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You said, ‘….. some demonstrators are not very helpful’.

We did – we know that different demonstrators have different approaches to teaching. All our demonstrators receive training before the practicals, so they DO know what they are talking about. However, sometimes they want YOU to think for yourself and hence do not give you the answer immediately. You need to find it out – because that is how we all learn.

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You said, ‘…….some practicals are repetitive’.

We did – we know that many people learn best through ‘learning by doing’ – and that means doing things a few times. Remember, when you learnt reading? You practiced for quite a while. Now, if you do, say, enzyme assays – why should this be so different from learning reading? We have designed our practicals very carefully and in line with current learning theories so that they suit the learning styles of most students. Even if they appear to be a bit repetitive, we hope that at the end you will gain all the practical skills employers want to see.

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You said, ‘…….it would be nice to have a ‘social’ forum for Bioscientists at Kent’.

We did – not a lot. Because you did it quicker and better. You set up the ‘Biosciences at Kent’ Facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2236321446 – a great place to share ideas or just to simply stay in touch.

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You said, ‘……I don’t know whether anyone listen to us’.

We did – well, that’s exactly the point of this blog. Please, please let us have any comments, suggestions for improvements or just tell us how much you enjoy your time at Kent.

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You said, ‘…..I wish we would get some more personal development training’.

We did – Very good point. We think that every student has the right to receive personal development training. We therefore included Personal Development Planning (PDP) into the BI308 module.

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You said, ‘…….I wanted to get more and better feedback on my assessments’.

We did – we always try to give you clear, individual and timely feedback, but sometimes it is not really recognized as such. Remember, even a mark (say 65 %) is feedback, as long as you know, how to ‘read’ it. To help you (and us) in this process, we produced a new guideline to assessment and feedback, which you can find on our web site. To make sure that we return assessments on time, we have introduced a ‘traffic light’ system, which tells us when assessments are due back. Obviously, you don’t see this information, but we receive an email every Friday, telling us exactly whether an assessment is overdue.

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You said, ‘…. there is an overload of taught information– after 6 weeks I am knackered’.

We did – Yes, we agree – there is a lot to take in and after 6 weeks of solid teaching we are knackered too. We therefore introduced a Directed Learning Week (DLW) in week 6 and week 17 or 18. This gives everybody time to catch up with work. It is NOT spare time – neither for the lecturers nor you. We will give you activities that you MUST complete during these DLW’s – questions related to these activities might turn up in the exams or in tests. We thought long and hard about these DLW’s and we hope that you will find them useful to become ‘independent learners’.

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You said, ‘….. the Topics modules in stage 3 are interesting, but they very much eat into project time’.

We did – we restructured stage 3 and incorporated most of the information from the topics modules into other stage 2 and 3 modules. This way we avoid having topics modules in the second term of stage 3.

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You said, ‘……I hate 9 am lectures’.

We did – not a lot we can do about this. Unlike a lot of other subjects in the University we have a lot of contact hours – we believe that all the topics in Biosciences are best taught by close interaction with the experts. Hence we often need to use 9 am or 5 pm slots.

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You said, ‘….the maths in some of the stage 1 modules is too much and I can’t cope with it’.

We did – Biosciences require a numerical approach, therefore it is essential to give you the maths skills expected from a Bioscientist. To do so we have included some maths revision into the BI308 skills module – we hope that these sessions are useful for you.

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You said, ‘….. I hate 2 hour lecture blocks’.

We did – most of our lectures, especially in stage 1 have been re-structured and are now back to the 1 hour format.

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