The COVID-19 pandemic caused severe disruption to education in the UK in 2020, with most of the school teaching moving online and national school examinations being cancelled. This was particularly disruptive for those taking end of school examinations in preparation for higher education. Biological science courses require students to absorb a lot…

First year undergraduate courses in higher education tend to be designed based on assumptions of students' prior knowledge. Almost 600 undergraduates at five UK universities, studying biological sciences, were given an MCQ test in their first week at university, based on biology A-level (pre-university examination) core criteria. Results…

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 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…

The results are presented of a survey comparing the perceptions of first and second year bioscience students regarding their experience of feedback on coursework. The two cohorts displayed similar levels of satisfaction regarding the quantity and timing of feedback, even though changes in assessment format entailed different actual experiences. By…

In the UK, there is great concern about the perceived increase in plagiarized work being submitted by students in higher educations. Although there is much debate, the reasons for the perceived change are not completely clear. Here we present the results of a 2-year trial of the JISC Plagiarism Detection Service (PDS) involving hundreds of…

Feedback on academic performance is of critical importance to students' learning, and in their perception of the quality of instruction they receive. Here we report the outcomes of a study comparing the views and expectations of first year biological science undergraduate students and academic staff regarding feedback provision and utilisation.…

Undergraduate retention is a major concern for universities and first year failure is a significant contributor to the overall statistics for non-progression. This report describes an interview-based investigation of students' perceptions for the reasons underlying their failure in 1st and 2nd semester modules. The most commonly cited reasons were…

A wide range of tools is now available to enable teaching practitioners to create web-based educational materials from PowerPoint presentations, adding a variety of different digital media, such as audio and animation. The pilot study described in this paper compared three different systems for producing multimedia presentations from existing…

Undergraduate recruitment is a significant activity for all universities. This brief report sets out the results of a survey regarding the course and institutional choices of the 2005-06 entry cohort of bioscience students in four universities. The key findings show that enjoyment of the subject and the wish to learn more are the primary reasons…

Most Virtual Learning Environments are designed to be simple to use by staff and students alike. We report a case study where this feature has led academic staff to reject formal centralised training and teach themselves how to use the system. What has resulted is widespread use of the system but with poor pedagogic development, leading primarily…