This course is offerede twice a year and is taking place either in 1st and 2nd quarter or in 3rd and 4th quarter.
Teacher responsible
Email: dec@biology.sdu.dk
Timetable
There is no timetable available for the chosen semester.
Prerequisites:
None
Academic preconditions:
Must be familiar with bachelors curriculum in biology or equivalent.
Course introduction
This course is designed to introduce the student to the basics of conducting a research project. The student should learn how to identify and formulate a research problem (along with the help of a supervisor), and once formulated, how to solve it. The student will evaluate the significance of their work in light of previous research as found within the scientific literature. The specific research problem may fall within any area of biology, and the research required to solve it can be based on laboratory experiments, field observations, theoretical mathematical modelling, or literature review. Under all circumstances, even when the research is based on experimentation or observation, it will be important for the student to become comfortable with searching and using the scientific literature in support of the research.
Expected learning outcome
The course will give the students a basic understanding of how to formulate and conduct a research problem. The student should be able to:
• With the help of a supervisor, define a research problem.
• Search, with keywords, scientific literature databases for other work whose results support the student’s research project.
• Evaluate the pertinent scientific literature.
• Conduct laboratory experiments, field observations, theoretical modeling, or literature review, as necessary to solve the research problem.
• Analyze data as relevant for addressing the research problem.
• Evaluate the results relative to previous work as found within the scientific literature.
• Write a report in the structure of a scientific paper. The report should contain: