Seven regional networking events, aimed at supporting and developing "early stage" novice university bioscience teachers were held across the UK. These workshops allowed 230 participants to reflect on teaching styles, learn about Higher Education Academy resources and discuss strategies to deal with a range of teaching situations.…

This paper uses the reflections of a recent workshop on biology and the humanities subject areas to consider the potential for designing a first year interdisciplinary module that brings together teachers and learners in the Biosciences with their counterparts in English and History. It considers three building blocks of module design: aims and…

In order to increase engagement and to consolidate skills, a tutorial-based skills course (module) was introduced as a compulsory component of first-year in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen. We evaluated whether students had attained certain "graduate attributes" during the course, comprising: transferable and generic…

Undergraduate research projects in the life sciences encompass a broad range of studies, some of which may require the participation of human subjects or other activities which may raise ethical concerns. As universities are accountable for all projects undertaken under their auspices they must ensure that these projects adhere to legal…

e-Learning Projects involve the construction by final year students of e-learning resources in project work. Students are supported in a blended training course in which they acquire appropriate skills and critically review eresources of their peers This paper describes innovations in course design that have lead to the evolution of eresources…

The A-level curricula are not preparing students for a university education, concentrating more on knowledge than skills. However, because of aspects such as the modular design of A-levels, subject knowledge can also be lacking in students as they enter university education. Diagnostic tests in maths and literacy for first year bioscience…

This report considers Biological Sciences students' perceptions of feedback, compared with those of the University as a whole, this includes what forms of feedback were considered most useful and how feedback used. Compared with data from previous studies, Biological Sciences students gave much greater recognition to oral feedback, placing it on a…

The Plant Sciences Pedagogy Project conducted research into undergraduate teaching and learning in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge and has translated the research findings into interventions to improve support for student learning. A key research objective for the project was to investigate how teachers within the…

Multimedia learning is widely used in life science education where the use of pictures and text can bring complex structures and processes to life. However the impact on academic performance and deeper understanding is not well documented. We therefore carried out a systematic review to evaluate the effectiveness of multimedia resources in…

Good quality, timely feedback is a key factor to help students achieve their full potential. Increased class sizes have put significant strain on the ability to return work promptly without compromising feedback quality. In the current study, two screencasting technologies were used to produce audiovisual feedback. For essays, Jing was used,…

The last student enrolled in a pure "Botany" degree in the UK began in the University of Bristol this year, 2010. In recent years only the University of Reading also offered the Botany degree, before it was dropped there 3 years ago. This short article is written to draw attention to this fact and to a more general relative decline in the number…

Laboratory-based learning allows students to experience bioscience principles first hand. In our experience, practical content and equipment may have changed over time, but teaching methods largely remain the same, typically involving; whole class introduction with a demonstration, students emulating the demonstration in small groups, gathering…

Text messaging has gained widespread popularity in higher education as a communication tool and as a means of engaging students in the learning process. In this study we report on the use of text messaging in a large, year-one introductory chemistry module where students were encouraged to send questions and queries to a dedicated text number both…

Most developed societies have become increasingly multicultural and as such their educational institutions are required to educate increasingly diverse student cohorts. International students differ greatly in their education and language backgrounds and tend to fall into different age groups as well. It is a challenging task to accommodate all…

In the current Higher Education climate, there is a pressing need to integrate research and teaching in the student learning experience. In order to create synergy between research and teaching activities, to the benefit of students and instructors, we provided students with the opportunity to participate in a high profile collaboration between…