When it comes to supercharging your scientific skills, broadening your base science communication, or picking up tips on how to boost your career, short courses can be one of the highlights of the General Assembly programme.
But, did you know that any EGU member planning to go to the General Assembly (you!) can propose a short course? You’ve got until 5 September 2019 to complete your proposal. This quick guide will give you some pointers for submitting and organising your own short course at the EGU 2020 General Assembly!
Before you even put pen to paper and plan your workshop, remember that the courses should provide a forum to teach your General Assembly peers something of interest. Ideally, short courses should be designed to be open to all conference participants, though they can also be affiliated with one or more of the meeting’s programme groups.
Planning your short course
As the organiser, you are free to choose the content and set-up of the course. But the content should be of interest to (a subset of) the community that the EGU represents! The decision as to whether your course will be included in the final conference programme is made by the programme committee chair, Susanne Buiter, and the short course programme group chairs: the ECS Union representative Raffaele Albano and Michael Dietze.
To submit your course, you’ll need:
- a title and a short description
- the details of the course organiser
You also have the option to co-organise your course with a programme group(s) (meaning it’ll appear in the both the Short Course Programme Group and that of your programme group(s)). You might consider doing this if your workshop is aimed at a specific community, as well as being of broad appeal.
Choosing a time-slot
If your short course submission is approved, you can specify preferences for certain time blocks, days or back-to-back scheduling online in the session tagging tool between 17–26 January 2020. Note that assignments depend on availability. Short courses with more than 85 participants can only be scheduled in the 19:00–20:00 time block. In principle, no short courses are scheduled from 18:00 to 19:00.
In very exceptional cases, short courses can be scheduled during the lunch break (12:45–13:45). Requests with motivation need to be directed to sc@egu.eu.
The logistics
All short course rooms are theatre style and come complete with a microphone, a video projector, a notebook including internet connection, WiFi, and a presenter panel to connect a personal notebook to the projector via a switch (VGA and DHMI including power supply). Technical assistance will also be provided in each short course room.
If you require participants to register in advance of the course, it is your responsibility as the organiser to coordinate this. Be sure to include a registration email address or a Doodle link in the description of the short course, so potential participants know how to sign-up.
Food and drink can liven up any meeting! Should you wish to provide catering throughout your workshop (at your own expense), please get in touch with the General Assembly caterer (Motto Catering) by completing their online order form before 17 April 2020. This online form will be made available by the end of the year.
Dos & Don’ts
- Do make skills/abilities related to science and research the focus of your workshop
- Do aim to provide training in skills needed by people working in science
- Do promote your short course
- Do make your course interactive or include hands-on activities (if possible)
- Do let participants know (via the description) if they’ll need to bring along materials (e.g. laptop, tablet, specific software) to participate in the course
- Do allow time for questions
- Don’t invite too many speakers
- Don’t engage in commercial activities during the course (e.g. sales)
- Don’t charge admission fees or course fees – these are strictly prohibited
For a full list of guidelines head over to the EGU 2020 website. If you have questions about submitting a short course request please contact the Programme Group Chairs or the EGU Communications Officer, Olivia Trani.
The EGU General Assembly 2020 takes place in Vienna from 3 to 8 May. For more news about the upcoming General Assembly, you can also follow the official hashtag, #EGU20 on our social media channels.
