University of Padua

Prerequisites: The student must be confident with the knowledge regarding the following topics: human anatomy, physiology, and general mechanisms of diseases. 

At the end of the course, the student will be able to take the patient history, perform the physical examination, formulate the diagnostic hypotheses and set up an appropriate diagnostic-therapeutic procedure for patients suffering from thoracic diseases, endocrine glands, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, anus, liver, pancreas, spleen, abdomen, peritoneum, skin, soft parts and breast, as reported in the program in full. 

Course topics include: Introduction to surgery (surgical risk, complications); Shock (classification, management principles); Infections of surgical interest; Benign and malignant diseases of the esophagus (including principles of surgical therapy); Benign and malignant diseases of the stomach (including principles of surgical therapy); Benign and malignant diseases of the small intestine (including principles of surgical therapy); Benign and malignant colorectal diseases (including principles of surgical therapy); Proctology (including principles of surgical therapy); Benign and malignant diseases of the liver and biliary tract (including principles of surgical therapy); Benign and malignant diseases of the pancreas (including principles of surgical therapy); Hernias of the abdominal wall and incisional hernia (including principles of surgical therapy); Diseases of the diaphragm (including principles of surgical therapy); Skin cancers (including principles of surgical therapy); Benign and malignant breast diseases (including principles of surgical therapy); Soft tissue tumors (including principles of surgical therapy); Tumors of the peritoneum (including principles of surgical therapy); Endocrine surgery (including principles of surgical therapy); Diseases of the mediastinum (including principles of surgical therapy); Lung tumors (including principles of surgical therapy); Acute abdomen (general framework, etiology, management principles); Diseases of the spleen (benign and malignant); Traumatology (general framework, management principles); Transplantation; Bariatric surgery; Vascular surgery; Critical care medicine; Plastic and reconstructive surgery.

Coming soon.

The course provides basic knowledge of modern and contemporary psychoanalysis as a model of human mind, as tool for understanding psychopathological processes, and as a psychotherapeutic treatment. At the end of the course, students: a) know major psychodynamic theories of mental functioning and development; b) handle basic psychoanalytic assumptions concerning the nature of psychopathology and its treatment; c) understand current evolutions of psychodynamic psychology (e.g., single case tradition vs. empirical research; relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience; process and outcome research on evidence-based psychodynamic psychotherapies).

The course provides foundational knowledge of adult psychopathology, clinical psychology, and clinical interviewing, with a specific focus on a set of practical issues, such as the impact of cultural differences, the development of key intrapersonal skills (e.g. perspective taking, mindfulness, epoché, empathy) and interpersonal skills (e.g. communication strategies, setting, interventions and techniques). The course introduces the concepts of culture and identity, nomality, deviance and psychopathology through the framework of social constructionist theory. During the whole course, in-depth analysis of various topics may vary according to students' requests and previous knowledge. Classes consist of traditional lectures as well as interactive and student-centered activities aimed to foster an active learning process, such as group work, class debates, role play, and presentations.

The course explores the relationships between cinematographic language and new digital technologies, investigates trends and iconographic recurrences of contemporary cinema, and creates awareness of the many ways which we read cinematic images. Students may pitch and create an audiovisual work, while developing critiquing skills. The course deepens the links between cinema and new technologies starting from the narrative, theoretical, and aesthetic modalities of contemporary digital cinema. The course also observes the historical context in which digital cinema fits. A part of the course is dedicated to the analysis of some specific symbolic orders of contemporary digital cinema and their film representation. The most significant correlations include: the film narrative and the forms of contemporary realism; the rediscovery of autobiographism; archive images and recycled cinema; the forms of hybridization and the aesthetics of video-art; the relationships between cinema space and museum space; the relationship between visible items and invisible items; the relationship between cinematic images and authenticity; and cinematic strategies used in different modes of production. The course includes the possibility to create a short audiovisual work. The course is aimed toward students studying communication and recommends a knowledge of basic topics in film and media history as a prerequisite.

This course includes laboratory experience and discusses various paradigms and phenomena related to different aspects of human cognition. The course discusses topics related to experiments including the ability to understand the aims and the experimental design underlying an experimental paradigm used to study a given phenomenon; the ability to evaluate both internal and ecological validity in a given experimental paradigm; the ability to identify the weaknesses underlying a given experimental paradigm; and the ability to accurately interpret the meaning of the results of an experiment. The course begins with methodological issues related to experimental psychology and works its way up from lower-level perceptual aspects of cognition, such as vision and object recognition, and then on to higher-level cognitive abilities. The phenomena that are illustrated and discussed are, among others, perceptual effects, the pop-out effect, the Simon effect, the Stroop effect, and also more recent phenomena illustrating how the cognitive system reacts to social signals and experimental settings with high ecological validity. Effort is made to keep theory and lab practice in parallel. Basic methodological aspects underlying the different experimental paradigms is also given strong emphasis. The course illustrates the relationship between the different effects investigated in the lab with the way cognitive processes are used in real life. The course requires students to have basic knowledge in cognitive psychology and methodology in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience as a prerequisite.

The Pre-A1 Italian language course is the first contact level students have with the language, it is suggested to learners who could have great difficulties because they speak non-European languages or a very different language from Italian. In this level students learn how to communicate in daily routine using fixed expressions. The course consists of discussing communicative functions including introducing oneself and talking about oneself (name, age, university study, nationality, address, place of living, mobile phone number); saying and asking for personal information; greeting and answering greetings; saying thanks and replying; apologizing and replying to apologies; looking for and asking for information in daily life (place to go to, price and cost); asking and saying the time; asking and saying the date; being formal and informal; asking and understanding information about the Italian language: What's the Italian for "x"?, How do you spell "x"?, What does "x" mean?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the first disciplines of Digital Marketing. It changes a lot over the years, switching from keyword-based logic to search intent answers. It is important to know all the fundamentals: words used, international scenario, the evolution of Search Engines, and the ranking factors. Since Google is the most used Search Engine in most of the world, all the topics covered in the course are based on Google guidelines. The course discovers the most impactful activities that can help websites to have success on Google, divided by: technical, internal, and external. The course examines how to build an informational architecture, and students work on a fashion web project, discovering how to approach the work and solve problems an SEO specialist would meet. With the help of Advertising, User Experience, Conversion Rate Optimization, Email Marketing and Web Analytics, SEO can express its real potential. The course demonstrates how the Digital Marketing initiatives can help each other to have the best opportunity to success online. There are other platforms where one can do SEO, such as YouTube, Pinterest, MyBusiness, and Amazon. The course explores the common points within Google SEO and others, to see how companies can take advantage of them. The course discusses topics including the basic of Search Engine Optimization; ranking factors for Google; the evolution of SEO; how to build a website informational architecture; SEO techniques, on site and off site and some tools to be used; how SEO can help other digital initiatives and vice versa (Advertising, User Experience, Email Marketing, etc.), how to do SEO, not only on Google; and how to track the results.