An introduction course to newcomers: How to help students entering a new field of knowledge

Abstract

The university staff is in the quite challenging situation of being a group of specialists in very
different areas on the one hand, which has to teach these special subjects to students on the
other hand. The students however are facing a whole flood of new information which they
have to metabolize. The information comes not only from the main subjects of their studies,
but also from more or less related fields of research and technology. Often the students have
little or no background knowledge related to the new subject they are confronted with, as we
will describe in the next chapters.
Now, how do the specialised teacher and the new coming student communicate with each
other if the terminology used is not known to one of the parties, the students. This leads us to
the main question we want to answer in the next chapters: how can we introduce a new
concept of thinking or a new field of research with a specific terminology to newcomers with
different background knowledge?