Earth Sciences

AIMS

• to assess the student’s ability to provide a critical synthesis of a scientific problem;
• to enable a student to derive original laboratory or field data, and/or to seek and utilise published data;
• to train a student to assess those data and draw appropriate conclusions;
• to learn how to communicate the experimental strategy, results and conclusions effectively;
• to provide training in how to formulate a research problem.

OUTCOMES

Knowledge and Understanding:

• an in-depth understanding of a specialised area related to the student’s degree programme;
• the principles and methodology of experimental techniques and of data handling and evaluation.

Intellectual Outcomes:

• a highly developed ability to consider issues from a wide range of perspectives and to draw on appropriate concepts and values in arriving at a critical assessment;
• ability to define problems, devise and evaluate possible solutions, and to solve elegantly routine and unfamiliar problems;
• appreciation of the use and limitations of data in testing an hypothesis.

Practical and Transferable Outcomes:

• a highly developed ability to analyse, synthesise, summarise and evaluate critically information from academic literature, ideas, interpretations and other sources;
• the ability to formulate and execute a research programme;
• the ability to communicate effectively through the research report and a poster presentation;
• highly developed critical approach to academic literature and other sources of information.

CONTENT

A course for all Earth Science MSci students with an independent project relating to their specific degree programme, normally to include a literature review, an element of data acquisition or analysis (laboratory or field-based) and a proposal for future research.