Physiology and Molecular Biology
MSc
- Duration
- Start date
- Location
Suitable for applications.
Learning and assessment
Teaching is designed to give you increasing responsibility for your own learning, to help you develop the key attributes needed for life-long learning and continued professional development.
You will be supported by a designated Personal Academic Tutor to ensure that you are able to develop and use your scientific skills and attributes in the world of work, particularly by making the appropriate career choices at the relevant times.
Teaching methods include lectures, seminars, tutorials, laboratory classes, workshops and a research project. In addition, independent self-directed or problem-based learning may include interactive research case studies, peer and collaborative sessions, reflective practice and portfolio building. These may be supplemented with interactions with science professionals and tasks that are either work-based or linked to other placements.
Assessments use a combination of unseen written examinations and a wide range of coursework elements such as laboratory reports, essays, online and computer-based assessments, data interpretation and analysis. This is also supplemented with assessment of communication skills in oral and poster communications during peer-reviewed and collaborative sessions.
Study support
You will be allocated a personal tutor who is someone with whom you will be able to talk about any academic or personal concerns. There are time-tabled personal tutorial hours per week throughout the academic year, including feedback sessions for all assignments and group/individual projects.
Programme leaders are available for any related matters and advice is given regularly towards curriculum and progression.
University central services are rich with support teams to assist students with every aspect of their journey through our degree programmes. From our Career and Employability Service, through our strong Students' Union, to our professional and efficient Student Finance team, there are always friendly faces ready to support you and provide you with the answers that you need.
Research
A key component of the programme is the 15-week-long laboratory research project that occupies most of the second half of the academic year.
The start of the research project is prefaced with a generic training period that incorporates a range of key transferrable skills such as literature searching, health and safety training and project planning. The research project itself offers an extended period of specialist training in research methods and experimental design. This is coupled with training in the use of appropriate statistical methods to enable a detailed analysis of the research data, and is followed by guidance on the interpretation and contextualisation of the experimental findings.