Admission requirements
Successful completion of 2nd and 3rd year courses. A signed research project agreement must be delivered to the Educational Office prior to the start of the research project.
Contact
Name: M.J. van Delft
Email: assistentopleiding@biology.leidenuniv.nl
Description
All bachelor students are obliged to do their bachelor research project in the second semester of their third year. General Research Skills (GRS) is a compulsory and integral part of the bachelor research project. The skills required for the research project, such as formulating a research idea, experimental design, statistics, data analysis and report writing are taught in GRS.
During the research project, the student is a member of a research group and participates in all possible scientific activities of the research group, such as work discussions. Each research project is carried out individually by a student, under supervision of an examiner of the Biology Education. The daily supervision of a research project can be delegated to a PhD student or a post-doc. A research project generally consists of the following phases: (1) Research proposal and initial presentation, (2) Experimental phase, (3) Reporting and (4) Final presentation.
The bachelor research project is carried out at one of the biological institutes of the University of Leiden (IBL, CML, Naturalis/NHN). Students with a molecular oriented study program are also allowed to do a research project at the LUMC.
For further details see general regulations Bachelor research project on Blackboard.
Learning goals
Course objectives:
Acquiring in-depth knowledge about a current research question, concepts and approaches in a particular biological research area.
Gaining experience with methods and techniques used within a particular research field.
Learning how to design and implement a research project.
Learning how to formulate a research question and hypothesis.
Learning how to critically evaluate the results of scientific publications.
Learning how to how to report and present research results.
Final qualifications:
The student knows how to design and implement a research, analyze and represent data and how to write a scientific publication.
Timetable
Start February 2013 – End June 2013
Daily from 9.00 to 17.00
Mode of instruction
Literature review, writing and presenting a research proposal, conducting an experiment, writing a report and presenting.
Assessment method
Research proposal, practical work, report and presentations. For the assessment of the research project, the evaluation form has to be completed, see Blackboard. The final grade is the weighted average of the sub scores. Each sub score must be a 6.0 at least. The report has to be assessed by two examiners of the Biology Education and both examiners have to sign the evaluation form. The completed evaluation form has to be submitted to the Education Office and together with an examination card will be saved in the students file.
Blackboard
On Blackboard in ‘Teaching Programme/Opleiding Biologie’ > ‘Bachelor yr 2&3’ > ‘General Research Skills, Bachelor research project and Literature Review’, the research project agreement, the general regulations for bachelor research projects and the evaluation form for the research project can be found.
Reading list
The research project will start with reading relevant literature.
Registration
via Usis
Exchange and Study Abroad students, please see the Prospective students website for more information on how to apply.
Remarks
On Blackboard in ‘Teaching Programme/Opleiding Biologie’ > ‘Bachelor yr 2&3’ > ‘General Research Skills, Bachelor research project and Literature Review’, the research project agreement, the general regulations for bachelor research projects and the evaluation form for the research project can be found.