The mass shift to Open-Book, Open-Web (OBOW) assessments during the pandemic highlighted new opportunities in Higher Education for developing accessible, authentic assessments that can reduce administrative load. Despite a plethora of research emerging on the effectiveness of OBOW assessments within disciplines, few currently evaluate their…

Employability is a key issue for students and Higher Education Institutions and a key component of employability is possessing the skills a role requires. In the environmental sciences, fieldwork provides an opportunity for students to develop employability-enhancing technical and transferable skills. However, students can have difficulty…

In this article we describe the effectiveness of a programme-wide communication skills training framework incorporated within a one-year biological sciences taught Masters course designed to enhance the competency of students in communicating scientific research principally to a scientific audience. In one class we analysed the numerical marks…

To identify specific genetic variants influencing the phenotype of entrepreneurship, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) with 3,933 Caucasian females from the TwinsUK Adult Twin Registry. Following stringent genotype quality control, GWAF (genome-wide association analyses for family data) software was used to assess the association…

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…

A three-country study was undertaken to assess the educational efficacy of two textbooks authored by the researcher. The same texts were distributed to groups of student nurses in the United Kingdom, Cambodia, and Kenya. A data collection tool was developed to obtain quantitative data and to ask open-ended questions on how useful readers found the…

The ability to understand and implement calculations required for molarity and dilution computations that are routinely undertaken in the laboratory are essential skills that should be possessed by all students entering an undergraduate Life Sciences degree. However, it is increasingly recognized that the majority of these students are ill…

For those receiving funding from the UK HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resource Programme (2009-2012), the sustainability of project outputs was one of a number of essential goals. Our approach for the hosting and distribution of health and life science open educational resources (OER) was based on the utilisation of the WordPress.org blogging…

In the UK, at key stage 4, students aged 14-15 studying GCSE Core Science or Unit 1 of the GCSE Biology course are required to be able to describe the process of genetic engineering to produce bacteria that can produce insulin. The simple interactive introduction described in this article allows students to consider the problem, devise a model and…

Undergraduate research projects in the life sciences encompass a broad range of studies, some of which may require the participation of human subjects or other activities which may raise ethical concerns. As universities are accountable for all projects undertaken under their auspices they must ensure that these projects adhere to legal…

There is general agreement in the literature that international students are more likely to plagiarise compared to their native speaker peers and, in many instances, plagiarism is unintentional. In this article we describe the effectiveness of an academic writing development programme embedded into a Biological Sciences Taught Masters course…

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…

Fieldwork is regarded as an important component of many bioscience degree programmes. QAA benchmarks statements refer explicitly to the importance of fieldwork, although give no indication of amounts of field provision expected. Previous research has highlighted the importance of fieldwork to the learning of both subject-specific and transferable…

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…

Fieldwork is an important and often enjoyable part of learning in Bioscience degree courses, however it is unclear how the recent reforms to Higher Education (HE) may impact the future funding of outdoor learning. This paper reports on the findings from a recent survey of 30 HE Bioscience practitioners from across the UK. Their current level of…