Ten Simple Rules for Organizing and Running a Successful Intensive Two-Week Course

Intensive summer schools often provide strong students with career-changing impact, teaching them the art of the trade, letting them understand the logical underbelly of a field, and connecting them with an elite circle of peers and field leaders. Indeed, many professors attribute considerable aspects of their growth as a scientist to such schools. Such summer schools are an essential service to the community. A well-run summer school combines many of the aspects that jointly define students overall success. Eight years of organizing the annual two-week Computational Sensory-Motor Neuroscience (CoSMo, http://www.compneurosci.com/CoSMo) summer school has allowed us to experiment with different approaches and evaluate teaching outcomes, and we have seen rather clear patterns. Many new schools are started each year, only some move on to ongoing success, and the vast majority take a while until they reach very good ratings (our ratings are still increasing but approaching 10/10). Focusing on the...