Professor Christopher Baldwin, Professor of Biomedical Education
School of Biomedical Sciences
Medical Sciences
What did you do?
The Bioscience+ programme of optional lectures.
Who is involved?
The scheme is led by Debbie Bevitt (Head of School, School of Biomedical Sciences) and she invites members of staff to give lectures to Stage 1 Undergraduate students. Case study written by Chris Baldwin, previous Head of School (School of Biomedical Sciences) with input from Lucy Crawford and Zach Dixon (Undergraduate students, School of Biomedical Sciences).
How do you do it?
Debbie invites ‘research stars’ associated with the School to give a lecture about their research, to include a short autobiography and a question and answer session. A programme of 8 lectures is promoted to Stage 1 students as ‘Bioscience+ lectures’.
Why do you do it?
To increase students’ awareness of both the leading research undertaken in the School, and how the speakers got where they are today. Final year students can attend research lectures, but before Bioscience+ the School didn’t have lectures about research that were accessible to Stage 1 students.
Does it work?
Between 120 and 160 students attended Bioscience+ lectures in Semester 1, with fewer attending in Semester 2. Anecdotal feedback from both students and staff has been positive. In Zach’s words, Bioscience+ lectures were useful in showing students the link between the codes and practices they have to learn and their application in research to show “this is why we’re doing this”
Contact Details
Professor Christopher Baldwin, Professor of Biomedical Education