A doctoral student must take at least two seminars or workshops for acquiring generic research, academic and business skills during his or her doctoral studies. Given the need for such skills during the doctoral study, as well as after its completion, we encourage the students to attend more than the minimal required number of seminars and workshops.

The student may freely chose when to take a seminar or a workshop (there are no restrictions with respect to the programme, so any semester, from I. to VI., is fine). The required number of seminars or workshops must be completed prior to submitting the doctoral thesis for evaluation.

Seminars and workshops offered at FER

Seminars and workshops offered at FER are listed below. Conditions for passing the seminars or workshops are listed on the respective web pages.

*Note: The recurring generic skills' seminars and workshops (listed above) are presently offered only in the Croatian language.

The exact dates for each seminar/workshop are announced at the beginning of the semester, in the schedule of classes.

Please subscribe to News and Announcements to receive information about the seminars and workshops offered in English. 

Seminars and workshops attended at other institutions

Doctoral students can, with mentor consent, also attend seminars and workshops for the acquisition of generic skills in other national and international institutions.

For such seminars to be officially recorded, the students must submit a formal request (Form FER-DR-08).

Please note that, at present, all the seminars and workshops are offered in Croatian.

Here is a list and brief description:

1. Search of scientific information and publication of research results (in Croatian: Pretraživanje znanstvenih informacija i publiciranje rezultata istraživanja)

   Lecturers: Prof. Mislav Grgić and Prof. Igor Vlahović, Fellow of the Croatian Academy
   (8 hours, winter semester)
   The objective of the seminar is to educate doctoral students in the basics of bibliometrics, scientometrics and writing scientific articles. Students will acquire basic knowledge of the relevant bibliographic and citation databases (Web of Science, Current Contents, Journal Citation Reports, Scopus, Google Scholar), methods of their efficient search and the methods of finding journals and papers in a particular scientific field. It will explain the basic rules of scientific research ethics. The concept and selection of the topic of the paper, the basic elements of scientific paper and a process for its submission, review and publication in the journal will be systematically processed.

2. Seminar on Entrepreneurship (in Croatian: Seminar o poduzetništvu)

   Lecturer: Prof. Vedran Bilas
   (5 hours, summer semester)
   The aim of the seminar is to inform, educate and motivate doctoral students regarding innovation and entrepreneurship. The students will be informed about technological infrastructure of the University and state agencies, and their recent support programs. The students will learn about opportunity driven entrepreneurship, fundamentals of business planning,  new venture financing and presentation of the new business ideas. The students will meet experienced entrepreneurs, university alumni who will share both knowledge and motivation for new projects.

3. Workshops on scientific publication 1 (in Croatian: Radionice o znanstvenom publiciranju 1)
   Lecturer: Prof. lgor Vlahović, Fellow of the Croatian Academy
   (6 hours, summer semester)
   Workshops on scientific publication 1 are the (thematic) continuation of the seminar for the acquisition of generic skills "Search of scientific information and publication of research results", which takes place in the winter semester of doctoral study. The workshops are dealing with the following selected topics related to the publication: How to motivate the writing of scientific work? How to communicate with editors and successfully respond to the reviewers? How to communicate, collaborate, and jointly publish with your mentor?
    

4. Workshops on scientific publication 2 (in Croatian: Radionice o znanstvenom publiciranju 2)
   Lecturer: Prof. lgor Vlahović, Fellow of the Croatian Academy
   (6 hours, summer semester)
   Workshops on scientific publication 2 are the (thematic) continuation of the seminar for the acquisition of generic skills "Search of scientific information and publication of research results " (in winter semester), and they cover additional topics, complementary to the "Workshops on scientific publication 1" (alternating workshop in summer semester). (Note: These workshops should not be considered prerequisites for this one.) The workshops are dealing with topics such as: (1) Plagiarism and autoplagiarism – what you need to know?; (2) How to deal with massive amounts of literature?; (3) Why and how to review scientific papers?
    
5. Project management and doctoral research (in Croatian: Upravljanje projektima i doktorsko istraživanje))
   Lecturers: Prof. Krešimir Fertalj, Prof. Željka Car, Prof. Boris Vrdoljak
   (4 hours, winter semester)
   The aim of the seminar is to strengthen doctoral students’ skills in the field of project management with a focus on research and scientific projects, and linking best practices in the fields of scope management, risk management, planning and implementation of projects containing doctoral research. The seminar is implemented as an interactive workshop during which the students will be briefly acquainted with the theoretical framework with an emphasis on those areas that are of great importance for the successful implementation of the doctoral research. Students will, through an interactive workshop, actively participate in team problem solving of various case studies of projects. The idea is to encourage doctoral students to more effectively manage and direct the activities of the doctoral research.
    
6. Time management (in Croatian: Upravljanje vremenom)
   Lecturers: Prof. Boris Vrdoljak, Assoc. Prof. Damir Žarko
   (6 hours, summer semester)
   The goal of the seminar is to strengthen doctoral students’ skills in the field of time management with a focus on best practices in setting personal long-term, medium-term and short-term goals, setting priorities and organizing tasks in the service of long-term goals. The concepts of intellectual curiosity, motivation, self-regulated learning and procrastination will be presented. The seminar is implemented as an interactive workshop during which the students are briefly acquainted with the theoretical framework of time management with focus on those topics that are important for the successful completion of doctoral studies. Students will, through individual work, group work and discussion, actively participate in raising the team awareness of inefficient behaviour when it comes to time management and finding ways to change such behaviour. The idea is to help doctoral students to more efficiently define and implement the objectives and activities in the doctoral studies and in everyday life.
    
7. Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (in Croatian: Etika autonomnih i inteligentnih sustava)
   Lecturers: Prof. Stjepan Bogdan, dr. sc. Tomislav Bracanović, Institute for Philosophy
   (6 hours, summer semester)
   The objective of this generic skill seminar is to inform PhD students about ethical aspects of the design, production and application of autonomous and intelligent systems, increasing thereby their awareness about potentially broader consequences of their professional work. The seminar will focus on principles developed in the study Ethically Aligned Design (2019), published by the Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, launched by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE): human rights, well-being, data-agency, effectiveness, transparency, accountability, awareness of misuse and competence. The seminar will also address the major philosophical views on artificial intelligence and the ethical issues related to it, such as autonomy, justice, discrimination, privacy etc. The seminar will consist of an introductory lecture on relevant ethical positions and concepts, followed by a number of interactive workshops in which students are going to discuss particular applications (and the attempts at their regulation) of autonomous and intelligent systems in diverse areas of human life.