Centre for Bioscience, The Higher Education Academy

In this section:

Projects

External Funding

 


Bioscience ImageBank

 

Enhancing Final Year Projects: A Stakeholder Perspective

Project Leader Dr Karen Gresty
Organisation University of Plymouth
Contact K.Gresty@plymouth.ac.uk
Partners Prof. Mick Healey (University of Gloucestershire) and Mrs Sue Burkill (University of Exeter)
Grant type Departmental Enhancement Scheme
Completed Completed

Description

This project aims to enhance the research and learning experience of our final year biology undergraduates, by addressing their employability skills through curriculum redesign. Our particular focus is the development of the personal research (honours project) module, which has long been a special challenge to both staff and students for a several reasons, including:

  • increased student numbers with a dwindling resource base
  • accommodating Foundation Degree transfer students with a variety of backgrounds
  • addressing the needs of students who do not want research careers

Outcomes

Themes coming from project
  • The project module needs to enhance the standard of communication skills in our bioscience graduates. The importance of data analysis skills for future employability needs to be emphasised by staff prior to, or during the final year: these skills should be strengthened alongside or within the project module.
  • Employers want students to have more real or outward-facing employer experience and more problem-solving and data analysis skills, somewhere in the programme (not necessarily in project module). Strategies for project delivery could place a greateremphasis on developing team-working skills. Employers would like more active engagement with programmes.
  • Staff are very cautious about any change that reduces the status of the final year project. However, there is a majority viewthat the traditional model needs to be modified to enable greater flexibility, or allow alternatives that are less focused on pureresearch.
Employer Perspectives

The most important skills and attributes employers expected bioscience graduates to be able to demonstrate were:

  • Communication skills
  • Practical/field skills
  • Technical/subject knowledge
  • Teamworking skills
  • IT skillsEmployers
Key findings presented at Science Learning & Teaching Conference (SLTC) as poster presentation in June 2009 at Heriot-Watt University

Links

Visit Karen's homepage at the University of Plymouth.

Centre's Publication: Student Research Projects: Guidance on Practice in the Biosciences

A bibliography of resources used during the project (pdf)

View the Centre's web pages on Employability