NAT501: Science Project (10 ECTS)

STADS: 0001901

Level
Bachelor course

Teaching period
The course is offered in the spring semester.
3. quarter of first year: Choice of Project and supervisor, formation of groups.
4. quarter of first year: Tool introductions. Experimental design. Implementation of experiments and data processing. Submission of report and process analysis by the

Teacher responsible
Email: holmer@biology.sdu.dk

Timetable
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Prerequisites:
None

Academic preconditions:
The contents of 1st-3rd quarter courses of either the Science year, Biology or Computer science first year must be known and acquired.

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.

Qualifications
The students will acquire two kinds of competences:

1) Project work: the ability to plan projects, acquire knowledge and skills, and cooperate and communicate. The work in the project group must be organized such that all group members participate actively in all phases, and the skill of working together is strengthened. The progress of the work should require cooperation within the group, so that inputs from the members are discussed and coordinated in such a way, that the results are presented coherently and structured in the project report. The work in a project group should benefit both personal learning and the quality of the final products.

2) Scientific absorption: the specific scientific competences are described under the monospecific or interdisciplinary project descriptions. In general the level of the scientific objectives of the project must be sufficiently high, that it requires cooperation between all members of the project group to achieve them. The specific scientific content may not replace compulsory courses, as all choices of line of study must remain open after the project. However, the project must expand the students scientific knowledge and general competences such as the ability to plan, undertake and report an experiment, as well as to provide a critical evaluation of the achieved results.

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
• Critically assess scientific results
• Collaborate efficiently in groups and understand group dynamics during collaboration
• 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) Biology
5) Biochemistry and Molecular biology
6) Computer science
7) 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 1-6 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
None

Assessment and marking:
The final evaluation requires approval/acceptance of 5 elements:
1) Participation in meetings with supervisor and in mid-term seminar
2) Report
3) Process analysis
4) Poster presentation and
5) Individual oral examination consisting of a presentation based on the report and questions in the report. Grading according to the 7-scale with internal censoring.
Evaluation of point 1-4 and the report are only valid until the following re-exam in 4th quarter and can not be transferred to the following year.
Re-exam after appointment with the supervisor in the 4th quarter

Date of exam
The ordinary exam takes place on June 18, 2012 and June 19, 2012 and June 20, 2012 and June 21, 2012 and June 22, 2012

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

3. quarter: Selection of project and supervisor based on informational meeting and the written information. During the selection of project, groups are formed.
4. quarter: 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 (Oral presentation, report, poster presentation) are compulsory for all students, whereas other tool introductions can be taken as needed (Experimental design and IT (Powerpoint, Word, Excel, Maple 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.

 
Educational activities

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

Course enrollment
See deadline of enrolment.

Tuition fees for single courses
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