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A 10-week research project is undertaken alone or in pairs in which the student learns laboratory or literature research techniques. Each student is assigned to a research team usually on the Foresterhill site, but occasionally projects may be offered by teams associated with the University, for example at the Rowett Research Institute or Robert Gordon's University. Each student independently submits the outcome of the project as a thesis. An oral account of the project is presented to SMS staff and fellow students. Students gain extensive experience of literature research procedures, data acquisition and data manipulation. Students are assessed on both their performance throughout the whole project and the quality of the written thesis.
Course Co-ordinator : Dr Derryck Shewan, IMS room 5.28, ext. 55785, d.shewan@abdn.ac.uk
The main objective of the project is to provide you with first hand experience of how new scientific information is acquired and assimilated into the existing body of knowledge through search and analysis of the literature. For laboratory students, they will complete a period of intensive laboratory-based work and to compile and submit a thesis describing the project and the outcomes of the work. During this course, students gain expertise in experimental design, time management, team work, problem solving, literature searching, data handling, information retrieval, data processing and presentation of scientific material.
This is a complex multistep process and the project will provide training in some or all of the following:-
• Identify the subject areas which contribute to the project topic and define the most important ones.
• Identify the crucial contributory strands of evidence from the literature.
• Acquire the skills to access original and secondary sources in the literature.
• Enhance knowledge of, and use effectively, computer-based databases and the library.
• Further develop personal skills with databases, graphics and word processing packages.
• Acquire and develop an ability to work independently.
• Refine effective time management skills.
• Acquire detailed knowledge of the topic and underlying evidence and integrate this into a coherent account.
• Preparation and presentation of oral and written accounts.
Thus the course, more heavily than any other in the School, is designed to encourage both a deeper academic understanding and to develop transferable and communication skills. The course is designed to permit students to actively study the very latest scientific research in a chosen field.
Projects will be undertaken from Monday 12th January 2009 to Friday 20th March 2009. For library students only, a poster describing the scope of the project will be presented on Wednesday 11th February 2008. A 10-minute Powerpoint presentation will be given by the student or students allocated to each project on Thursday March 20th 2009. The thesis is to be completed with the aid of a word processor and submitted NOT LATER than Friday 24th April 2009. Further guidelines on thesis preparation are provided under "Writing up your project report" below.
PROJECT ALLOCATION
At the start of the 1st half session a list of library and laboratory based projects and associated supervisors is posted on WebCT. Students are encouraged to approach individual supervisors to more fully discuss specific projects on offer, which helps in making informed choices. They are asked to nominate 7 projects ranked in order of preference, at least one of which must be a library project. Projects are allocated according to student choice whilst taking previous academic achievement into account. Every effort is made to provide students with one of their chosen projects, and in the vast majority of cases students are allocated a project towards the top of their shortlist.
CARRYING OUT YOUR PROJECT
The precise manner in which the project is carried out will depend on its nature and there will inevitably be considerable variation between projects. The following are therefore intended as broad guidelines. All searches and acquisition of material should be completed by the end of the 7th week of the project, leaving the remaining time for analysis, laying the foundations of your written report and your talk.
You are required to keep a record of your searches and primary results in a chronological order: do not use scraps (or even tidy loose sheets) of paper which may be lost or muddled. Your supervisor will expect to discuss your progress - probably weekly - and expect you to prepare short synopses for discussion on your progress.
In researching your topic it may be useful to start with advanced textbooks or monographs but quickly you should be using major review journals and original papers: the latter are the primary sources. Once you have a broad idea of the scope of the topic create an outline programme of work and discuss this with your supervisor. You will find that both the detail and relative balance of individual subsections will alter as your knowledge and understanding increase. Have a critical and discriminating attitude towards the material. Dissect out the positive and negative compounds. Constantly, try to relate and integrate the new material. The final thesis should not be a regurgitation of what you have read, but should synthesise it into a critical review.
If you are a Library student, you will be required to present a poster on your work on Wednesday 18th February 2009. Your supervisor will assist you in the layout and with the necessary materials. The presentation will not be formally assessed in itself but is designed to give you critical feedback on your project topic and forms part of your continual assessment. If desired, posters may be printed by Medical Illustration, and Dr Derek Scott will provide a template for the poster layout (available on WebCT) and co-ordinate the timely submission of posters for printing.
THE PROJECT ORAL PRESENTATION
You are required to give a 10 min Powerpoint presentation on your project to a group of your peers and academic staff on Thursday 26th March 2009. In preparing this talk pay attention to:
• Giving a simple, clear and concise explanation of the background and a precise statement of your aims.
• Summarising your results in a readily comprehensible form. Graphs and diagrams are often a good way of doing this and any tables or figures should be kept simple.
• Avoiding excessive detail of techniques and methodology.
• Six slides can usually be presented during a 10 minute talk.
• Rehearse the talk with your supervisor and peers.
• The talk should not be read out from a script.
You should be prepared to answer questions (5 min maximum) at the end of your talk. You will need to discuss your talk with your supervisor and be prepared to have a trial run in order to achieve the correct balance and length. The presentation is not assessed individually but is viewed as an important element in the overall continual assessment. It is intended that the timing of this talk will assist you with preparation of the thesis to follow.
WRITING UP YOUR PROJECT REPORT
Although your work may have been performed in pairs, remember that your thesis has to be written up completely independently of others (theses on the same project will be marked by the same examiner, so overlap will be obvious). Acknowledge any contribution that your project partner may have had, indicating any shared data, etc. Your report should follow the general format of a scientific paper in a journal. It should have an informative title, a summary, an introduction, a materials and methods section, a results section, a discussion and finally a list of references. You may find it helpful to use subdivisions within these main sections. Your supervisor will provide papers to illustrate good style and other matters considered in these guidelines. SI units should be used throughout. The text must be produced on a word processor. Ask your supervisor or course coordinator for a look at previous years’ theses in order to get an appreciation of how to prepare yours. The length should be around 50 sides (at least 11 point font, 1.5 line spaced with adequate margins on all sides) and should include the following sections:
Summary
A concise (not more than 250 words), paragraph that allows the reader to understand the scope and main conclusions of the work without having read the rest of the script.
Declaration
A personal statement that the thesis and the work described in it was done by you and any input from others is duly acknowledged or cited. Print and sign your name to authenticate this declaration.
Contents
Provide a neat and accurate layout of the main sections and sub-sections of the thesis and the pages on which they are to be found. You may also like to list the figures within the thesis and provide descriptions of all the abbreviations used in the text.
Introduction
This should describe the background to the work, quoting key references. It should lead up to questions or hypotheses that underpin the specific project you have undertaken. As a rough guide it should be about 20% of the report.
Aims
Briefly, perhaps with the use of bulleted points, set out the specific aims of your project. You may also state how these aims were intended to be realised.
Materials and Methods
A concise, but informative, account of all the techniques (including statistical methods) used. The object is to allow the reader to repeat your work under similar conditions. If a published or standard method is used it is not necessary to describe it in detail; the reference will suffice. However any variations to the published procedure that you have introduced should be described. The length of this section will vary depending upon the nature of the work, but typically is around 25% of the report.
Results
Comprehensive and clear description of results with tables, graphs and selected original data (images, traces, chromatograms, etc). As well as presenting the results in tables and graphs, you should include for each experiment a narrative account of the results. The reader should not be expected to interpret tables or figures unaided. Wherever appropriate, statistical procedures should be used to indicate the variability of results and to test the significance of differences between different experimental conditions. It is important that results should be recorded accurately, although if you have a mass of primary data it may be best appended at the end and abstracted into more convenient summary tables or graphs in the results section. As a rough guide this section should be about 30% of the report.
Discussion
This should not be a repetition of the results or the introduction. The purpose of the discussion section is to summarise and interpret your conclusions and comment on their significance in the light of what is known from the literature. Resist the temptation to make highly speculative comments on the basis of isolated results, however ingenious a theory you may be able to develop. Try to identify shortcomings in your work - there will be several after such a short project - and suggest what more might be done to extend or confirm your experiments. Try to draw some conclusion(s) from your study and state to what extent you have achieved your stated aims. As a rough guide this section should be about 25% of the report.
References
Sources of information should be acknowledged at the appropriate place in the text and a list of all references mentioned in the text must be given at the end of the discussion. There are several ways references may be cited, and you have had tuition in referencing during your degree (check the layout of the Journal of Physiology or the British Journal of Pharmacology - be consistent throughout, no matter which style you choose). However, all references should include titles of articles, as well as authors, journal, volume, page numbers and year. Chapters in books should also be fully identifiable, with author, page numbers, chapter title, and the book title, editor (if any), publisher and year and place of publication of the book. In the text, cite both the author(s) (first author et al if three or more) and year; for example, Shewan (1885), Shewan and McEwan (1886) or Shewan et al (1888).
Projects will be undertaken from Monday 12th January 2009 to Friday 20th March 2009.
For Library Projects, a poster describing the scope of the project will be presented on Wednesday 18th February 2008.
For ALL projects, a 10-minute Powerpoint presentation will be given by the student or students allocated to each project on Thursday March 20th 2009.
The thesis is to be completed with the aid of a word processor and submitted NOT LATER than Friday 24th April 2009. Further guidelines on thesis preparation are provided under "Writing up your project report" above.
THESIS SUBMISSION DATE
Friday 24th April, 2009.
All Honours students are expected to attend the weekly IMS research seminars (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/ims/seminars/) that are relevant to SMS topics and held in IMS Conference Rooms on Level 5 or Level 7. Details of forthcoming seminars are also advertised on posters and screens around the IMS.
The University has strict regulations on plagiarism. If you are unsure about what constitutes plagiarism read the University guide on plagiarism at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/writing
Copying or plagiarising another persons work, either from other students or published material in books or papers and submitted as your own for assessment is considered a form of cheating. This is considered by the University to be a serious offence and will be penalised according to the extent involved and whether it is decided there was an attempt at deliberate deception, or whether bad practice was involved. If you do use information or ideas obtained from textbooks or other published material you must give a precise reference to the source both at the appropriate point in your narrative and in a list of references at the end of your work. Direct quotations from published material should be indicated by quotation marks and referenced in the text as above.
Your performance during the project will be assessed by your supervisor who will consider:
• Your depth of understanding of the project and the related literature.
• Your commitment and application including your level of preparedness for weekly meetings.
• Your technical skills in the library.
• Your initiative and contribution to development of the work through ideas and suggestions for experiments.
• Your planning and organisation of work.
The written project report will be assessed by your supervisor and another member of staff, and possibly by the external examiner. They will be looking for breadth of reading, depth of understanding, logical organisation, clear presentation, correct and concise use of English, critical evaluation of information, an ability to relate new results to the literature and originality. The marking sheets used by the markers are available on WebCT; you are advised to consult these when writing your thesis. These marking sheets are used as guidelines only by the examiners, and the marking may vary depending on the nature of the project.
Overall assessment is weighted such that the continual assessment mark provided by your supervisor comprises 25% of the total mark and the written thesis 75%. The latter will comprise 2 elements of assessment, one from the project supervisor(s) (25%) and one from an independent member of academic staff (50%). The 10 minute Powerpoint presentation will not be directly assessed but your supervisor will take preparation and delivery of the talk into account in the continual assessment of the project as a whole. The project will contribute 8/22 elements (36%) to the student’s final degree classification.
Dr Derryck Shewan
Problems with Coursework
If students have difficulties with any part of the course that they cannot cope with alone they should notify someone immediately. If the problem relates to the subject matter you may be best advised to contact the member of staff who is teaching that part of the course. Students with registered disabilities should contact either the IMS based School Office (Miss Lyndsay McEwan l.mcewan@abdn.ac.uk) or the Old Aberdeen office associated with the teaching laboratories (Mrs S.Jones s.jones@abdn.ac.uk ) to ensure that the appropriate facilities have been made available. Otherwise, you are strongly encouraged to contact any of the following as you see appropriate:
Course student representatives.
Course co-ordinator (NV)
Convenor of the Biomedical Sciences Staff/Student Liaison Committee (Dr Gordon McEwan).
Adviser of studies.
Disabilities Co-ordinator (Dr Derryck Shewan).
Staff are based at Foresterhill (IMS Building) and we strongly encourage the use of email or telephone the SMS office. You may be wasting your time to travel to Foresterhill only to find staff unavailable.
Support Available to Students
The University is keen to help you successfully complete your studies. If at any time you feel you need assistance, there is a range of support services available to help you. These include support to assist with unexpected and/or exceptional financial difficulty, support for disabled students and academic learning support through the Student Learning Service. Further details about all these services area available at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/studenthelpguide/.
Monitoring Students' Progress
The University operates a system for monitoring students' progress to identify students who may be experiencing difficulties in a particular course and who may be at risk of losing their class certificate. If the Course Co-ordinator has concerns about your attendance and/or performance, the Registry will be informed. The Registry will then write to you (by e-mail in term-time) to ask you to contact their office in the first instance. Depending on your reason for absence the Registry will either deal directly with your case or will refer you to your Adviser of Studies or a relevant support service. This system is operated to provide support for students who may be experiencing difficulties with their studies. Students are required to attend such meetings with their Adviser of Studies in accordance with General Regulation 8.
Set criteria are used to determine when a student should be reported in the monitoring system. You will be asked to meet your Adviser if any of the following criteria apply for this course:-
either (i) if you are absent for a continuous period of two weeks or 25% of the course (whichever is less) without good cause being reported;
or (ii) if you are absent from two small group teaching sessions e.g. (laboratory/tutorial classes) without good cause;
or (iii) if you fail to submit a piece of summative or a substantial piece of formative in-course assessment by the stated deadline
If you fail to respond within the prescribed timescale (as set out in the e-mail or letter) you will be deemed to have withdrawn from the course concerned and will accordingly be ineligible to take the end of course assessment or to enter for the resit. The Registry will write to you (by e-mail in term-time) to inform you of this decision. If you wish consideration to be given to reinstating you in the course you will be required to meet the Convener of the Students' Progress Committee.
Absence from Classes on Medical Grounds
Candidates who wish to establish that their academic performance has been adversely affected by their health are required to secure medical certificates relating to the relevant periods of ill health (see General Regulation 17.3).
The University’s policy on requiring certification for absence on medical grounds or other good cause can be accessed at:
www.abdn.ac.uk/registry/quality/appendix7x5.pdf
You are strongly advised to make yourself fully aware of your responsibilities if you are absent due to illness or other good cause. In particular, you are asked to note that self-certification of absence for periods of absence up to and including eleven weekdays is permissible. However, where absence has prevented attendance at an examination or where it may have affected your performance in an element of assessment or where you have been unable to attend a specified teaching session, you are strongly advised to provide medical certification (see section 3 of the Policy on Certification of Absence for Medical Reasons or Other Good Cause).
