A course going over current research has much potential, but most of that was entirely missed due to a lack of familiarity on the part of the professor.

The general idea of the course is to simultaneously identify "themes" within current research within a discipline of interest and to devise a research proposal.

We were actually instructed to omit legally-required image forms of attribution (i.e. when citing CC-BY-* images) and were threatened to have grades significantly docked for doing so. Much of the structuring of the course really demonstrates a lack of understanding of both the ethics of research and disciplines of geology outside of the instructor's specific research. There had been numerous complaints of the instructor playing favorites between the sexes as far as grading.

This course is basically "part 2" of the Geology Seminar. The instructors do rotate, so it's possible to avoid some of the lower-quality professors.