candidate will have an overview of relevant tools and software for scientific writing.
- The candidate will have an overview of the possibility and challenges in using artificial intelligence.
Teaching methods
Language of instruction and examination
EnglishSchedule
The schedules are normally finalized and published well in advance of the start of the semester, often a few weeks beforehand. This gives students the opportunity to organize their studies and prepare for upcoming activities.
It is recommended to check the schedule regularly, as changes may occur.
Examination
| Assignment | Hand in: 11.12.2026 14:00 |
Grade: Passed / Not Passed |
To take an examination, the student must have passed the following coursework requirements
| Report draft | Grade: Approved – not approved |
| Online courses | Grade: Approved – not approved |
Everything you need to know about before, during, and after the exam; registration, absence, appeals, and diplomas: UiT Exams homepage
More info about the coursework requirements
A draft for a pre-project will be submitted at a defined deadline, where feedback can be used to improve the final pre-project report.
The student is required to attend a number of short online courses related to scientific writing, which will be announced at course start.