Dr Nephtali Marina-Gonzalez, UCL Division of Medicine and secondee at the Arena Centre, explains a novel approach to deliver undergraduate final year research projects.
2 June 2020
The final year research project is the pinnacle of biomedical sciences degrees and provides essential training to students wishing to pursue a scientific career.
Dr Nephtali Marina-Gonzalez shares his experience of offering non-lab based, “alternative” research projects in the Applied Medical Sciences programme.
He includes tips for staff who want to implement this initiative to deliver final year or capstone projects remotely or online.
Less than 10% of biomedical sciences students pursue careers in research. The need to broaden the type of final year research projects being completed is becoming increasingly important.
We know from student surveys that modules, where laboratory-based projects were replaced with solely (critical) reviews of the literature, would not be selected by students. Therefore, rather than offering this kind of module, we instead integrated opportunities for students to complete "alternative" research-based projects into modules that traditionally offered lab-based projects only.
At the beginning of 2019/20, pre-Covid-19, I gathered a team of supportive colleagues within our Division to pilot a small number of alternative projects designed to help students develop a wider range of relevant employability skills. I was inspired by a similar initiative that had been developed by Dr Dave Lewis at Leeds University.
Four students were selected to undertake research projects on topics which aligned to their career goals, such as:
I supervised one of these students in collaboration with Prof David Spratt (Division of Medicine).
Their research project was dedicated to writing an ethics approval application and creating a strategic plan to establish long-term collaborations with primary schools in London that would allow future students to carry out educational research projects.
All four students enrolled in the pilot were very engaged with their projects and the supervisors were pleased with the results obtained.
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Advaith Veturi, a final year student who undertook a project on machine learning, said:
The research project went great! I really had fun and gained a lot of skills in writing programmes for medical data… my supervisor said that the team will likely hire a research fellow to take over, to do more analysis and include my results in a publication, so I could see my name in a paper in the next few months!
The need to overhaul lab-based projects became more urgent during the Covid-19 crisis. With physical distancing in operation, access to laboratory facilities and research funding for the new academic year might be uncertain.
The four students on the pilot continued working remotely under continuous supervision and managed to submit their dissertations on time.
What originally was created as alternatives to tackle the lack of lab-based research projects, became an important approach to facilitate the delivery of research projects across a whole cohort.
With the pivot to online study, this approach may become more popular across many disciplines.
Dr Lewis has recently expanded the variety of alternative research projects that can be delivered online:
In addition, online or predominantly online research projects are more inclusive for students with caring or other responsibilities that prevent them from participating in laboratory-based activities that can take a long time to complete.
All of the above formats can be delivered as team-based rather than individual projects, thereby providing more real-world experience and the development of additional employability skills.
It is important to consult with approval documents before making changes to assessments. It depends on how broadly written the original paperwork and advertised offerings were written.
In our case, the original approval was very broad and it allowed us to do the changes without the need of applying for an amendment.
The biggest issue might be accreditation for those degrees that require it. However, in recent years, many UK Bioscience Schools and Faculties are broadening their portfolio of final year projects formats offered, so these are in line with the substantially revised requirements of the Royal Society of Biology, which accredits the Applied Medical Sciences programme.
Dr Nephtali Marina-Gonzalez would like to thank supportive colleagues from UCL and around the UK for their support. including:
