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…

Development of skills in bioscience undergraduates is seen as desirable by academic staff, students and employers, and this is reflected across most degree programmes. However, providing the opportunity for students to practise skills may alone be insufficient for their development. With an evident discrepancy between the skills expected of…

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…

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…

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…

Here we report on the successful implementation of an online experimental summary sheet that enabled the continual student monitoring of a large cohort of students undertaking a 6 week enquiry-based laboratory project. Students submitted a weekly research summary that contained information about their data analysis and future experimental plans.…

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…

Confidence is an important issue for biology students in handling computational concepts. This paper describes a practical in which honours-level bioscience students simulate complex animal behaviour using StarLogo TNG, a freely-available graphical programming environment. The practical consists of two sessions, the first of which guides students…

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 typical introductory biology curriculum includes the nature of science, evolution and genetics. Laboratory activities are designed to engage students in typical subject areas ranging from cell biology and physiology, to ecology and evolution. There are few, if any, laboratory classes exploring the biology and evolution of human sexual…