ME301 Biomedical Engineering

Spring 2004

Prof. JC Iatridis

Guidelines for Leading Journal Club Discussion in ME 301

1) Present material for 15-20 minutes then lead discussion for remaining time. Powerpoint and/or overhead slides are required.

2) Presentation suggestions

a. In general, summarize information and emphasize the most important details. It is not necessary to state all specific information, but you must include enough information to adequately explain all that was done and why.

b. Introduction

i. State significance of research question

ii. State hypotheses and/or aims

c. Methods

i. General description

ii. Help explain anything that is particularly complicated or not explained well in the text.

iii. Do background reading of extra papers as appropriate to summarize the methods.

d. Results

i. Synthesize and describe important results

e. Discussion

i. Summarize most important findings

ii. Did the authors address hypotheses

iii. State limitations of the paper

iv. State anticipated impact

f. Discussion Questions

i. Is this work significant?

ii. Is this work new?

iii. Writing quality

1. Is the manuscript well-written?

2. Are the figures clear and well-chosen?

3. Could this work be replicated based on paper?

iv. Any other relevant question(s) specific to the work.

3) Leave the last 5-10 minutes for students for free-writing in their notebooks the take-home messages from class discussion.

4) End the class with a quick vote to ‘stash or trash?