Study location	Netherlands, Maastricht
Type	Summer Courses, Full-time
Nominal duration	1 week (2 ECTS)
Study language	English
Course code	MSS3015

Tuition fee	€299 one-time

Entry qualification	Enrolled as an Undergraduate student or Undergraduate diploma A completed Bachelor or Master thesis or a completed research paper. The entry qualification documents are accepted in the following languages: English. Often you can get a suitable transcript from your school. If this is not the case, you will need official translations along with verified copies of the original.

Language requirements	English The language of the course is English, so we expect a fluent level and the ability to follow and participate in class.

More information	maastrichtsummerschool.nl

Overview

Course Description
Often research output created by participants does not get disseminated upon completion. While the research results are academic outputs, publications in an academic journal is not often feasible due to the peer review (high quality) standards of those journals. At the same time, due to the academic (complicated) language and length of most research, the documents can also not easily be used for other (non-academic) purposes. With this short course, we aim to support participants to use existing research results in order to write short, easy to understand policy briefs. Those briefs follow the formats as used in practice. They can be shared with (future or current) employers and serve as reading content for linked in or other social media outlets. In this course, we introduce a toolkit that includes instructional materials (instruction video’s, readings, format templates),examples of policy brief’s highlighting good/bad elements and link to repositories that disseminate research outcomes to policy makers. The toolkit will include exercises that help translate the existing research material (in master theses or research reports) stepwise into a policy brief format, aswell as exercises that encourages students to define the target-audience they write the policy brief for and exercises guiding them to create dissemination strategy for the policy brief.

Goals
By the end of the course, students are expected to have:
• Awareness of the modes of dissemination and value of research dissemination;
• Understand how to translate research outcomes into policy briefs, based on existing master thesis research outcomes;
• Understand the key criteria for a good policy brief Increase their skill in policy brief writing;
• Increase their skill in peer review, by providing feedback to other policy briefs Understand what dissemination actually can look like after completing the brief.

Recommend Literature
• A toolkit with references will be provided. The toolkit will hold links to examples, exercises, readings and useful websites.

Teaching Methods
Interactive Class, Presentations

Assessment Methods
Final Paper, Participation, Presentation

Course Coordinators
Mindel van de Laar