This doesn’t appear to be too unusual, almost every department I’ve been in has such “topics” courses in certain areas. One point is that the lecturer can present their specific knowledge or current developments.
Yep, I think my university called these “special topics” or “selected topics” papers sometimes. As in, a paper called “Special Topics In X” would just be “we got three really good researchers who happen to study different areas of X, we asked them each to spend one-third of the year teaching you about their favourite research, and then we test you on those three areas at the end of the year”. Downside is that you don’t necessarily get the optimal three topics that you wanted to learn about, upside is you get to learn from great researchers.
This doesn’t appear to be too unusual, almost every department I’ve been in has such “topics” courses in certain areas. One point is that the lecturer can present their specific knowledge or current developments.
Yep, I think my university called these “special topics” or “selected topics” papers sometimes. As in, a paper called “Special Topics In X” would just be “we got three really good researchers who happen to study different areas of X, we asked them each to spend one-third of the year teaching you about their favourite research, and then we test you on those three areas at the end of the year”. Downside is that you don’t necessarily get the optimal three topics that you wanted to learn about, upside is you get to learn from great researchers.