Semester 1: Developing Communication Skills
A) Listening comprehension, accessing the literature, referencing and plagiarism
In Welcome Week you will attend a Research Showcase talk. You will write a summary of this talk and email this summary to your Advisor prior to your first tutorial. The summary should be a maximum of 1 side of A4 using Arial 10pt font, 2.5cm margins, and 1.5 line spacing. Writing this summary will help you gain listening comprehension skills, which will improve your understanding of lecture content.
By the end of week 3 you may have been on a library tour with your tutorial or PASS group, which will help get you started in finding different sources of information needed to complete the various assignments that form part of the tutorials. You will also receive guidance on the correct way to acknowledge (reference) the different sources of information that you use. Your Advisor will go through a tutorial activity on correct referencing and plagiarism.
Plagiarism is the use (theft) of someone else’s work without proper acknowledgement, presenting the material as if it were one’s own. Plagiarism is totally unacceptable in any form. Any first year student found to have plagiarised work will have to attend an interview with a panel of academic staff. The panel will determine a suitable penalty, which may include a mark of zero for the assignment or for the course unit. The penalties are increasingly severe in later years of the programme!
Early on in the semester you will do an exercise with your tutorial group on how to recognise and avoid plagiarism.
The Library’s My Learning Essentials training programme has an online resource that explains what plagiarism is and how to avoid it:
http://libassets.manchester.ac.uk/mle/avoiding-plagiarism/
The following links provide excellent resources with more information on plagiarism and how to avoid it, including self-test tutorials:
http://www.indiana.edu/~istd/index.html
http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/TLTC/learnhigher/Plagiarism/index.html
There is also further information on plagiarism in the appropriate section of your First Level Handbook and the University’s guidance document on plagiarism can be viewed at:
http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=2870
B) Essay writing
Success in every degree programme involves learning how to organise your thoughts and communicate an understanding of a topic. An essay is not simply a series of facts, but a structured presentation of a logical argument, backed up with evidence, to establish a point of view. Writing an essay therefore requires careful research and planning. In Semester 1 you will complete two essays (the second of which will be formally assessed), on topics selected by your Advisor and Programme Director. You will also take part in exercises that will enable you to distinguish good scientific writing from bad and to avoid plagiarism (see above). Appendix 2 of this Handbook provides guidelines on essay writing and should be used for guidance.
To facilitate your understanding of plagiarism and enable you to eliminate plagiarism from your own work, the assessed essay you complete in Semester 1 will be submitted through Blackboard and put through the University’s plagiarism detection software TurnItIn (TII). You will find the submission site and instructions for submitting your essay in the Assessments area of the Blackboard BIOL10000 unit. You may find this document useful for uploading your essay file:
Should you have any technical difficulties with uploading your file you should submit an eLearning enquiry through Blackboard (a tab can be found on the left hand side of the tutorial unit site) or contact the Student Support Office.
Your Advisor will give you instructions for the page length, margins, spacing and font size for your essay submission. The deadline for submission of the draft version is 4pm Thursday week 7 (10th November 2016). Once the draft essay submission deadline has passed, you will be able to see the plagiarism report on your essay. You should review the content of the plagiarism report and if necessary edit your essay to eliminate plagiarised material. Please save a pdf of your plagiarism report as your Advisor may wish to discuss it in tutorial. This activity will assist you in learning how the University checks for plagiarism, and gives you the opportunity to learn how to recognise plagiarism in your work in order to avoid it in the future.
The final version of the essay is due 4pm Thursday week 9 (24th November 2016). The final version of your essay will also go through a plagiarism check but this will only be for staff use, and will be considered when your essay is marked. If you do not submit a draft of the essay in week 7 you may still submit a final version for assessment in week 9, but you will not be allowed to see the plagiarism report on your final version. Late submissions of the final essay will be penalised with a 10% mark deduction per day late.
Feedback on your final essay will be available in Week 12. You should save a copy of your feedback commments for use in future assignments. Your feedback will no longer be availalbe after week 2 of semester 2, so you are strongly recommended to view it before the end of week 2 of semester 2.
You may find this document useful for viewing your draft plagiarism report and your feedback for your final version of your essay file:
http://elwiki.ls.manchester.ac.uk/groups/elearning/wiki/10ef4/How_to_View_Feedback_in_TII.html
C) ‘Frontiers in Science’ talks
The ‘Frontiers in Science’ talks are a series of lectures given by leading researchers from the Faculty, which you are expected to attend. These talks are held on Tuesdays at 9am in semester 1.
11th October – Prof Andrew Loudon – University Place Theatre B
15th November – Prof Kathryn Else – Simon Building Theatre B
6th December – Prof Keith Brennan – University Place Theatre B
See Announcements for titles.
Talks are aimed at a general audience, so don’t worry if you know little about the subject before you attend. Your Programme Director and/or Advisor will select one talk from the Semester 1 schedule for you to prepare a short summary (250 words). Your Advisor will inform you of the deadline for submission of your summary. You should write the summary assuming that it will be read by a lay (non-specialist) audience. It should, for example, be written in a style that would make it suitable for inclusion in a quality national daily newspaper. You will need to think carefully about the main point of the talk: why is the work described important? Does it, for example, offer hope for the treatment of a major disease? Or has it started to tell us something new about an important topic in the Life Sciences?
Providing a short, intelligible summary of a scientific topic is a key skill, which you will need to acquire during your studies. Your Advisor will mark your summary, paying attention to the accuracy of the information conveyed and how easy it is to understand.
D) Science Ethics and Society (“What is Science For?”) BIOL12020
All students should have an understanding of the ethical considerations associated with scientific research. Being able to understand, analyse and respond to the arguments related to ethical and social issues raised by scientific research are important skills for scientists. To this end, throughout their degree programmes students will undertake a series of activities to enhance their understanding of the ethical debates surrounding biological science.
Information for these activities will be posted on the BIOL12020 Blackboard site.
On the Tuesday of Welcome Week, all first year students will attend the Sustainability Challenge which is part of the University’s flagship Social Responsibility initiative, the Ethical Grand Challenges Programme. Students will receive personalised communications, telling them where to go and when, in the week before Welcome Week, and the information will also be published on personalised timetables.
All 8,000+ first year undergraduate students from across the University will take part in the Sustainability Challenge, a 2.5 hour simulation activity, based around the fictitious University of Millchester. Students, in mixed disciplinary groups, will work against the clock to develop plans for a new campus, while global responses to climate change trigger a series of ‘game changing’ interventions.
The Ethical Grand Challenges Programme aims to enable every Manchester undergraduate to engage with three key ethical grand challenges during the course of their degree: Sustainability in Year 1; Social Justice in Year 2 and Workplace Ethics in Year 3. The Programme also highlights an important ethos of the University of Manchester, namely that the University is committed to making a difference, and working across disciplines to solve problems.
If you’d like to find out more, please email sian.yeowell@manchester.ac.uk or colette.cooke@manchester.ac.uk.
E) Poster presentation
Scientists often present their work at conferences in the form of a poster, which readily conveys key aspects of their work in a visually appealing and informative manner. Constructing a good poster is a challenging task: it must not be too cluttered, with excessive text or overly fussy diagrams. It should allow the viewer to understand the topic and grasp the overall conclusions, without having to spend a long time sifting through the details. It should also be eye-catching, to attract the attention of anyone passing. In your tutorial group, towards the end of Semester 1, you will choose a topic for your poster in consultation with your Advisor. You will research the topic, design and prepare your poster for display at a Poster Event held for first-year students from the whole Faculty. The Poster Event will take place during week 12, on Tuesday 13th December 2016 at 2 p.m. Prizes will be awarded for the best posters, and you will be given a mark for your poster; this will contribute to your overall mark for the Semester 1 tutorial unit. Note that Appendix 3 in this Handbook has further useful advice on how to prepare a poster. Attendance at the Poster Event is a compulsory part of the Tutorial Unit and failure to attend will result in a 20% reduction in the mark awarded.