PHUV9410 Professional Practice and Language Barriers Course description

Students should be aware that a master's degree in a related engineering discipline (electrical, construction, building services, architectural engineering or renewable energy) and relevant undergraduate courses covering the topics of basic indoor climate, and heat and mass transfer is recommended in order to complete this course.

The course includes the following specific topics:

• indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and health for human occupants: in-depth study of indoor air quality (IAQ), user control, thermal preferences and adaption. Advanced methods for field studies of IEQ/IAQ.
• design of building envelopes, including building form, materials and their environmental assessment, and climate-adaption.
• HVAC and building automation, including demand-control, automated commissioning, and optimisation of operation and facilities management.
• building-integrated and city-wide renewable energy supply, including solar energy and energy storage.
• methods for numerical simulation of indoor climate and energy use in buildings
• theory and application of life-cycle analysis (LCA), and its methodological issues

Organized tuition is given in the form of lectures and workshops. The course consists of two parts. The first part is a two-days workshop at OsloMet with mandatory participation. In lectures and discussions, students will be introduced to relevant theories and methods. The last part is a one-day mandatory workshop at OsloMet. In addition, there will be online learning activities. Candidates are expected to participate in all learning activities, both online and on-site. Candidates are expected to give oral and written feedback on other students’ work.

Preparations for the course

Candidates are expected to read the syllabus and to prepare a presentation before the course to be able to participate in discussions and activities.

Coursework requirements

The coursework requirements are: Mandatory participation, an oral presentation, a paper draft and a written and oral feedback to a co-student’s paper.

1. Mandatory participation: 80 % attendence at both workshops and learning activities online is required.
2. The oral presentation is to be prepared before the course starts and presented at the first workshop. The oral presentation should be no longer than fifteen minutes. The topic of the presentation must relate to linguistic diversity, language barriers and/or interpreting in a way that is relevant to the students’ PhD projects. Following the presentation there will be a five to ten minutes’ discussion.
3. The oral presentation will serve as foundation for a paper draft. The paper draft should be minimum 1000 and maximum 1500 words.
4. Written and oral feedback: Each student will comment one co-student’s paper draft, both in writing (250 - 500 words) and orally (3 - 5 minutes).

The candidate will write an individual paper based on the presentation and the comments by the student and staff, of 3000 words (+/- 10%) plus reference list. The paper must be written in English, Norwegian, Swedish or Danish.

In case of failed exam/legal absence, the candidate may have a new exam under the same conditions when a new/postponed exam is arranged. If the paper is graded with "fail", the candidate must submit a revised version within a given time limit.

The grades are "pass" or "fail". The requirement for "pass" is that paper builds on the learning outcomes and on parts of the syllabus.

The paper will be assessed by the course coordinator and a member of the academic staff involved in the PhD-program.