BB839: Planning and evaluation of biological studies (5 ECTS)

STADS: 04013901

Level
Master's level course

Teaching period
The course is offered in the autumn semester.

Teacher responsible
Email: usteiner@biology.sdu.dk

Timetable
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Prerequisites:
None

Academic preconditions:
The content of the course ST520 Applied statistics, ST501 Science statistics or ST503 Statistics for Biologists is assumed to be known.

Course introduction
The students will learn to formulate biological questions in order to design, analyse, interpret, and present their own biological studies. Theory, exercises, and examples will be presented to prepare master students for the quantitative analysis of future master projects. The students will learn to use statistical software, programR, for analysis of a variety of models.

Expected learning outcome
At the end of the course the student is expected to be able to:

• formulate scientific questions in biological disciplines, e.g. ecology, physiology, neurobiology, and evolutionary biology, in order to test those questions
• design relevant laboratory or field studies in order to test expectations
• handle, analyse, and interpret data from experimental and field studies, including statistical analyses of linear models, ANOVA, ANCOVA, GLM, mixed effect models and model selection (information theoretic approaches).
• Select appropriate models for the different types of data and designed studies
• present quantitatively the results from biological studies, including graphical representation

Subject overview
The necessity of quantitative evaluation of results from biological experiments. Types of biological data and sources of variability in biological studies. Design of biological studies. Handling of raw data, statistical analysis, and interpretation and presentation of results.

Literature
There isn't any litterature for the course at the moment.

Website
This course uses e-learn (blackboard).

Prerequisites for participating in the exam
Prerequisite submission of 80% of the non-graded problem sets using the statistical software of the course.
Prerequisite submission of an annotated scientific publication with respect to structure and statistics.
Prerequisite submission of a self produced short video on a statistical topic done as a group project (04013912)

Students will be given the chance of a re-hand in.

Assessment and marking:
Written project, which is evaluated by the 7-mark scale, external censorship. (04013902)

Reexam in the same exam period or immediately thereafter. The reexam can have a different form than the ordinary exam.

Expected working hours
The teaching method is based on three phase model.
Intro phase: 20 hours
Skills training phase: 25 hours
 - Other: The training phase consists of exercises. hours

Educational activities Study phase: 5 hours

The training phase consist of seminars with excersices.

Language
This course is taught in English.

Course enrollment
See deadline of enrolment.

Tuition fees for single courses
See fees for single courses.