Module Catalogue 2024/25

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

To develop knowledge, skills and experience of the degree subject, by establishing, running and
reporting an original piece of research on a topic of the students choosing.

To develop a range of key skills that will enable the student to engage with the research community
in medicine, business or science.

ONC8097 and ONC8098 together form one module which spans 2 academic years of the
programme.

Outline Of Syllabus

As the module covers all possible types of project and scientific enquiry the generic module content
will support the student, through experiential learning to establish a research project in their
workplace, putting in place all and any required site specific practical, ethical, governance and safety arrangements. The students can then run the project and be responsible for all the processes and tasks contained therein.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

By the end of ONC8097 and ONC8098 students will be able to:

Investigate and identify institutional requirements for the practical, ethical, governance and
safety needs for a research project within the workplace.

Set priorities within a project to ensure the aims of the project are met and design appropriate
timelines. This includes both the individual needs of the project but invariably extends to how
project requirements fit into a busy healthcare workplace in order to make progress.

Critically appraise how their project relates to the current literature and to a wider field of
knowledge.

Communicate new knowledge and research to the wider professional community in their own field, and articulate what the expected standards are for such communications.

Intended Skill Outcomes

By the end of ONC8097 and ONC8098 students will be able to:

Navigate the practical, ethical, governance, regulatory and safety processes necessary to produce a
viable research or practice development project in the professional setting, demonstrating skills
in literacy, numeracy, administration, authorship, diplomacy at a postgraduate level.

Run a project and amass a dataset, including organisational, records management, project management
and ensure compliance with legal and institutional requirements and the individual skills necessary
for the project (eg. practical laboratory skills, interview skills, patient assessment or clinical
skills, records review etc.).

Critically evaluate and analyse data in line with the standards and criteria of their chosen
subject and its methodologies.

Critically evaluate the findings and relate them to the findings of others.

Relate findings to the original aims of the project and to the wider field of knowledge.

Produce a research report of publishable standard in their chosen topic area.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Writing a dissertation requires the student to develop and demonstrate a range of different skills
in combination (planning, organisation, judgement etc.). In bringing these disparate skills together the chosen teaching method is to encourage the students to submit early drafts of their work for comment and discussion. This allows the students to develop their individual strengths and improve on their individual weaknesses. Given the individual nature of the projects these students undertake, the time available to them and the wide diversity of topics, no other teaching strategy would deliver
the advanced ‘fine tuning’ of their skills.

Given the wide variety of project types, and professional situations that students find themselves
in, there is no fixed timeline within the two modules - students determine their own planning and
time management with advice.

As each dissertation project is unique and chosen by the student there are no set class activities.
Students interact in a one-to-one manner with an experienced investigator and are supported in the
workplace by additional specialist advisors for specific needs (stats advice, use of qualitative
methods etc.).

Preparation for dissertation is started in module ONC8097 Dissertation Part 1 (Jan) (E-learning).

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The design of this assessment is consistent with assessment strategies at masters degree level and is designed to not only to test module outcomes but is also sensitive to programme outcomes for all pathways. The dissertation assignment will be broad enough to embrace the assessment of all module learning outcomes and represent an accumulation of learning from the successful completion of preceding modules.

General Notes

N/A