Us my lecture notes enough biomedical science
I study biomedical science and im so confused on how to add to my notes because there's no set books for me to use. Are the lecture slides enough info for me to graduate with a first class degree? If no what should I be looking for?
Hi! I’m a third-year Biomed student so well experience in this 😅 And the answer is I would say it depends what year you’re in. Certainly in my experience, my first year didn’t count to my degree and the exams were only multiple-choice, so the lecture slides are fine. There won’t be set books but hopefully they’ve given you some recommended textbooks that you can access which can be good if you need help with a concept. But in second and especially third year, you’re expected to also do wider reading -
bringing together content from other modules and also reading and evaluating research papers. This isn’t something you have to do for every lecture but is meant to be directed by your interests, so I’d say pick a few topics to do reading on and then at least one of those should come up on your exam. The important thing to note is that at least at my uni, you must have some evidence of wider reading in your coursework and exams in second/third year to get a first grade. (For context, I study at KCL and my degree is not IBMS accredited.)
If your uni functions the same, then in terms of what you need to be looking for, its always a good idea to start with the references from your lecture notes, which they should provide throughout or usually there’s a slide at the end. You definitely don’t have to read all of them (it would take far too long) but maybe if there was an interesting paper they mentioned or you want more detail on something, pick the references that align with that. Or maybe they just briefly mentioned a topic and you can search that in a database like PubMed. My advice would always be to check for the most recent research on a topic, because science moves on fast and things get outdated very quickly. In terms of what to add into your notes, it could be anything from extra detail on how something works or if it’s implicated in a particular disease, or new treatments coming out for a disease, or the limitations of a study that was mentioned and what would need to be done further. It’s very much driven by the content covered in the lecture and your own interests. But checking the limitations of a paper and any more research that might have been done since then to either support or disprove its argument is really important especially in your final year, as they place quite an emphasis on critical reading/writing in order to get higher marks.
Hope this helps! And I’m happy to answer any other biomed questions you have
bringing together content from other modules and also reading and evaluating research papers. This isn’t something you have to do for every lecture but is meant to be directed by your interests, so I’d say pick a few topics to do reading on and then at least one of those should come up on your exam. The important thing to note is that at least at my uni, you must have some evidence of wider reading in your coursework and exams in second/third year to get a first grade. (For context, I study at KCL and my degree is not IBMS accredited.)
If your uni functions the same, then in terms of what you need to be looking for, its always a good idea to start with the references from your lecture notes, which they should provide throughout or usually there’s a slide at the end. You definitely don’t have to read all of them (it would take far too long) but maybe if there was an interesting paper they mentioned or you want more detail on something, pick the references that align with that. Or maybe they just briefly mentioned a topic and you can search that in a database like PubMed. My advice would always be to check for the most recent research on a topic, because science moves on fast and things get outdated very quickly. In terms of what to add into your notes, it could be anything from extra detail on how something works or if it’s implicated in a particular disease, or new treatments coming out for a disease, or the limitations of a study that was mentioned and what would need to be done further. It’s very much driven by the content covered in the lecture and your own interests. But checking the limitations of a paper and any more research that might have been done since then to either support or disprove its argument is really important especially in your final year, as they place quite an emphasis on critical reading/writing in order to get higher marks.
Hope this helps! And I’m happy to answer any other biomed questions you have
Original post by Rohan007best
I study biomedical science and im so confused on how to add to my notes because there's no set books for me to use. Are the lecture slides enough info for me to graduate with a first class degree? If no what should I be looking for?
Hi @Rohan007best
As mentioned above, it's really going to depend on the year/module - but I've found further reading really interesting and useful for my degree (biochemistry).
Normally my lecturers recommend us a textbook chapter for basics, and then primary/review literature for anything else. Honestly, I think looking into a good review article of a specific area, e.g. a signalling pathway, can be really useful to help you contextualise anything you've learnt and also pick up some new facts which you can use as examples of further reading. Review articles compile a lot of primary literature (the actual experiments behind the facts/statements) so you can look further into any specific things you want more information into by following the citation.
Rebecca
(Lancaster Student Ambassador)
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