Short courses (SCs) are primarily aimed at providing an interactive forum for participants of the EGU General Assembly for capacity building. They are expected to focus on providing or discussing skills and abilities related to the geosciences.

Short courses on open software are welcome; courses on operating/running commercially available equipment or software are also permitted, preferably given by EGU community members not affiliated with the equipment or software manufacturer. Commercial activities (e.g. product sales) are not allowed.

The topic of a SCs should be of interest to more than one Programme Group (PG) of the EGU General Assembly.

Submitting a short course proposal

Submission of proposals for a SC session is possible during the public call-for-session proposals (refer to the deadlines and milestones table).

During this period, conveners should place their proposal in the SC Programme Group and indicate which format they prefer for their short course (see below). There is no automatic roll-over of courses from one year to another.

The proposals are evaluated by the SC Programme Group Team (see below) and approved by the Programme Committee, taking the following criteria into consideration:

  • Breadth of proposal
  • Cross-division relevance
  • Diversity of convener team
  • ECS participation
  • Diversity of short course topics offered
  • Rotation of topics

The results of the evaluation are communicated to the conveners at the end of October. The final scheduling (day and time) of the accepted SCs takes place in February, during the Programme Committee meeting.

Before submitting a SC proposal, please read carefully the general Convener guidelines and rules. Further SC guidelines and conditions are presented below.

By submitting a proposal, conveners agree to abide by the EGU code of conduct. SC proposals which are not selected for the upcoming EGU General Assembly are invited to resubmit again next year, or contact webinars@egu.eu to discuss the possibility of delivering the SC live or pre-recorded as a webinar supported by the EGU office staff.

Format

The EGU General Assembly offers two different short course (SC) session formats:

  1. Lecture style SCs (hybrid optional) take place in a lecture room inside the Austria Center Vienna (ACV) and are (optionally) streamed live to allow attendance and contribution from virtual participants. For this format, rooms set up theatre style, like a typical lecture room. Ideal for short courses where speakers are conveying information / knowledge to the short course participants.
  2. Banquet style SCs (on-site only) take place in a lecture room inside the ACV, without the option for virtual attendance. In this format, rooms are set up banquet style, with roundtables. Ideal for short courses where short course participants actively engage with each other.

A short course can be scheduled:

  1. In parallel with regular scientific sessions, during time blocks (TB) 1 through 4. A timeblock consists of 1 hour and 45 minutes,
  2. During the lunchtime slot (12:45-13:45), with a duration of 1 hour, or
  3. During the evening slot (19:00-20:00), with a duration of 1 hour.

Short courses scheduled TB1 to TB4 take place in rooms with a maximum capacity of 100 seats. Short courses scheduled during the lunchtime and the evening slots can take place in rooms with greater capacity, availability of rooms permitting. In principal lunch and evening timeslots are avoided for short courses due to conflicts with networking, business meetings, and award ceremonies. For this reason, lunch or evening slots for short courses need to be justified within the request.

When submitting a proposal, conveners should indicate their preferences for session format and timing. The SC Programme Group Chairs will do their best to satisfy these requests but due to limitations in room size and availability, conveners should be aware that their requests are not guaranteed.

Convener responsibilities

  1. Breadth: organizers are free to select the content and set-up of their short course. The content should be of interest to (a discipline-crossing subset of) the community that the EGU represents.
  2. Inclusion: for hybrid short courses, organizers should ensure that virtual participants are included in the run of the short course and able to actively participate in it (e.g. by being able to ask questions and listen to the discussions that take place on-site).
  3. Promotion: organizers are responsible for promoting their short course. The EGU will promote short courses by listing them in the online programme. Mailing lists cannot be provided for data privacy reasons.
  4. Course materials and presentations: short course materials can be uploaded to the short course session page once the programme is finalized. A link to an external website hosting the short course material can also be added.
  5. Presentations: to upload individual presentations from speakers, conveners should add the speakers as session contributors via the session modification tool. As soon as they are added, they will be able to use the presentation upload tool.
  6. House keeping: for the safety of participants, conveners should monitor room capacity to avoid overcrowdedness. Rooms need to be vacated by the end of their time slots and should be left in good condition, as they were found.

General conditions

  1. SC participants, conveners, and solicited speakers must be registered participants of the EGU General Assembly. They do not receive waived conference registration fees or travel support to participate in the SC. This applies to both on-site and virtual participation, however for short course speakers who would otherwise not join the EGU General Assembly, a waiver for virtual participation can be requested.
  2. There is no formal registration to a particular SC, and no course fees can be charged.
  3. On-site participation to a SC is on a first-come, first-served basis, and is limited by the maximum occupancy of the room.
  4. As the number of short courses that can take place during the EGU General Assembly is limited, not all SC proposals may be included in the final programme. In these cases, conveners are encouraged to re-submit their proposal to the following General Assembly.
  5. SC proposals are evaluated according to the criteria below and a ranked list is built to fill the programme in agreement with the capacity constraints:
    • Breadth of the course's scope (impact on a wider field of science, disciplines, applications);
    • Degree of interdisciplinarity (e.g. for how many EGU Programme Groups the course provides valuable information);
    • Availability of hands-on experience (e.g. interactive activities, tutorial-like courses);
    • Contribution/involvement of Early Career Scientists to/in the course;
    • Emphasis on career development, networking, and topics beyond pure science;
    • Diversity of topics offered;
    • Agreement with the EGU guidelines for short courses;
    • Originality (SC proposals that are similar in topic may be requested to merge).
  6. For certain short courses, a certificate of attendance can be generated for its participants as proof of the training opportunity.

Rooms

  1. Rooms are equipped with a microphone, a video projector, a laptop with Internet connection, and WiFi.
  2. Technical assistance is provided in each short course room.
  3. Organizers and speakers should be aware that it is not possible to use their own computer for the presentations, including software demonstrations. Presentations should be uploaded in advance as session material. Demonstrations can run on a browser opened with the available WiFi.
  4. For hybrid short courses, the laptop in the room runs the video conference software, Zoom, and the lectern provides a webcam, which may not be bypassed by presenter's individual computers. This enables virtual attendees to follow the presentations and ask questions through the embedded Zoom platform.

Contact

SC Programme Group Team, Rolf Hut and Maria Vittoria Gargiulo (Chair and Union-level ECS Rep): sc@egu.eu