Métodos de Ensino e Avaliação

The course is a combination of several teaching methods including lectures, laboratories and seminars. A lecture class covers one topic and may include a presentation by the teacher and/or the corresponding discussion; each lecture focus one topic and is based on some study material previously placed on the course webpage and the students are invited to read the material before the lecture Seminar classes are dedicated to the presentation and discussion of the students’ projects A laboratory class is dedicated to the usually called practical classes and include, for instance: 1) practice with a statistical software; 2) familiarization with several forest simulators, namely with the ones most commonly used in Portugal; 3) development/fitting of some sub-models of a forest model; 4) calibration (or similar exercises) of management-oriented process based models Course grading: Students will be evaluated along the course in three ways: Continuous evaluation (C): in some classes, some questions will be placed to some of the students (random selection) to evaluate the assimilation of the topics learnt in the previous classes. Practical evaluation (P): the students will constitute groups of 3 to prepare a small project in which they will have to use an existing model to compare the impact of different scenarios in the dynamics of one (or more) stands. The teachers will support the students either in the selection of the model and/or the scenarios and during the preparation of the project. In two of the Seminar classes, each group will present a description of the model and the results of the simulations they prepared. Theoretical evaluation (T): In two of the Seminar classes (if needed, depending on the number of students, additional time will be found so that all the students will have the opportunity to participate in a Seminar) some theoretical questions will be placed to each student and all the students must participate in the discussion of the topic. The classification will be obtained as (0.2 C + 0.4 P + 0.4 T). The frequency in the course is obtained with 75% of presence in the classes and an average classification between the continuous and practical evaluations higher than 10 (0.5 C + 0.5 P > 10). If the frequency is achieved, the students have the option to be assessed in a final oral exam, being the classification obtained as before (0.2 C + 0.4 P + 0.4 T).