The aim of this module is to give students the skills necessary to communicate scientific ideas and attract the necessary funding to conduct research. As part of this students will develop their skills at acquiring, organising, processing, presenting and critically evaluating scientific information whilst concomitantly developing team working skills.
Students will begin with a series of presentations supporting the skills development they will need in order to put together a grant application in a group and learn about the funding of scientific research. Aspects will include funding avenues, grant writing, science communication, working in groups, critical analysis of papers, delivering presentations and project management.
The students will then be tasked in groups to develop their own scientific research idea and to communicate this idea through the writing of a grant application and an oral presentation. Throughout students will be given guidance and training in equality and diversity, how to read scientific sources and avoiding plagiarism, whilst also undertaking interactive workshops to discuss science communication and particular funding case studies.
Communicating science will be a strong focus of this module, with training elements also including presenting a research paper as part of a pod cast, presenting their grant application/business plan to a funding committee and writing both technical and lay summaries.
Students will be taught using a combination of standard lectures, workshops and tutorials. The module will predominantly be group work based.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
Acquire, organise, process, integrate, critically evaluate information from current research papers and present this information in a suitable form and level;
Plan a programme of work to answer a hypothesis in a grant proposal, applying some of the techniques learnt;
Participate effectively in group work;
Communicate complex scientific findings to a lay audience.
Assessment
34407-01 : Research Grant 1 - Written Application : Coursework (50%)
34407-02 : Research Grant 2 - Oral Presentation : Presentation (20%)
34407-03 : Research Grant 3 - Peer-Marking of Proposals : Coursework (10%)
34407-04 : Podcast : Coursework (20%)
Assessment Methods & Exceptions
Assessment: Group work - Group Grant application 80% • 50% written group application • 20 % group presentation • 10% peer-marking proposals
Individual Work - Science audio Podcast based on a current research paper (20%).
Method of Reassessment: Repeat failed assessments.
