BB823: Sound and hearing (5 ECTS)

STADS: 04006601

Level
Master's level course approved as PhD course

Teaching period
The course is offered in the spring semester.

Teacher responsible
Email: coen@biology.sdu.dk

Timetable
Group Type Day Time Classroom Weeks Comment
Common I Monday 08-20 Fåborg Svanninge Bjerge 20
Common I Tuesday 08-20 Fåborg Svanninge Bjerge 20
Common I Wednesday 12-14 U17 19
Common I Wednesday 08-20 Fåborg Svanninge Bjerge 20
Common I Thursday 08-20 Fåborg Svanninge Bjerge 20
Common I Friday 08-20 Fåborg Svanninge Bjerge 20
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Prerequisites:
Passed bachelor degree in biology, psychology, engineering or similar.

Academic preconditions:
None

Course introduction
The aim of this course is to give students heading for a Master’s degree in Biology an introduction into and a broad overview in the field of bioacoustics. Students interested in the field are given the chance to gain insights into major breakthroughs in acoustic communication, training in relating to currently debated topics, and an orientation about interesting questions for future projects. Furthermore monitoring techniques for assessing wildlife presence of vocal species are introduced. 
 
The course gives an academic basis for studying acoustic communication, signal analysis and bioacoustics.
In relation to the competence profile of the degree it is the explicit focus of the course to:
  • Give the competence to plan and control work and development of projects, to initiate and succeed in professional collaboration and to be responsible for own professional development and specialization
  • Give skills to read original research papers, to make high-quality recordings of signals in air and water, to calibrate microphones, analyse and visualize  sound signals
  • Give knowledge and understanding of fundamental and recent topics within the field of bioacoustics
 


Expected learning outcome
The learning objective of the course is that the student demonstrates the ability to:
  • have a basic knowledge of acoustics
  • be able to describe the anatomy and physiology in different animal groups’ hearing organs
  • be able to describe sound communication in different animal groups
  • be able to explain the physiological and psychophysical methods for measuring hearing and sound production
  • conduct an independent bioacoustics project
  • be able to describe the experiments and results in a satisfactory academic language.
 


Subject overview
The following main topics are contained in the course:
  • Basic physical properties of sound waves
  • Recording sound in the wild of frogs, birds, bats, whales
  • sound production and hearing in air and water
  • environmental sound degradation
  • noise
  • spectral analysis of signals
  • the dB scale


Literature
There isn't any litterature for the course at the moment.

Website
This course uses e-learn (blackboard).

Prerequisites for participating in the exam
None

Assessment and marking:
  1. Portfolio with:
  • oral presentation of seminar
  • written critique of scientific paper
Internal marking by teacher, pass/fail. (5 ECTS). (04006602).
 


Expected working hours
The teaching method is based on three phase model.
Intro phase: 10 hours
Skills training phase: 40 hours, hereof:
 - Laboratory exercises: 14 hours
 - Other: 24 ekskursion hours

Educational activities
  • Reading scientific article
  • Critical reflection / commentary
  • Preparation for plenum presentation 
 
Educational form
In the literature seminars each student must choose a recent journal article on a bioacoustics topic. In a group they are asked to prepare a short presentation and discussion of the work, which is presented and discussed in plenum.
 


Language
This course is taught in English.

Remarks
Please note that the course includes a stay at the field station Svanninge Bjerge. A small fee will be charged, by a web pay link, that will cover the cost of meals during the field course.

Course enrollment
See deadline of enrolment.

Tuition fees for single courses
See fees for single courses.