Undergraduate Course: Development and Disease (BIME10027)

Course Outline
School	Deanery of Biomedical Sciences	College	College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	20	ECTS Credits	10
Summary	Students on this course will learn about the ways that organisms develop from early embryos into mature adults and how this can go wrong, causing developmental disease. Detailed content of this course will vary from year to year. A small number of introductory background lectures will be given at the beginning of the course. Students will learn how to critically evaluate research papers and will write a short (assessed) essay in which they discuss the current state of knowledge in a field of their own choosing. Guided by staff, students will choose specific topics that cover recent research described in the primary scientific literature. Examples of potential topics include: neurodevelopmental disorders, ciliopathies, premature ovarian failure, heparanopathies and aniridia. Introductory lectures will explain the background to each topic and give students the information they need to understand the research papers. Typically, students would then read 2-3 papers related to the topic, which would be discussed in a seminar format, likely involving student presentations. Students will have to take a high degree of responsibility for their own learning - they will be required to read around the topics, reading original research papers and reviews. Based upon their learning during the course, students will devise a plan of research to address a question that they have chosen themselves. They will present their research plan in the form of a poster, which will form the major part of the assessment for this course.
Course description	Not entered

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations		Other requirements	None

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2022/23, Not available to visiting students (SS1)		Quota: 25
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 36, Feedback/Feedforward Hours 5, Formative Assessment Hours 2, Summative Assessment Hours 3, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 150 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	The course will be assessed by two items of in course assessment: a mini review essay (40%) and a poster presentation illustrating your ideas for a future research project on the topic that you have chosen (60%).
Feedback	Not entered
No Exam Information

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to: 1. Students will learn and understand details of current research into developmental mechanisms and how disruption of such mechanisms can lead to developmental disorders. 2. Students will learn to critically evaluate primary scientific literature in the field of developmental biology. 3. Students will learn how to write a concise summary of a research paper, placing it in context of the research field. 4. Students will learn how to formulate specific hypotheses and to design a research plan to test them experimentally.