Essential Skills in Biomedical Science

 This course is for first year B.Sc. students (level 1) and of 12 credits.

Course Outline:

This course is made up of two components, data handling and essential skills. The main purpose of the data handling part of the course is to help the students to acquire the calculation skills and  to interpret the results from frequently used biochemical techniques. This will provide  the  foundation for practical work which they will do, not just during the first year, but also for several other courses they will opt during their degree program, and, particularly, in their final year research project. The essential skills component aims to introduce the students to the basic skills needed for life at the University. It includes significant transferable basic skills, which promote personal development and academic performance. The Key under-pinning skills for success include how to extract information from journal articles, citation and referencing, annotated bibliographies, mind maps/outlines and scientific writing.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the course, a successful student should be able to:

1. Carry out basic biochemical calculations

2. Write an annotated bibliography

3. Carry out a literature search using PubMed

4. Understand the concept of good academic practice

5. Demonstrate proficiency in the use of Excel.

In the previous two lectures the students were taught the techniques of notes making, time-management and also discussion on the work sheet which is available as a course material. These work sheets provide information on units of measurement (molecules, moles & other units) required in a laboratory, abbreviations used, their meaning, solutions and dilutions with worked out examples.

Today there was a ‘Open Book Test’ 1. This test was on Molecules and Moles and the duration of the test was 2 hrs. This is a formative test. All the students were given the test paper cum answer sheet. They  have to do the calculations on a separate sheet and this sheet is to be enclosed to the test paper. This is annotated and will be returned to the students. This test was conducted in a lecture theatre and appeared to me that all the students (150) were present at 9:00.