Module overview
This module will provide Master’s year (level7) Neuroscience students a course based around UoS expertise in Neuroscience. This will be a research led education in which core concepts and techniques developed at levels 4-6 are iterated to an advanced level through 8 workpackages. These work packages will be led by individual (or groups of) academics around a generic structure encompassing pre-contact preparatory work, face to face contact in workshops, post contact assessment exercise followed by a final feedback session. Within each work package the students will be provided with detailed information about an area of research and the techniques involved. Where possible the students will be given the opportunity to directly observe experimentation and undertake exercise designed to train them in appropriate analysis/modelling and data presentation. These assessments will build and use aspects of the workshop and post contact set-tasks to develop skills required to extract and critically think about data and verbally and textually discuss with advanced precision. Wider concepts as presented in publication formats including primary papers, reviews, and wider policy documents will be used as an important route to develop advanced understanding. There will be an assessment for each work package (75% of module mark) and these associated in-course assessments will be supplemented by a final exam (25% of module mark) designed to test wider comprehension of advanced neuroscience. This will take the form of a 3 hour exam in which the students will be asked to generate a short summary capsule based on their comprehension of a research paper provided at the exam session. This capsule should report on the works Background, Results, Conclusion and Significance, and include a summarising diagram. The course will develop the student’s ability to understand neuroscience methodologies and synthesize material at an advanced level, consistent with a student studying at level 7.