Registration to Scientific Writing

NOTE: The lecturer is abroad from 23rd to 28th April, 2002. He does not answer your questions during this time. On the other hand, registration is possible by following the guidelines below.

REGISTRATION TO THE COURSE "SCIENTIFIC WRITING" (58110-3)

Registration takes place beforehand as follows.

For spring semester course:: previous November.
For autumn semester course:: previous April.

If you missed the deadline, you can still register on the waiting list by sending all the information requested below (including the items that should have been fed into the Computer Registration system) to the lecturer via e-mail. The places left over after the early registrations have been processed (if any) are offered to the students on the list in the first lecture. Therefore you must attend the first lecture or if this is impossible, then contact the lecturer well beforehand via e-mail!

RIGHT TO ATTEND

The course is solely for those Computer Science Majors (including second Major, or "sivuainelaudatur", students) who have completed all other compulsory "cum laude approbatur" level courses, except for " 581259-4 Ohjelmistotuotanto" and "581260-4 Ohjelmistotuotantoprojekti". Note also that taking both this course and "Ohjelmistotuotantoprojekti" on the same semester is not a good idea: both involve intensive working periods to meet given deadlines, and these may well fall close to each other in your calendar...

You must register even though some of these courses have not yet been completed; the missing courses must be completed by the first lecture.

The course is primarily for those students who meet the requirements above. If there is room, other students may be admitted as well. Such decisions are made by the lecturer together with the examiner and teaching assistant of the group in question.

If you are currently studying for another Major, but have applied for transfer into Computer Science, then list this alongside still missing compulsory courses below.

If you already have another University degree that required a written Thesis, then you can request exemption from this course. Please give a copy of your Thesis to Reijo Siven. The decision will be made by comparing your Thesis with the Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) Theses to see if they are sufficiently similar.

LANGUAGE

If you have taken either the Finnish matriculation examination ("ylioppilaskoe") or the International Baccalaureate (IB) examination with Finnish or Swedish as the language for the native language exam, then you must register using the local registration instructions instead.

Otherwise you are now reading the correct registration instructions.

As a foreign student, you are entitled to choose the language you prefer from Finnish, Swedish or English. (If you would prefer yet another choice, then please contact the lecturer - in one of the three aforementioned choices - and we'll see if we can find you a teacher sufficiently skilled in that language.)

However, this is not a language course, and its grade does not count as such. This is a writing course, and the language selection affects only the written exercises of the course, one of which is the Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) thesis. (However, if you do need a formal certificate for your Finnish or Swedish skills, then please state so in your registration message below.)

The lectures are in Finnish. They discuss general issues in scientific writing, such as using references, etc. The Teaching Assistant of your exercise group will guide you in your own writing tasks. This guidance will be in English if needed.

COMPUTER REGISTRATION (ILMOITTAUTUMISJÄRJESTELMÄ)

In contrast to most other courses, registration to this one is a three-step process:

Register electronically via the computerized "ILMO" coursee registration system of the Department, as usual. Note that there are no exercise groups in the system; everyone registers into one long list instead.
Compose an e-mail message to the lecturer. The contents of the message are explained in section "Mandatory Further Information" below.

This e-mail message must be sent to the lecturer during the official registration period; otherwise your registration will be late!

Attach an electronic copy of your current excerpt from the study register to the aforementioned message, and send the combined message to the lecturer. Instructions on how to obtain the copy are given in section "Excerpt from the Study Register" below.

MANDATORY FURTHER INFORMATION

Because the electronic student records do not contain all the pertinent information, please compose an e-mail message to the lecturer. Use the title "Scientific Writing Registration". The contents of this message must answer the following five (5) questions:

List the required courses (see section "Right to Attend" above) still missing, including those that are currently underway or being graded.
Give for each of the above missing courses the intended date of completion (which should be before the first lecture of this course).
After the "Cum laude approbatur" level our Master's programme divides into the following six (6) fields:

"Algorithms", or "Algoritmien erikoistumislinja".
"Intelligent Systems", or "Älykkäiden järjestelmien erikoistumislinja".
"Software Engineering", or "Ohjelmistotekniikan erikoistumislinja".
"Distributed Systems and Data Communications", or "Hajautettujen järjestelmien ja tietoliikenteen erikoistumislinja".
"Information Systems", or "Informaatiojärjestelmien erikoistumislinja".
"Teacher", or "Opettajan suuntautumisvaihtoehto". (If you are interested in this field, please state also whether you have already been accepted to "Education", the compulsory Minor subject. Preference will be given to those students.)

not

Note: "Applied Computer Science", or "Sovelletun tietojenkäsittelyn suuntautumisvaihtoehto", is deliberately missing from the list above. If you have already chosen it as your field, and the professor currently responsible for that field has accepted your written study plan, then

state this in your message
mention also what minor subjects were included in your plan
give a comma-separated list of those other fields which you consider to support your plan best.

State the language - normally English - you will be writing the exercises in. (If you are attending this course to pursue a formal certificate for your Finnish or Swedish skills, plese state the language you are interested in.)
State your e-mail address (the one you use most, if you have several) and phone number. An e-mail address is required for registering into this course!

You can also supply any extra information you consider relevant, such as special interests within Computer Science or Minor subjects. In addition, if you are interested in (or past or current member of) the tutkijalinja of our department, then mention that as well.

EXCERPT FROM THE STUDY REGISTER ("OPINTOSUORITUSREKISTERIOTE")

You can obtain the aforementioned excerpt as follows:

Log into some UNIX machine of the IT department (not the CS department) using your own username. Such machines include kruuna, klaava, vesuri, sirppi, ...
Issue the command "opintosuoritusote".
You will receive the document within 24 hours as an e-mail to your address "firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi".

Attach this file into the e-mail message being composed.

Note: This attachment must be ordinary ASCII text! Such modern abominations as HTML or Word documents are strictly forbidden.

The analogous command is "opintosu" for the micro-computer network of the IT department.

EXERCISE GROUPS

The early registrations will be divided into appropriate exercise groups based on the information given above. Latecomers are taken from the list to fill out the empty places, if any.

The exercise group division will appear on the "cum laude" notice board at room A413 approximately two (2) weeks after the end of the registration period.

The lecturer Matti Nykänen can be contacted via e-mail at address matti.nykanen@cs.helsinki.fi.

Department of Computer Science