Biosciences

Every student is assigned an academic advisor when they arrive. Your academic advisor is the person who will support you throughout your studies.

Our academic advisors provide student support in a number of areas.

• Academic - They will discuss your academic progress with you and offer advice on where and how you can improve your work. They can also provide guidance on course unit choices.
• Pastoral - Your advisor acts as a first point of contact if you are experiencing personal difficulties, such as financial or medical issues. They can signpost you to the correct support services, both at the University and outside.
• Employability - Your advisor will discuss your future career plans with you and provide a reference.

You will get to know your advisor through the regular group tutorial sessions we run in Year 1. You will also have two individual meetings each semester.

These meetings allow you to discuss your academic progress, interests and career aspirations. Together, you will be able to identify any help that you need and set goals.

If you need advice between these organised meetings, you can contact your advisor to arrange a meeting.

We also have a team of Senior Academic Advisors. They are there to support our academic advisors and provide additional support to those students facing challenging times.

Our Senior Academic Advisors can help students to access appropriate support services at the University.

This year, we have adapted the practicals to be run as online resources, with tailored videos, walk-throughs and data analysis, that can be completed in your own time.

In Year 1, these have been supported by drop-in Zoom sessions for help with data handling skills, or for talking to other students and staff about the concepts covered.

We have also set up optional laboratory sessions, where students who want to come to campus can come into the teaching labs and use some of the equipment we introduce in the online resources.

Of course, these have been designed to follow social distancing guidelines and with full PPE. We hope to offer more laboratory in-person sessions after Christmas or in Year 2, so students can gain more experience of laboratory techniques in person.

This flexibility in provision, and the feedback we are getting from students on what works best for them, will help us should we need to adapt again next year.

All lectures are online. Some are live online lectures, and make use of breakout rooms, polls and the chat function in Zoom.

The chat function is useful for asking questions during the lecture, and this works better than in big lecture rooms where some people may not want to shout out loud.

Other lectures are pre-recorded in small bite-sized chunks for students to watch in their own time. This is supported by live Q&A (question and answer) sessions.

As well as Zoom, we use Microsoft Teams and Blackboard Collaborate. Our students have appreciated these different approaches.

Where possible, tutorials have been face to face, following guidelines for staying safe.

Other tutorials take place online, or are a hybrid where some students are in the room and others join in online.

Again, we have been as flexible as possible to allow all to join in. For example, one final year tutor group has students at home in five different countries. They meet on Zoom, and discuss essays and problem sets by sharing e-whiteboards and presentation slides with each other.

Building relationships via online communication is not what a lot of us are used to. However, lots of tutors and students have found innovative and creative ways to make the online spaces work.

Placements

This year has presented challenges in providing placements. Our placement office has worked hard to ensure students get to go on placement and are safe and well looked after once they start.

Several students have got a placement at COVID-19 labs in Cheshire. Some students have switched to our MSci course.

A few students on our modern language courses have found a lab placement in this country. Others have delayed the language placements until after Year 3, which still works out well for their degree and employment prospects.

Field courses

Field courses are still being planned for the summer break. We managed to run online versions last year, which were well received by the students.

This year, we hope students can get to Costa Rica as planned and see the frogs in the wild, in the rainforests. However, there is an excellent frog breeding programme at the Manchester Museum too.