Teaching and learning
Teaching staff
Your teaching is undertaken by specialist academic staff. We have over 200 members of academic staff involved in teaching. These range from individuals who are actively undertaking research (principal investigators) to academic members of staff who have chosen to specialise in teaching and learning at HE level (teaching-focused lecturers).
Teaching methods
Our degree courses are modular, split into course units. The way you learn will vary depending on the required outcome of each course unit. Teaching and learning methods include:
+ / - Tutorials
Tutorials are hour-long sessions that you undertake each week with your personal adviser and a small group of students. They give you the opportunity to get to know your personal adviser and your tutor group, while exploring interesting and topical aspects related to your degree discipline. Activities include discussions, presentations, community projects and group work, which help to hone your transferable skills such as oral and written communication, time management and teamwork. These skills will contribute enormously to your future employability.
+ / - Lectures
Lectures are held in lecture theatres over the campus and the audience can vary from 20 to 500 students. The majority of lectures use the latest technologies to present material in the most effective way, and most have associated eLearning modules to enhance your learning and consolidate your understanding.
+ / - Practicals
Practicals are designed to complement your lectures and other studies. Depending on your degree course,you will undertake between three and nine hours of practical work per week, carrying out supervised experiments in small groups in our well-equipped teaching labs. In your first and second years, you will develop your laboratory skills and become familiar with the latest experimental techniques in preparation for an independent project in your final year. Laboratory coursework marks accrue from practical exercises, experiments and reports.
+ / - eLearning
eLearning is primarily delivered through the University’s virtual learning environment, which provides learning resources on demand when you need them. These resources include lecture notes, movies, animations, discussion boards, live classrooms, assessments, quizzes, practice problem sets, lecture podcasts and many other activities to assist your studies.
Visit: eLearning
+ / - Fieldwork
Some of the units that prove most popular with our students are the field courses. Courses are currently held in several European locations, South Africa, and South and Central America. They offer you the chance to study organisms in a range of environments, from marine to freshwater, temperate to tropical.
Field courses
Example timetable
You have around 17 hours contact time per week. If you are interested in seeing what a typical first year will hold in store for you, see:
Faculty of Life Sciences Typical First Year Timetable
Assessment
Each module/unit is assessed separately and the scores combined to give your result for the year. We combine different types of assessment to measure your performance. You are likely to be assessed using several of the following methods:
- multiple choice and essay style examinations
- debates
- discussions in seminars
- coursework essays
- online discussion groups
- reports written in the style of scientific research papers
- oral presentations
- online multiple choice questions
- laboratory based exercises