The transition to undergraduate study is often a challenging step for students as they progress from relatively smaller school/college classes with a high degree of contact time with familiar staff to a university department where one-on-one interaction with staff members is significantly reduced. The first year tutorials module offers one of the…

I describe a novel research-led module that combines reduced academic marking loads with increased feedback to students, and allows students to reflect on and improve attainment prior to summative assessment. The module is based around eight seminar-style presentations (one per week), on which the students write 500-word "news &…

The use of podcasting in higher education has escalated in recent years. The aim of this case study was to analyse undergraduate student use and perceptions of lecture audio recordings in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Leeds. Students completed an online survey over a two-week period based on their use of lecture audio…

National Student Survey (NSS) results show that many students are dissatisfied with the amount and quality of feedback they get for their work. This study reports on two case studies in which we tried to address these issues by introducing audio feedback to one undergraduate (UG) and one postgraduate (PG) class, respectively. In case study one…

Students express widespread dissatisfaction with academic feedback. Teaching staff perceive a frequent lack of student engagement with written feedback, much of which goes uncollected or unread. Published evidence shows that audio feedback is highly acceptable to students but is underused. This paper explores methods to produce and deliver audio…

Fieldwork is an important and often enjoyable part of learning in Bioscience degree courses, however it is unclear how the recent reforms to Higher Education (HE) may impact the future funding of outdoor learning. This paper reports on the findings from a recent survey of 30 HE Bioscience practitioners from across the UK. Their current level of…

The validity of peer assessment as well as students' experience and understanding of the process are recurrent themes in the educational literature. We studied postgraduates' experience of summative peer assessment, in particular their perceptions of the process. Student experience was generally positive, and not affected by…

Laptop computers were provided for use in three biology classes with differing formats (a second year lecture course of 100 students, a third/fourth year lecture course of 50 students, and a second year course with greater than 250 students, in groups of 25 during the laboratory portion of the class) to assess their impact on student learning and…

Understanding students' reactions to their feedback to coursework is crucial in being able to deliver feedback which motivates them and helps them to do better. This study focused on undergraduate bioscience students on a variety of degree programmes, at three UK universities, across all years. A questionnaire was completed by students when first…

The provision of timely and constructive feedback is increasingly challenging for busy academics. Ensuring effective student engagement with feedback is equally difficult. Increasingly, studies have explored provision of audio recorded feedback to enhance effectiveness and engagement with feedback. Few, if any, of these focus on purely formative…

The National Union of Students (NUS) National Student Experience Report identified examination feedback as an area where students had particular concerns. This finding was echoed in the authors' institution and triggered an action research project to investigate ways of improving students' perceptions of pre- and post-exam feedback. We report the…

The first year experiences of students are viewed as important in contributing to retention, overall academic success and student satisfaction. As such there is an increased focus on students' experiences of their first weeks at university. In this paper we describe some findings from a video-diary project through which bioscience students…

This study assessed the effect of admissions qualifications on the subsequent academic performances of BSc nutrition students at a UK university. Entrance qualifications for three groups (Grp01, Grp02, Grp03) reading for a BSc(Hons) degree in, Dietetics, Food & Nutrition or Human Nutrition (n = 105) were determined from their UCAS (Universities…

Induction for students entering university at level six is often less in-depth than that for students experiencing higher education (HE) for the first time. A week-long "Enhanced Induction" was developed specifically tailored to the concerns of the staff and students involved in an Animal Science "Top-up" at the University of Worcester. The…

A surge in the amount of information in the discipline of Cell Biology presents a problem to the teaching of undergraduates under time constraints. In most textbooks and during lectures, students in Singapore are often taught in a dogmatic manner where concepts and ideas are expounded to them. The students in turn passively receive the materials…