Bahar Gaser

1412873
Research Seminar Reflection
As an exchange student from a different education system and academic background,
each class I took at Social Ecology Vienna helped me gain a different perspective and
improve my skills in various fields. Just like I had never had an excursion course before
studying at SEC, I had never had a similar course to this Research Seminar class either. Prior
to this semester, I also studied in Graz for 1 semester, but since my classes were all
Psychology courses at bachelors level, they had less participation of the academics and more
involvement of the students -such as discussions and presentations each week. On the other
hand, almost all of the classes I have in Turkey are in the 'vorlesung' form, with minimum
interaction between the students and the professors -mostly due to the size of the classes.
In those terms, I believe the research seminar course had a perfect balance between the
2 types of classes I'm used to having. It had a very informative side, as in each class there
were many professors and master/doctorate students, and yet we had a chance to interact with
them by asking them questions at anytime there was a misunderstanding or something we did
not get. Also, forming mixed groups at the end of each class helped me both to understand the
topics and clear any issues I had in mind.
What was hard for me about following the lectures was only personal, and had nothing
to do with the lecture itself. I sometimes had a hard time understanding the content, because
they were nothing similar to the things I had knowledge about. Of course, I was always
helped by colleagues when I failed to understand something. Sometimes I also had to do little
research in advance to be able to follow the content of the presentations, to recognize some
terms and interpret the graphs used in the presentations. However, I am sure that the lectures

were much more easier to comprehend for people with social ecology background -and
sometimes, to the ones who could speak German.
One recommendation about the dynamics of the course might be taking a little more
time for the discussions; both for the within group discussions and the interaction with the
presenter. I believe those parts of the lecture were really productive, and as I said, they were
good opportunities to bring up the points I couldn't understand in the lecture, but couldn't ask
the presenter because I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the presentation. Maybe the total
length of the lecture can be increased to 2 hours, with a 10 minute break between the
presentation and the Q&A part.
All in all, I have learned a lot and gained a lot of knowledge about topics which
previously I had no idea about. Thanks to this course I had an opportunity to widen my areas
of studies and interests. I hope the students of the following seminars also feel the same way,
and get the best out of them.