Methodology at Leuphana

Current Courses

Prof. Dr. Henrik Wehrden

Research practice and ethics

This course serves as a starting point of your PhD journey at Leuphana. By starting with an open exchange about the expectations and goals for your PhD we frame together how to conduct each and every individual research best. The course thus provides an overview of the different components of academia that are relevant for your PhD, helps you to find your niche in your surrounding, and which expectations and responsibilities are important to make your PhD a successful part of your career.

Ziel: The goal of this course is to work together on a curriculum that serves the participants best. What are competencies relevant to be a successful PhD students? What are opportunities at your institution? What are responsibilities of you as a PhD students? Our goal in this course is to answer your staring questions best, and to work on an agenda and planning that serves as a reflexive point of your phD in addition to your research project and your supervisors.

Bachelor Thesis

This module supports you in the process of writing your bachelor thesis. While the lecture builds on a flipped classroom concept, it will be widely framed around the questions of the audience regarding the specific slots. The lecture thus helps you to find a topic, supervisors, and how to communicate with them. You will get input on time management, how to tame a topic, define research questions of hypotheses, research literature, and write a glossary. An additional emphasis will be set un creating methodological designs, pitfalls of research, and establishing a routine. We also give you help on how to overcome writer's block, norms and standards of science, and how to submit and defend your thesis. All individual steps will also be discussed more hands on in the tutorials.

Ziel: Vorlesung, Tutorium sowie der Wiki Eintrag zielen darauf ab, den Prozess des Schreibens der Bachelor-Arbeit in allen Phasen von Beginn an bis zur Abgabe der BA-Thesis zu begleiten.

GOAL

The lectures, the tutorials as well as the Wiki entry aim to support the process of writing a bachelor’s thesis from start to submission.

Methods of Environmental Sciences

The module conveys basic knowledge and practical research examples through which the diversity of methods available in environmental & sustainability science is exemplified and contextualized. The module presents an overview of approaches to obtain, analyse and interpret data within science, and embeds these into a broader ontological framework. While the focus is generally on how methods can aid and enable the production of knowledge, a connection to the history of science, including the origin and development of each specific method is part of the lecture.

Ziel: The study of environmental & sustainability sciences aims to combine topics that are engaged from different and diverse perspectives, yet is certainly more than the sum of its parts. Environmental & sustainability sciences engage in a holistic perspective and take normative dimensions as well as a focus on transformative knowledge strongly into account. Within this module students will learn to embed methods into the context of knowledge production, spanning across system, normative and transformative knowledge. Students will begin to understand that the choice of and experience in applying methods is a precondition of research. In addition, students will be enabled to recognize the normative dimension of scientific methods by starting to reflect about drawbacks and benefits of specific methods, and how the choice of methods may influence the process of knowledge production.The students will acquire basic skills in the methods of environmental & sustainability sciences, and embed this knowledge into the broader context of methods in science, starting with an introduction into developing study designs building on the application of methods. Through the application of simplified hands-on experience with the specific methods the students will get an initial understanding of the benefits and challenges of the individual methods. The knowledge acquired in the module and applied to exemplary case studies of publications, thereby enabling students to start to get engaged with the scientific canon. By engaging students through blended learning - building on an extensive Wiki as well as Video and podcast formats, which students are expected to engage with in order to pass the exam - they further learn to participate in the scientific discourse.

Tutorial I Module Bachelor Thesis - in English

In addition to the lectures, this tutorial gives you the opportunity to ask questions, discuss your topic ideas in groups, address any thesis struggles and to present your (planned) work to each other in order to receive feedback and specific help from your peers and the tutor.

Experience has shown that this structured accountability-like tutorial makes it easier to get started and stay on track so that you can get through the Bachelor's thesis process as successfully as possible. The tutorial is designed in such a way that you can benefit from it no matter which phase of the thesis you are currently in: you can join from the very start of planning your thesis up until when you are in the finishing phase and preparing your defense.

The tutorial is accompanied by this Wiki-Article, which provides information as well as hints and experiences regarding each step of the thesis process: https://sustainabilitymethods.org/index.php/How_to_write_a_thesis

There is an additional "Writing Tutorial" every two weeks that you can sign up to. Here, we will exclusively focus on getting into writing/researching in a productive atmosphere. Further, there is the opportunity to discuss questions.

Ziel: You will have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with all formal and content-related aspects of writing a bachelor thesis and to exchange about your process with fellow students. You will acquire the necessary skills to successfully design your bachelor thesis.

Tutorial Modul Bachelor Thesis - guided co-working on writing your thesis

In addition to the lectures and the tutorial, this co-working space gives you the opportunity to work on your thesis and to connect with your accountability group. Further, this is a space to ask questions and receive concrete help from your peers and the tutor.

Experience has shown that this makes it easier to get started and stay on track so that you can get through the Bachelor's thesis process as successfully as possible. The tutorial is designed in such a way that you can benefit from it no matter which phase of the thesis you are currently in: you can join at the very start of planning your thesis up until when you are in the finishing phase and preparing your defense.

The tutorial will be accompanied by the following Sustainability-Methods-Wiki article: https://sustainabilitymethods.org/index.php/How_to_write_a_thesis

Ziel: You will have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with all formal and content-related aspects of writing a bachelor thesis and to exchange ideas about this process with your fellow students. They acquire the necessary skills to successfully design their bachelor thesis.

Current Courses

M.Sc. Dagmar Berg-Mölleken

Methods in Sustainability Science

What can you expect from this course?

This course is a deep dive into scientific methodology. Most of you have some experience with specific disciplinary methods from your bachelor's programs, thus you bring a diversity of experiences to the table. The primary goal of this course is to take your multidisciplinary backgrounds and integrate your knowledge into a critically reflective and normatively oriented canon of inter- and transdisciplinary methods and methodology for sustainability science.

How does the course work?

In this course, you will be sent on missions to design case studies for diverse problems in sustainability science with a focus on scientific methods! To be able to do so, you will receive a range of inputs on methods and methodological aspects in the first weeks and over the course of the semester. We use a Flipped Classroom approach, which means you do not get a top-down lecture where you just listen to us and do homework afterwards; instead, we provide you with method packages for preparation that you engage with individually and in groups each week at your own pace before we come together for the seminar session.

The seminar Sessions ...

We meet for the seminar session every Monday from 11:50 to 14:05 in the lecture room C40.501 in the central building. We use the room as a hub for exchange and joint learning, where we work together on specific methods, get your group work moving forward, and critically exchange ideas about the diverse aspects necessary for working with scientific methods in sustainability contexts. The session is divided into three parts:

- the first part focuses on the integration of the knowledge you engaged with in the preparation materials into your mission work

- the second part focuses on specific challenges related to the methods, mission contexts or group collaboration aspects in task forces

- the third part is designated for your group work, where we will be present and answer questions

Ziel: We are aware that this course will challenge you. We are intentional about that because we believe that learning happens in a sweet spot outside of your comfort zone. You will engage in four different multi- and interdisiplinary group works during the semester. The groups will be randomly assigned, and each group constellation, in combination with the mission topic, will bring unique challenges. However…

…DO NOT WORRY! We will guide you in setting your own learning goals and provide feedback on your progress after every mission.

What do we expect from you?

Our central expectation is that you are present in class and contribute to the group work to the best of your abilities. With such diversity in the class, some of you will have a lot of experience with a particular method or forms of group work, and others may be completely new to it. Remember, the overall course goal is to be integrative, and we kindly ask you to trust the process, your collaboration partners, and your own progress!

Workload

This module earns you 5 CP for your Master’s degree. Legally, that requires 150 hours of work on your part during the semester. Our course is designed toward that workload, including all preparatory work, your mission group work, and the seminar sessions.

Assessment: Kombinierte wissenschaftliche Arbeit - combined scientific work

There will be four group works, each culminating in a mission research design as an assignment. You have the possibility for a test run in the first mission, and from the second mission onward, the assignments will be graded. The grading criteria will be discussed in the first session and will be available for orientation on Moodle. You will receive feedback on every mission that you can use to improve your work on the next mission.