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. 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 Chairs of the SC Programme Group and approved by the Programme Committee (see below). 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.

Format

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

  1. Hybrid SCs take place in a lecture room inside the Austria Center Vienna (ACV) and are streamed live to allow attendance and contribution from virtual participants. For this format, rooms set up theatre style, like a typical lecture room.
  2. On-site only SCs 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.

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 65 seats. Short courses scheduled during the lunchtime and the evening slots can take place in rooms with greater capacity, availability of rooms permitting.

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.
  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;
    • Agreement with the EGU guidelines for short courses;
    • Originality (SC proposals that are similar in topic may be requested to merge).

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 Chairs: Michael Dietze and Daniel Evans (Union-wide ECS Representative), sc@egu.eu