SCI2015: Scientific Practice and Communication

There is no way to put this nicely - I hated this unit. There are a lot of things in it that, IMHO, just don't hold up, and need refinements. Not to say that the content isn't valid, it just needs a look through by some other scientists. I will note that most of my issues with this unit are extremely micromanaging, but there is one massive one, which you need to be aware of before you take this unit:

It is run by the school of biological sciences. In fact, let me write it again:
SCI2015 (and SCI2010), the

No, but there are some online quizzes which seem similar enough.

2 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

There's a couple of recommended books which, after a quick look through, contain essentially no similarities whatsoever to the lecture content.

2015 Semester 1.

83 HD

This unit is a bit of a mixed bag. It (or SCI2010) is a compulsory unit in the Bachelor of Science; SCI2010 is the standard unit that most people take, while SCI2015 is the "advanced" version for students doing the BSc Advanced (Research) or other degrees - such as BSc double degrees or standard BSc - by invitation if your results are good enough.

The content of this unit is pretty interesting; it's got a lot to do with how science works, how it can go wrong, and how you should conduct yourself as a researcher. Topics range from the history and origins of science, to scientific ethics, to pseudoscience, to career development and others. I only went to one lecture, but it was fun and interesting given that you're passionate about science. The highlight of the lecture series - and the only lecture I attended - was a magician/illusionist who was brought in for a performance during the pseudoscience section.

Assessment is pretty good too; the exam is worth 10% less in SCI2015 than in SCI2010 (which is nice ), because you have more formative presentation-based assessments leading up to your final literature review. The other major bonus of SCI2015 is that you get to pick your literature review topic, which essentially makes writing the final paper a lot less painful. There are 5 assignments that make up the in-semester assessment:

• Assignment 1 - Major Research Project
  
  • 1a - Research proposal: This is worth 5% of your semester mark; it involves A) generating a 100-word specifically-worded research proposal on a topic of your choice, which you'll write your lit review on eventually and B) Present your proposal to the class. A big part of this unit is presentation, so you should make sure that you can design attractive visual aids as well as present eloquently.
  • 1b - Annotated bibliography: This is worth 5%. You need to choose 4 articles related to your topic and generate an annotated bibliography on it. An annotated bibliography is a paper that consists of summaries of journal articles and additional critical evaluation of these articles.
  • 1c - Literature review draft: This is a formative assessment, but you need to complete it to be able to complete Assignment 3 and Assignment 1e. It's exactly what it sounds like; you need to generate a draft of your literature review. It's okay if you haven't done much, but you do need to have something to turn in so that you can take part in the peer review assignment and turn in your final lit review.
  • 1d - Conference poster presentation: This is worth 10% of your semester mark. You need to make a detailed conference poster for presentation, which will be presented to the tutorial group and any guests who are there for whatever reason. It's quite a lot of fun, as people circulate around the room and listen to mini lecture-style presentations.
  • 1e - Final literature review: This is worth 30% of your overall semester mark. A word of advice; don't leave this to the last minute unless you want some major stress! This assignment is a big one; it's only about 3000 words for SCI2015 students, but all the referencing and citation management take up quite a lot of time. Make sure you know how to use a journal search engine such as MEDLINE or Scopus, and that you're familiar with a citation manager such as Endnote (which you can get free from the university). I wrote my literature review of the efficacy and patient/hospital-related factors of performing decompressive craniectomy on traumatic brain injury patients (if you're interested I can send you a copy ).
    
    Another benefit of doing SCI2015 is that you can choose your preferred journal of submission (N.B. you don't actually need to submit your paper to a journal, but I'll write a bit about that later), and therefore you can kinda choose your referencing style as dictated by the style guide in the journal you choose. As well as this, the assessors are a bit more lenient in terms of word count and number of references. SCI2015 is basically a lot more independent than SCI2010, some people (myself included) prefer this, but it might not be for everyone.
    
    One final point is that you have the option (assuming your work is of a high enough quality) to submit your paper - following stylistic adaptations as required - to the journal Reinvention - a Journal of Undergraduate Research.
• Assignment 2 - Interview with a researcher: Basically you pick an academic (I think the rule was they had to at least be working on a PhD), make a time to interview them, then make a powerpoint about the interview and present it to the class. As I mentioned, this unit is pretty heavily presentation-based, so if you're not a confident presenter when you start this unit, you probably will be by the time it's done. This assignment is formative, but there's no reason not to do it, so yeah.
• Assignment 3 - Journal Club: You and another person pick a journal article, summarise it and present it to the tute class for about 10-15 minutes, then take questions. This is worth 10% so take it seriously, but the assignment is broad so you can take any article so long as it's from a peer-reviewed article. My tute partner and I did our presentation on "Were James Bond’s drinks shaken because of alcohol induced tremor?", published in the British Medical Journal in 2013, which was pretty funny
• Assignment 4 - Peer review report: Remember when you had to submit Assignment 1c (the draft lit review)? Well following that you'll receive someone else's draft, which you need to annotate and then write a letter to the "editor" detailing your recommended changes. You'll also receive an annotated version and one of these letters of your draft, analysed by another student.
• Assignment 5 - Workshop participation and blogs: Workshop/tutorial participation is exactly with what it sounds like, and the blog posting is done on Moodle in a specialised area. You need to submit at least 5 blog posts over the semester (you'll only be graded on 5), and they're judged on both quality and the fact that you've done them so don't half-arse it. Both of these together are worth 10%.

The exam is really, really quite simple if you've done a couple of past exams. It consists of 2 parts, A) being 40 MCQs based on lecture/tute material and B) Written responses (short and long) based on various areas of the course (pseudoscience, communication, ethics etc.). Most of the MCQs are taken from recent past exams, so I'd advise you work through them and it'll be a breeze. The written responses are a little bit harder, but if you understand what you're talking about - as well as specific examples of things like scientific misconduct and research fraud) - then you won't have an issues whatsoever.

All in all, this is a really interesting unit, and I recommend it to anyone interested in science and scientific practice (aside from the fact that you don't really have a choice if you're doing a BSc ).

A/Prof. Roslyn Gleadow

Yes, but the past papers are under SCI2010 (you sit the same exam). There are several on the database, with the 2004 exam under "SCI2010: How Science Works" and 2005-2009 under "SCI2010: Practice and Application of Science". The 2011 exam was also provided on Moodle.

4 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture.

You don't need anything.

Semester 1, 2014

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