An innovative teaching project at MedUni Vienna has been awarded the recognition prize at this year’s Ars Docendi State Prize Awards. The project "Research-centered skills acquisition through journal clubs" by Philipp Seeböck was awarded in the category "Research-related or art-led teaching".
Philipp Seeböck is Principal Investigator at the Computational Imaging Research Lab of the Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy at MedUni Vienna. He is researching new methods in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve diagnostics and patient care in medical imaging. The award-winning course is called "Journal Club Deep Learning".
Research-centered skills acquisition through journal clubs
Today’s scientific landscape requires researchers to have a broad range of skills that go beyond specialized knowledge. This includes the ability to critically analyze literature, identify relevant research gaps, develop innovative ideas, present results and concepts, and interact in interdisciplinary teams. Journal clubs are common in the academic world and are important forums for the discussion of scientific literature, but often do not provide opportunities to develop these basic research skills. This project aims to expand journal club seminars to promote basic research skills alongside subject specialization.
A central feature is ’research project pitches’, in which students develop and present their own project ideas in groups that are as heterogeneous as possible. This trains the ability to identify research gaps and generate innovative ideas, improves interdisciplinary collaboration and promotes the emergence of new networks and perspectives. In addition, students learn to communicate their concepts clearly and convincingly in a short time, which is an important skill in both academia and industry.
A continuous feedback culture ensures that the teaching concept is iteratively improved and meets the needs of the students.
Presenting your own research projects in pitches
In this project, the jury was impressed by how a teaching format was further developed that is already widespread for good reasons, especially in medicine and in the reception of Anglo-American postgraduate teaching: the journal club, in which doctoral students inform themselves in smaller groups about research articles from scientific journals and critically exchange ideas. In addition to the establishment of rules, which in addition to formalities and a critical perspective also include the choice of peer-reviewed articles by the students themselves - and thus a certain interdisciplinarity - the decisive further development of the format lies in the productive implementation of so-called research pitches.
On the basis of registered desiderata, small groups (2-3) are given the task of outlining their own research projects in a very compact form, derived from the research projects presented in the journals, and presenting these to the peers in a very pointed manner. The pitch presentation is followed by questions, discussions and the selection of the best project pitch.
This pitching in the Journal Club is a convincing addition, especially as it raises awareness of the desiderata of the projects published in the journals and at the same time strengthens communication skills, which are of comprehensive importance in the academic and research world. Demand and evaluation results indicate that this reform of the Journal Club has met with an extraordinarily positive response. In the opinion of the jury, a research-oriented form of event has been developed here that should also prove to be very attractive for disciplines outside of medicine.
About the Ars Docendi State Prize
In order to emphasize the importance of teaching in the scientific system and to recognize excellent teaching achievements, the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research has been awarding the Ars Docendi State Prize for outstanding teaching since 2013. In cooperation with the Austrian University Conference, the University of Applied Sciences Conference, the Austrian Private Universities Conference, the Rectors’ Conference of Austrian Universities of Teacher Education and the Austrian National Union of Students, this prize is awarded annually in various categories.
