1.      Required Task

Background and rationale

The Final Year Research Project module, delivered by the University of Exeter Medical School (UEMS) on the BSc Neuroscience/Medical Sciences programmes. This is a 45 credit module and runs alongside other Final Year modules during Terms 1, 2 and 3. This module has two components 1) Project work 2) Professionalism.

As part of the project work you will undertake a research project in neuroscience research. This project will be conducted in conjunction with a research supervisor, who will provide individual guidance in project development, implementation, data analysis and interpretation and guidance, as appropriate for your project topic and type. You will obtain and/or analyse primary (unpublished) or secondary (published) data. Or you will perform a critical review of the literature and an impact and communication project. Project work may involve practical implementation of neuroscience research-related techniques, employed in a context appropriate to the research project discipline. You will also be encouraged to attend appropriate UEMS and other University research seminars. These are typically held on Wednesday afternoons between 3-4pm on Zoom. Look out for invitations from module and programme leads.

Task

Create a written report that describes your research project(s) in the format of a scientific article using the House Style described below.

The main body of the text should not exceed 10,000 words.

Required content

• Title page 
• Project title
• Student ID number
• Table of contents
• Table of abbreviations 
• Table figures and tables
• Abstracts
• Scientific abstract(maximum 200 words)
• Lay abstract(maximum 200 words)
• Introduction
• Thebackground and rationale underlying your research should be outlined in the context of existing literature. The relevance of your work to clinical/translational science should be clear.
• Literatureshould be representative, appropriately sourced, correctly cited and critically appraised.
• Theresearch question and/or hypothesis should be clearly stated along with measurable aim(s) and/or objectives. An aim can be defined as a statement of what is to be addressed, while an objective is a means by which the aim will be achieved.
• Methodsshould be succinct and of sufficient detail to allow replication.
• Findings (from literature searches) should be appropriately interpreted and critically appraised.
•  Discussion of findings (from literature searches) should demonstrate understanding and insight; Conclusions should be justified. As a final year student, you are expected to demonstrate an ability to synthesise (bring together relevant information in a new way).
• Findings/results and discussion may be combined where it is deemed appropriate (e.g.where it is common in the published literature for the discipline of your project). Please discuss this with your project provider for advice.
• Conclusions:Clearly state your conclusions in succinct section (one or two paragraphs in length). It should bring together the key points raised in the discussion and relate them back to your research question/aim. It should also give ideas for the future direction of the field. Ideas for future work should be appropriate and achievable.
• References should be in the Vancouver style. For guidelines on referencing please see the library’s page onHow to reference. Please also see the “Cite them right” guidance
• The references are not included in the word count.

Additional Guidance

• The report/dissertation should beclearly presented in a critical, well-structured way and should be easy to read for a non-specialised scientific audience
• Appendicesshould only be included where the material is necessary for comprehension of the report but cannot be included in the body of the report, e.g. films or detailed chemical preparation.

Grammar

• Avoid long sentences that have several embedded clauses.
• Use abbreviations minimally because they are hard to read and often the same abbreviation means different things in different specialties and contexts.
• All abbreviations employed must be defined in full the first time they are used.

Technical terms

• Drugs should be referred to by their approved non-proprietary names and the source of any new or experimental preparations should be given.
• Scientific measurements should be given in SI units, except for blood pressure which should be expressed in mm Hg.
• Numbers under 10 are usually spelt out, except for measurements with a unit (8 mmol/l) or age (6 weeks old), or when in a list with other numbers (14 dogs, 12 cats, 9 gerbils).
• Raw numbers should be given alongside percentages, and as supporting data for p values.
• A gap should be inserted between all figures and units.

Tables and Figures

• All tables and figures should be numbered in order of useand by type
• All tables and figures mustbe presented on separate pages at the end of the single electronic document.
• All figures should be accompanied by an appropriate legend(below the figure) including the reference citation if appropriate. Colour should be used minimally and only where grayscale will not suffice. Figure legends should accurately describe the figure and NOT discuss the data.   Figure legends should have a title.
• All tablesshould be accompanied by a short title sentence describing what the table shows (above the table). Further details can be included as footnotes to the table. All figures and tables should be referred to in the main body of text.

Formatting:

The word limit is 10,000 words. It should be formatted as follows:

• Font: Calibri (body) 11pt
• Line spacing: 1.15
• Margins: ‘Normal’ for a Word document: 2.54cm all sides (top, bottom, left and right)

The word limit includes the lay and scientific abstracts.

It does not include:

• The titlepage
• Reference list
• Tables andtable titles
• Figures + figure legends.

The text should be appropriately formatted to make it easily readable – i.e. break up text by including subheadings and avoiding long paragraphs.

Submission

Your assignment must be submitted through both eBART by the stated deadline. For instructions on how to do this, please see the please see the Online Submission Student Handbook (https://as.exeter.ac.uk/it/systems/bart/).

If you do not submit your summative assignment on time, your mark will be capped at 40% (up to two weeks after the original deadline; after which a score of zero will be awarded). This is unless you have valid mitigation (please visit the Personal & Pastoral support ELE page for more information.)

You should submit your work as either a MS Word, .doc, .docx or PDF file, PDF is highly recommended.

The naming of your file must follow the format below:

ID number_ModuleCode _Assessment type_AC year

For example:

91000000_NEU3001_ RBP_2021-22

In submitting this you are declaring the work is your own independent piece of work, not produced in collusion with a fellow student or plagiarized from a fellow student, or a web site, or a text book, or any other information source. You must demonstrate good referencing practise and ensure you have sufficiently paraphrased all sources of information. Failure to do so may result in being referred to an academic misconduct panel which has the power to grant penalties based on specific criteria. For more details please revisit the Academic Honesty and Plagiarism information on ELE.

Acquired skills

The aim of this assignment is to develop key academic skills in critically appraising and clearly communicating in a concise fashion an area of science.

Specifically:

1. Demonstrate understanding in key biomedical and/or clinical science techniques.
2. Apply skills of critical thinking, problem-formulation, problem-solving, and rigorous scientific data /information analysis to biomedical and/or clinical science practice.
3. Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of essential facts and theory in a research discipline related to biomedical and/or clinical science.
4. Describe and critically evaluate aspects of current research in biomedical and/or clinical science with reference to research articles.

Sources of support

• Online academic skills resources (http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1850) e.g. Essay writing, skills for referencing, critical reading, note taking

Relevant Previous assessments (core modules only) 

Please revisit the feedback you received on the following assessments and any other relevant assessments from your optional modules.  

• Year 1 –CSC1004 Fundamental Skills for Medical Scientists: Literature review
• Year 2 – CSC2014 Principles of Medical Research:  Group report; CSC2019 Neuropharmacology News & Views article; CSC2007 Introduction to Health Research Press release
• (Year 3 –CSC3003 Professional training year: Scientific report)

Marking Criteria

The research projects will be marked using the standard assessment criteria as detailed on ELE (click here). These will be double marked then moderated by the module leads. The sci-comms projects will have additional marking criteria for the individual components of the portfolio.