FF501: First year project (10 ECTS)

STADS: 0002211

Level
Bachelor course

Teaching period
The course is offered in the spring semester.

Teacher responsible
Email: shan@sdu.dk

Timetable
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Prerequisites:
None

Academic preconditions:
The contents of 1st-3rd quarter courses of either Applied Mathematics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Biology, Computer Science, Pharmacy, Physics, Chemistry og Mathematics are assumed to be known.

Course introduction
Students will learn project work by planning and implementing an elective project in the natural sciences to acquire skills in collaboration, communication, sharing of experiences, scientific methodology and handling of a scientific question. Specific competences depend on the selected project and are presented in the project descriptions.

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

• Plan and complete a project based on a scientific question and related design (theoretical project or experimental research)
• Handle the most common IT-tools
• Communicate, collaborate and share knowledge by e-learn.sdu.dk
• Write a report and make a poster of the project
• Undertake a thorough literature search for analysis and discussion in the report, in the oral presentations and during the exam
• Communicate the project at a poster conference
• Make an oral presentation of the project at the exam
• Discuss and motivate important aspects of the project at the exam
• Demonstrate overview and skills to integrate important aspects of the project at the exam

Subject overview
1) Matematics/Statistics
2) Chemistry
3) Physics
4) Pharmacy
5) Biology
6) Biochemistry and Molecular biology
7) Computer science
8) Health Science (Only for students of pharmacy and pharmaceutical science)
9) Interdisciplinary projects, which involves 2-3 of the topics above

Students can either choose a monospecific project, in which it is possible to go into details of a scientific topic within one of the disciplines 1-8 or choose an interdisciplinary project, in which the topic covers several disciplines. Most monospecific topics will naturally lead to interdisciplinary training (for example, in order to do a project on environmental biology, it will be necessary to learn some chemistry). It is possible to focus on interdisciplinary training by choosing an interdisciplinary project. .

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
The prerequisite is made up of four parts. All parts must be passed in order to participate in the exam:

1. Participation in meetings with supervisor
2. Participation in midterm seminar
3. Complete mandatory mini courses
4. Active participation in group work in preparation of the project report

1. Bestået/ikke-bestået, intern bedømmelse ved underviser. (0002222).

Assessment and marking:
The final evaluation requires approval/acceptance of four elements:

1. Project report 
2. Process analysis 
3. Poster presentation and
4. Individual oral examination consisting of a presentation based on the report and questions in the report.

1. Grading according to the Danish 7-mark scale with internal marking. (10 ECTS). (0002212).

Point 1 - 3 must be approved to achieve a pass grade in the oral examination. The assessment of points 1 - 3, including the project report, is only valid up to and including the re-examination period of the same year.

Re-exam in August after appointment with the supervisor.

Expected working hours
The teaching method is based on three phase model.

Februar/Marts:
Projektvalg og vejledervalg efter orientering og skriftligt materiale. I forbindelse med projektvalg dannes grupperne, som består af 3-5 studerende.

Marts-Juni:
1) Projektplanlægning i samarbejde med vejleder. Problemstillingen identificeres og der formuleres en projektplan.
2) Opnåelse af nødvendige redskabskompetencer ved at følge tilrettelagte forløb. I begyndelsen af 4.kvartal udbydes en række korte projektrelaterede forløb, hvoraf to: Projektarbejde (inkl. introduktion til litteratursøgning og e-learn.sdu.dk) og Formidling ( rapport og posterfremstilling) er obligatoriske for alle studerende, mens andre redskabsforløb følges efter behov (Powerpoint, Wordog LaTeX)).

3) Vidensindsamling, forsøgsplanlægning og udførelse af eksperimenter.
4) Midtvejsseminar med fremlæggelse af problemstilling.
5) Vidensbearbejdning, databearbejdning.
6) Rapportskrivning, procesanalyse og posterfremstilling.
Educational activities

Educational form
Selection of project and supervisor based on informational meeting and the written information. During the selection of project, groups are formed. The groups consisting of 3 to 5 students.

March-June:
1) project planning in collaboration with the supervisor. The project is identified and the project is planned.
2) Achieving the required tools and competences through course work. In the beginning of the 4.quarter a number of short introductions are offered, where 2 of these: Project work (incl. introduction to literature search and e-learn.sdu.dk) and Communication (report and poster presentation) are compulsory for all students, whereas other tool introductions can be taken as needed (Powerpoint, Word and LaTeX).

3) Collection of knowledge, experimental design, and execution of experiments.
4) Mid-term seminar with presentation of problem.
5) Knowledge analysis, data processing.
6) Reporting, process analysis and production of poster.

Language
No recorded information about the language used in the course.

Course enrollment
See deadline of enrolment.

Tuition fees for single courses
See fees for single courses.