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Group discussions and formulation of questions

Discussions with group or course members can serve a number of functions. Apart from being entertaining, it can help you to understand a problem. Subjects like the one of the course requires a large number of skills to deal with them effectively. No one masters all the required skills. The art of science is more about asking the right questions, than about looking for the proper answers. This is why the course puts emphasis on the careful formulation of questions.

We will form local groups, that come together (possibly via Skype, zoom or google hangouts) once a week to discuss orally, and to complement the discussions on the MOOC discussion board. If you wish to form a group or alternatively are looking for a group then please contact a person in your closes vicintity. You can find the list of discussion group leaders here:

The group leaders will chair weekly local meetings, where participants discuss problems and topics related to DEB theory. 

If you know local co-participants who would like to come together to supplement their discussion via the black board, please consider joining the organisation team. We believe that such local meetings are very helpful in addition to off-line exchange of ideas via blackboard. We suggest that once the groups are formed they already organize time slots to meet for each week of the course. Everyone has busy schedules - experience teaches that setting up the meeting times in advance is effective. 

Each meeting should have:

• A secretary: he/she takes notes during the meeting and posts a summary of the meeting on the blackboard as soon as possible after the meeting.
• A time-keeper: he/she makes sure that tempo is respected. Thus is it useful to give warning when half the meeting is up and then give 5 minutes notice before the end of the meeting. He/she should gently but firmly say: time up when X hours have passed.
• A summarizer: he/she summarizes the discussion on the blackboard that took place before the meeting 

Partipants should organize in advance who take on which responsibility for each meeting. This will make the meetings very effective. 1.5 hours is a reasonable time - but of course meeting can be as long as the participants choose. Experience teaches it is most effective to decide before the meeting what the meeting duration should be.

MOOC Discussion forum

Each week, participants have the responsibility of each posting at least one well formulated question in the Discussion forum. Participants should also post summary of key findings and questions raised during the local discusion groups.

We will make intensive use of the course's discussion board. All participants who have registered at the course will receive an invitation to log in at the start of the course. This discussion forum allows you to discuss asynchronously, make chatting appointments with fellow participants, interact with the course leadership, and pose problems in the field of energetics that have your special scientific interest.

We will aim at

• an active use of the theory
• exchange across disciplines and nationalities among participants
• solving practical problems by collaboration with group members
• stimulation of creativity

People will be able to post questions and comments at any time on the discussion forum.