The teaching strategy takes its inspiration from the idea of ‘taking responsibility for one’s own learning’ and offers a wide range of learning situations. Students must take three major decisions: the choice of an option course, a focus and final additional training.
Approximately thirty credits are reserved for activities which can be freely chosen from the overall Biochemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology programme or from related Masters.
Teaching is organized in small groups, most frequently in ‘tutorial’ style and learning is for the most part centred on individual work (e.g. reading, consultation of databases and bibliographic references, presentation of seminars and research work). Before making a final choice for the subject of the dissertation, students do a ‘rotation’ in four laboratories relating to each of the four available option courses. Work on the dissertation usually starts in the second semester of the first year and continues until the first semester of the second year of the Master. The training is completed by an intensive placement in a professional environment lasting several months, preferably abroad.
The five programmes organized in the French Community of Belgium share a portfolio of approximately fifteen inter-university workshops which can be taken from the first semester of the second year. Each workshop consists of a week of immersion in an intellectual issue in an area of advanced research, spent in a host department which specializes in the area. UCL provides three workshops; our students must attend at least two of them.
Students doing the teaching focus may do advanced teaching in mathematics, physical sciences or geography.