FOUNDATION SKILLS FOR LIFE SCIENCES

FOUNDATION SKILLS FOR LIFE SCIENCES
Course Code
BI 2005
Credit Points
15
Course Coordinator
Professor M Cotter, Dr M Swaine

Pre-requisites

BI 1004

Co-requisites

BI 20M1 or BI 20B2 or BI 2001 or BI 20P1

Overview

6 four-hour workshops every other Wednesday morning involving a Personal Response System (PRS) lecture at the start to introduce the topic, followed by groups of students working together to complete a related task eg solve a number of data interpretations.

Web-based "homework" is available in the following week, consisting of a bank of questions, which the students are advised to answer and practise. On alternate Wednesday mornings, students complete an individual assignment, generated randomly from the bank of questions.

At this point the students receive feedback on their answers. Any student who fails this assignment is able to repeat the task.

Topics include: numerical manipulations, practical skills, interpretation of graphs and data sets, basic statistics, application of statistical analysis to data, writing good scientific English, preparation of abstracts, designing experiments, critical analysis of published work, evaluating sources of information, analysis of conflicting published data, basic presentation skills.

Structure

6 four-hour workshops and 6 one-hour individual assignments.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (100%). Consisting of group work (25%), per assessment (5%), and individual assignments (70%).

Resit: Students will be able to repeat individual assignments.