International Conference on Enhancement and Innovation in Higher Education Crowne Plaza Hotel, Glasgow 9-11 June 2015 Welcome

Kelly Moule and Phil Langton University of Bristol, UK Biomedical Research, Employability and Enterprise Skills: Preparing students for their final year and beyond

Biomedical Research, Employability and Enterprise Skills (BREES) Developed to address the following: Research skills to help prepare students for the research- intensive final year (or research placement) Employability skills for biomedical scientists Entrepreneurial skills Overview: A mandatory unit taken by all biomedical undergraduates in their second year (approx 300 students) Unit is worth 20 cp (out of 120 cp) and runs throughout the academic year First cohort 13-14

Research Skills (BREES) Worth 60% of the unit Designed to cover: Scientific writing Data presentation Experimental design and statistics Philosophy of science and ethics Assessed by two abstract writing exercises and a statistics exam

Employability Skills (BREES) Worth 20% of the unit Designed to cover: cv writing shortlisting interview skills peer to peer feedback Delivered in collaboration with the Careers Service, students “apply” for an internship. Assessed by peer assessment of cv (“shortlisting”) and a mock interview (first as part of an interview panel and then as an interviewee)

Enterprise Skills (BREES) Worth 20% of the unit Working in teams students develop an innovative biomedical idea for commercialization (e.g. diagnostic device, therapeutic molecule, etc) Delivered in collaboration with the University’s Research and Enterprise Development group and our Life Sciences Entrepreneur in Residence (Professor Alan Palmer) Assessed by executive summary of business case, panel pitch, and grant proposal to secure funding

Feedback to students As the cohort is large, delivery of feedback is challenging. We have used a combination of generic and individualized methods. Example: feedback on the abstracting exercise. Students submit their abstracts via Blackboard and these are then exported to Excel. Word mail merge (MM) is used to generate a number of word documents for plagiarism checking (Turnitin), marking and feedback and generic feedback. More detailed explanations of each step in the process can be found at which can also be accessed via the QR code:

Student attainment Overall attainment in the BREES unit’s inaugural year. Frequency histogram of unit marks for the BREES unit in the academic year (cohort size = 249). The marks were broadly in line with other 20 CP units and no ‘between-school’ differences were observed.

Students were critical of certain aspects but acknowledged the value of the skills learned within the unit. The data were obtained from 79 survey respondents (31.7% of the cohort). Student feedback

Final year students were surveyed to determine their perceptions of various aspects of the Research strand. A total of 51 students responded to the survey (20.5% of the cohort). Reflective feedback

Conclusions There are clear benefits to this approach and it helps to prepare students for their final year research projects, but there are also a number of challenges… Students are uncomfortable taking a unit which is not heavily didactic. Peer assessment is unpopular, even though students understand the benefits and staff moderation is available. Team working is challenging. Feedback dialogues are challenging with large cohorts Working in partnership with the students is key!

With thanks to… Dr Phil Langton Colleagues in Physiology & Pharmacology, Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Biochemistry: Drs Keith Brown, Andy James, Pete Brennan, Ann Pullen and Mike Jones Jacky Willet Our students