Slides from a talk given at the University of Dundee describing a series of activities used at the University of Leicester to promote skills development amongst (medical) bioscience students. www.lefthandedbiochemist.wordpress.com

1. Dundee May 2010
Putting skills development into the
curriculum (without boring everyone
to tears): some practical ideas
Dr Chris Willmott
Dept of Biochemistry,
University of Leicester
cjrw2@le.ac.uk
University of
Leicester
http://tinyurl.com/bored10

2. Introduction
• skills development: school or university?
• uni: deepening basic skills, introducing specialist
• “we‟ve done this before”
• emphasising relevance and context
• doing v describing v deconstructing?
http://tinyurl.com/juggler10

3. http://tinyurl.com/students10
Context
• Activities all developed initially for use in Year 1 (of 3)
module
2000-2009 = Key Skills
2009-2010 = Introduction to Medical Bioscience
• Medical-related courses
(Med Biochem, Med Gen, Med Phys)
• n = various, but latterly approx 100

4. Content
• Plagiarism awareness and avoidance
• Essay writing
• Information literacy
• Experimental design
• Scientific reports
http://tinyurl.com/boredbaby10

5. Plagiarism avoidance
• Deliberate or accidental reproduction of somebody
else‟s work as your own
• “On the increase”
• Internet as a source
• Cut and paste
• Prevention better than cure,
better than confirmation of guilt
Nick Newman

6. Plagiarism avoidance
• Many students are “accidental” plagiarists:
- Not understanding the rules
- Not enough time (poor time-keeping, overchoice)
- Poor study skills
See also Gill Chester (2001) http://tinyurl.com/chester2001

7. Plagiarism avoidance
• To distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate
uses of source materials
• To encourage good study skills, and referencing
practice, as a safeguard against accidental plagiarism

8. Plagiarism avoidance
• Students are presented with seven versions of an
„essay‟ extract as well as the original source material
• Asked individually, then in groups, to consider which
are guilty of plagiarism
• Tutor-led discussion of appropriate and inappropriate
use, leading into practical tips on avoidance of
accidental plagiarism
Willmott CJR and Harrison TM (2003) An exercise to teach students about plagiarism
Journal of Biological Education 37:139-140

9. Plagiarism avoidance

10. Plagiarism avoidance
• Session also involves:
- advice on good note-taking practice
- advice on referencing
- warning re Turnitin

11. Plagiarism avoidance
• Original activity adapted by Stuart Johnson into
self-directed tutorial using Adobe Presenter
• “Don‟t Cheat Yourself” now uses different example
for Bioscientists
http://tinyurl.com/
plagiarism-biology
• now also
16 other subjects
http://tinyurl.com/
plagiarismtutorials

12. http://tinyurl.com/essayhand10
Essay writing
• Essay writing remains a cornerstone of assessment
• Students may have received little specific guidance
or feedback on exam essays:
- tend to take place at or near end of module
- reticence re haggling for marks?
• Rare opportunity to see genuine work produced by
other students

13. Essay writing
• Activity involving three phases:
• Stage 1: students peer-review genuine exam
essays written by previous cohort
• Stage 2: write essay under exam conditions
• Stage 3: peer-mark each other‟s essays
Willmott C (2007) „You have 45 minutes, starting from now‟: helping students
develop their exam essay skills Bioscience Education E-journal 9-C2

14. Essay writing: Stage 1
• Students read set of exam essays
• In groups, rank answers according to formal
marking criteria
• Each group reports back on ranking, these are
compared with „real‟ order
• Tutor-led discussion on strengths and weaknesses
• Other advice on exam technique

15. Essay writing: Stage 1 - issues
• Number and range of essays?
- six = a good number
- less = insufficient spread of quality
- more = take too long,
distinctions becomes subtle
• Handwritten or typed?
- handwritten
- layout and legibility as learning
outcome
- photocopy once, remove marker‟s
comments (but record elsewhere),
re-photocopy

16. Essay writing: Stage 1 - issues
• Right to use previous students‟ essays?
- initially with essays from archive
- collected permission from cohort and used their
essays
- institutional policy on students‟ IPR?

17. Essay writing: Stage 2
• Students plan essay on specified topic
• One week later
• 45 minutes, exam conditions
• Formal exam booklets
• Candidate numbers only
(nb peer-marking)
• Extra MPH for dyslexics etc
http://tinyurl.com/independentessay

18. Essay writing: Stage 3
• Peer-evaluation of essays
• Tutor-led discussion of key issues & common errors
• Essays distributed to groups (not their own)
• 45 mins to read and offer feedback on as many as
possible
• No writing on script, feedback accumulated on sheet
of coloured paper circulated with essay
• Essays collected back in and passed to tutor team
for summative marking
• Returned with peer and tutor feedback
Willmott C (2007) „You have 45 minutes, starting from now‟: helping students
develop their exam essay skills Bioscience Education E-journal 9-C2

19. Information literacy: ‘Goggle’
• Problem these days not finding information it is
sifting and evaluating sources
• Almost certainly start with regular search engine
• Purpose-made “Google search”
• Theme = mitochondria
• Selected order and genre
of source material
• Students fill in online form,
completed form e-mailed
to them, data collated
http://tinyurl.com/searchtool10

20. Information literacy: ‘Goggle’

21. Information literacy: ‘Goggle’
• Asked to score each source for “academic quality”
• Asked to think about appropriateness of using each
source for two different tasks:
- first year essay on role of mitochondria in
energy production
- final year dissertation on mitochondria &
ageing
• Appropriateness in terms of:
- Authority for task
- Relevance for task
• Tension: time v breadth
- initially 10 sources, now 8

22. Information literacy: ‘Goggle’
• Sources:
- online copy Alberts et al Mol Biology of the Cell
- Wikipedia
- essay from essay bank
- review from Cell (on ageing)
- review from Annual Reviews (on protein import)
- educational website
- news report
- online video (TED)

23. Information literacy: ‘Goggle’
• Organisation of session:
- need minimum of 60 mins, 90 mins better
- alternatively students pre-complete individual
evaluation of sources then meet with tutor for
hour to discuss
• Issue relating to name, considering alternatives

24. Experimental design
• QAA Benchmarking statements (2007, p2):
“students should develop competence in comparing
the merits of alternative hypotheses and receive
guidance in terms of how to construct experiments
or to make observations to challenge them”
• 50 minute introductory session: Can you smell fear?

25. Experimental design
• Can you smell fear?
1. Example of inadequately designed experiment
Video: Brainiac Science Abuse
2. What was good? What might have been better?
3. Example of appropriate experiment
Peer-reviewed study:
Prehn-Kristensen et al (2009) PLoS ONE

26. Experimental design
Brainiac Science Abuse: The Smell of Fear
Sky1, 07:00, 28th January 2009 (http://tinyurl.com/brainiacfear)

27. Scientific reports
• Research papers are the principal means of
communication within the science community
• Skills necessary for critiquing and/or writing reports
do not arise routinely in other activities
• Final year projects are written in the style of
scientific reports, but practical work does not
necessarily develop those skills
Session Task Session Task Session Task
1 1 2 2 3 3
Willmott CJR, Clark RP and Harrison TM (2003) Introducing undergraduate students
to scientific reports Bioscience Education 1-10

28. Scientific reports: Session 1
• Buzzgroups discuss names and purpose of sections in
a research paper, followed by tutor-led discussion
• Students consider strengths and weaknesses of three
versions of an
Abstract (Kirkman)
• Set Task 1
Malmfors et al (2000)

29. Scientific reports: Task 1
• Reading a primary research paper
• Students answer series of questions to guide them
through article
• Culminates in writing an Abstract for paper
• Formative assessment
• Which article?

30. Scientific reports: Task 1
• Which article?
• Contemporary papers frequently jargon-rich
and impenetrable
• “There is no form of prose more
difficult to understand and more
tedious to read than the
average scientific paper“
Francis Crick (1994)
http://tinyurl.com/crick10

31. Scientific reports

32. Scientific reports

33. Scientific reports: Session 2
• Review of abstract-writing task
• Introduction to next activity, writing-up an expt on
lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) as though own data
• Tension:
problem writing up v problem understanding
• Evolved into 3 stages:
– outline of scientific question
– data from one approach distributed & discussed
– first draft brought to further discussion on data
handling

34. Scientific reports
• Formative feeback via 10 minute 1-2-1 tutorial
• Plenary session: introduction to, and discussion of,
second experiment (genetic basis of colour blindness)
• Students write-up a report of second experiment
using provided data
• Summative assessment (25% of module)

35. Acknowledgements
Tim Harrison
Stuart Johnson
Richard Clark
Jo Badge

36. References
Willmott CJR and Harrison TM (2003) An exercise to teach
students about plagiarism Journal of Biological Education
37:139-140
Willmott CJR, Clark RP and Harrison TM (2003) Introducing
undergraduate students to scientific reports Bioscience
Education E-journal 1-10
Willmott C (2007) „You have 45 minutes, starting from now‟:
helping students develop their exam essay skills Bioscience
Education E-journal 9-C2
Willmott C (submitted, 2010) Introduction to experimental
design: can you smell fear?
Johnson S, Badge J and Willmott C (in preparation)

37. Thank you
E-mail: cjrw2@le.ac.uk
Twitter: cjrw
Slideshare: cjrw2
Delicious: chriswillmott
Blogs: www.bioethicsbytes.wordpress.com
www.biosciencecareers.wordpress.com
www.lefthandedbiochemist.wordpress.com
University of
Leicester

39. Plagiarism avoidance: Evaluation
• “Before the session I had no idea about the rules on
plagiarism”
• “The problem of plagiarism was made clear and we were
taught how to avoid its use (sic)”
Willmott CJR and Harrison TM (2003) An exercise to teach students about plagiarism
Journal of Biological Education 37:139-140

40. Essay writing: Evaluation
• “I liked this module very much… going over past exam essays
really showed what to do and what not to do”
• “It gave me ideas how to improve my essay style as I could
see where others had gone wrong”
• “Got a chance to see others work, realised how annoying
some people‟s work is to mark so I could change my style
accordingly”
• It highlighted the importance of a plan when structuring
exam essays”
• “It was useful to look at other people‟s work and the way in
which exam papers are marked”
• “I noticed that a long essay doesn‟t mean a good essay”
Willmott C (2007) „You have 45 minutes, starting from now‟: helping students
develop their exam essay skills Bioscience Education E-journal 9-C2

41. Scientific literacy: Evaluation
• “Learnt a lot about the different varieties of source available,
were never told at school or sixth form about this sort of stuff”
• “Made us think about the suitability of using sources in our
essays”
• “It helped on how to filter out large amounts of information
that come up when you search”
• “This showed me many different types of search result that I
was not previously aware of”
• “The activity was interesting and the feedback was very helpful
when deciding which sources to use”
• “It made me more aware that not all information on the
internet is true”
Johnson, Badge and Willmott (in preparation)

42. Experimental design: Evaluation
• Likert scale (n = 16) :
1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree
“I enjoyed the session on experimental design” 4.44
“I found the session on experimental design useful” 4.25
Willmott C (submitted, 2010)
„Introduction to experimental design: can you smell fear?‟

43. Experimental design: Evaluation
• “The experiment presented was really entertaining. The task of
coming up with a more effective experiment was stimulating”
• “The set up - looking at a particular experiment, discussing
among ourselves faults and then discussing as a group the
experiment design was good”
• “It described an experiment that was carried out (not the
Hammond experiment but the sweat-collecting experiment)
which was complex and professional. This will help to think
about future experiments that us as students may like to carry
out”
• “It worked very well, and engaged everyone instead of just
talking about how to set up a good study”
Willmott C (submitted, 2010)
„Introduction to experimental design: can you smell fear?‟

44. Scientific reports: Evaluation
• Session 1: “I had never seen a scientific report before”
• “Information about scientific report writing was useful. Group
involvement made session interesting”
• Session 2: “Introduction to report was fun and in depth and
made everyone take part instead of feeling left out and bored”
• “Didn‟t no [sic] how to write a report before”
• 1-2-1 session: “Extremely important and very useful. It just
picked up on the small areas in report writing that you, as an
individual needed to work on”
• “This was most useful as we got to see where we were going
wrong and ways to improve our work”
Willmott CJR, Clark RP and Harrison TM (2003) Introducing undergraduate students
to scientific reports Bioscience Education 1-10