, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial

 or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings,

 focusing each time on some particular subject, in which everyone present is requested to participat

The term seminar is also used to describe a research talk, often given by a visiting researcher and primarily

 attended by academics, research staff, and postgraduate students. Seminars often occur in regular series,

 but each seminar is typically given by a different speaker, on a topic of that speaker's choosing. Such seminars are not usually a p

art of a course of study and are therefore not usually associated with any assessment or credit.

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In some European universities, a seminar may be a large lecture course, especially when conducted by a renowned thinker (regardless of the size of the audience or the scope of student participation in discussion). Some non-English speaking countries in Europe use the word seminar (e.g. German Seminar, Slovenian seminar, Polish seminarium) to refer to a university class that includes a term paper or project, as opposed to a lecture class (e.g. German Vorlesung, Slovenian predavanje, Polish wykład). This does not correspond to the English use of the term. In some academic institutions, typically in scientific fields,

 the term "preceptorial" is used interchangeably with "semina