Abstract:

Second year students in the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester complete a degree programme specific research skills module (RSM) as part of their overall assessment. This RSM aims to expose them to appropriate research methodology and allow them to gain valuable skills to prepare them for research elements of the final year of study. The RSM classes are all laboratory based and run twice (2 x 7hours) a week over a 2 week period. A key component of the Physiology RSM is an exercise physiology project. Here students work in groups of 10-12 and are required to design and implement a research project with limited equipment and using human volunteers. The students have to devise a hypothesis and design their protocol to test this.
Projects include testing the efficiency of walking and jogging at the same speeds on a treadmill or comparison of the efficiency of arms versus legs exercise using an Ergometer. Students are required to write up these project reports in the style of a research paper. The deadline for submission of this paper is one week after the completion of the project. One element the students appear to find difficult is the presentation and description of the results section. This was an area where most students performed poorly and this had a negative impact on their overall assessment grade. Verbal feedback was provided by the academic staff during the practical sessions but students requested more timely feedback regarding their approach to the write-up.
In 2012-13 an assessed presentation element was introduced into the RSM. Students were required to work in subgroups (consisting of 3-4 students working on the same project) and deliver an oral presentation consisting of 1 brief introduction/methods slide and a maximum of 4 results slides. The emphasis was for all students in the group to produce and describe one element of their findings. This aimed to provide the students with a formal opportunity to present their findings discuss their approach and to receive timely written and verbal feedback. In addition, this aimed to give students the opportunity to peer review the approach of other members of their project group and give them an appreciation of the different ways to describe and present data. There was also an opportunity to discuss and justify appropriate statistical analysis for the data. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach and student and staff perceptions of this component of the course.

Keywords:

Feedback, Research skills, Groupwork.