Projects matching your search criteria
Using Participatory Image Based Research to Inform Teaching and Learning about Inclusion in Education
Images can play an important role in developing skills in critical reflection, both in schools and universities. Working with school students to take their own photographs as a way of exploring their school and its culture has great potential as an EBL approach. As such, University students in Education stand to gain invaluable skills in learning and engaging with this participatory methodology. This project will engage with six LEAs in the North-West to develop a 15 credit course unit which will also be available as an online resource. Aspects of the unit will be piloted in the second semester with PGCE students.
Project Team: Susie Miles, Ian Kaplan Faculty: Humanities
Funding year: 2005
Keywords: education, images, research, participatory, teacher training, image-based, postgraduate, teamwork, inclusion
Case Study (PDF, 257.2Kb)
Being a Student: An Ethnographic Perspective
The use of ethnography to teach a course in ethnographic methods exemplifies the project's commitment to a research-led approach to learning. Students will learn about qualitative research methods by researching their own learning and university environment. The approach will identify and challenge the students' own notions of responsibility and learning. In this way, students will learn about ethnography and will become more aware of how their own learning works.
Project Team: Alberto Corsin-Jimenez Faculty: Humanities
Funding year: 2005
Keywords: ethnography, reflection, reflexivity, ethnographic, research, diary, individual, undergraduate, qualitative
Case Study (PDF, 75Kb)
EBL From The Very First Day: Developing New Senses of Place
To develop a new EBL project for all first year geography students to be implemented during the induction weekend residential fieldtrip to Keswick. The exercise will engage students directly with the environment through role play and collaborative mapping, and will be team-based, with students responsible for the design and execution of the fieldwork research. This will be the student’s first university experience of geography and will immerse them in an EBL project that will stretch them, encourage collaborative, creative and artistic appreciation of place, and also be fun. It will open their eyes to the different ways cultural geography makes places and their own roles in this process.
Project Team: Martin Dodge, Mark Jayne, Sara MacKian, Chris Perkins Faculty: Humanities
Funding year: 2006
Keywords: geography, fieldtrip, keswick, first year, place, environment, mapping, research, collaboration
Case Study (PDF, 988.3Kb)
Development of an Enquiry-Based programme for exploring the scientific method
We will develop an enquiry-based programme that will provide first year students with the skills to critically evaluate the scientific method and scientific knowledge. The programme will be delivered in a series of tutorials, where students will elaborate hypotheses, collect data, and draw conclusions from (sometimes) conflicting evidence. Students will also research databases, give an oral presentation, and write an essay. The course will culminate with a seminar by a leading researcher from outside the University. The programme will help students develop a critical understanding of the facts, and the need for alternative hypotheses, enabling them to grapple more rapidly and effectively with units which require a greater degree of independent thought. We will focus on the question “What is the origin of humans?”, using different kinds of data (e.g. DNA sequence and morphological data).
Project Team: Paula X Kover, Matthew Cobb, Henry McGhie Faculty: Life Sciences
Funding year: 2006
Keywords: scientific, method, critical thinking, evaluation, knowledge, data collection, hypothesis, research, dna, presentation, hypotheses
Life Sciences Enterprise Projects
Development of a new type of final year project in the Faculty of Life Sciences. Students will identify an area of life sciences in which there is potential for a hypothetical new product. After receiving didactic and EBL-based training in business methodology from the Manchester Science Enterprise Centre (MSEC), teams of students will conduct market research and formulate a business plan for their product. We anticipate that this will improve students' understanding of how businesses are structured and the skills required to be an entrepreneur and develop students' independent learning and decision making skills.
Project Team: Dr Maggie Fostier, Dr Tracey Speake, Dr Martin Henery Faculty: Life Sciences
Funding year: 2006
Keywords: science, enterprise, msec, final-year, project, product development, market research, business, teamwork
Case Study (PDF, 111.6Kb)
Critical Project Development Skills in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
The Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) provides service teaching to several hundred students from disciplinary backgrounds across the humanities and the social, physical and life sciences. By adopting an EBL approach to the delivery of its modules, the centre hopes to equip the students with the necessary skills essential for historical project work as well as other transferable skills such as independent learning and critical thinking.
Project Team: Dr James Sumner, Dr Flurin Condrau, Dr David Kirby Faculty: Life Sciences
Funding year: 2007a
Keywords: science, history, research, technology, medicine, project
Linking Teaching and Research: Using Faculty research seminars to enhance EBL activities in final level tutorials
A selection of seminars presented by external experts, relevant to degree programmes across the Faculty, will be recorded using video and/or audio technology. These recordings will be used to develop frameworks for tutorial EBL activities by the project team and other interested staff, including programme directors and final level tutors. Involvement of seminar presenters would be encouraged, and materials developed would be shared with them. Students might conduct literature research and work in groups to explore links with the curriculum, ethical issues, relevance to society, methodologies, or the applications of technology. Outcomes would be to provide frameworks for the development of activities that link research with the curriculum, to give students access to renowned bio-scientists and their work, to enhance the EBL experience and transferable skills of students, and promote the sharing of resources between institutions.
Project Team: Carol Wakeford, Tristan Pocock, Ian Miller Faculty: Life Sciences
Funding year: 2007a
Keywords: research, video, tutorial, ethics
Engaging with Early Christian Communities: An Enquiry-Based Learning approach
Development and evaluation of two different models for introducing EBL to ‘The Rise of Christianity’ course unit. Model 1 is a series of ‘Contentions’, bibliographically supported packages of primary and secondary source material that students can use to understand and contribute to ‘classic’ debates. Model 2 is that of source analysis, a presentation (oral and web-posted) of analytical description of primary source material. The project will develop templates for each model that can be cascaded to other disciplines and will contribute to the on-going development of strategies for supporting independent research by students in the History of Christianity area.
Project Team: Kate Cooper Faculty: Humanities
Funding year: 2008
Keywords: christianity, history, research, resources, theology
Enhancing Postgraduate Employability through EBL: Academia-Industry Collaboration in Subtitler Training
This project will develop a new EBL component for delivery of subtitler training on the MA in Translation and Interpreting Studies with a view to bridge the academic/professional divide and enhance the employability of postgraduate trainees. The project seeks to encourage a research-based approach to the management of professional performance within a highly client-centred fragmented industry.
Project Team: Dr Luis Pérez-González Faculty: Humanities
Funding year: 2008
Keywords: subtitling, translation, employability, postgraduate, professional, research-based
Green City Projects: facilitating cross-faculty communities of practice in environment and sustainable development research for Manchester City Council
This project seeks to foster cross-university collaboration between dissertation and team research project components of taught masters and other level 4 programmes. Students will use EBL as research-based learning to develop solutions independently or in discipline teams on real projects for the City. Disciplines will share experiences in online action learning sets and compare results in a plenary.
Project Team: Professor Colin Hughes, Julia McMorrow, Peter Smyntek, Jonathan Sadler, Mark Baker Faculty: TEAM, Engineering and Physical Sciences, Humanities
Funding year: 2008
Keywords: TEAM, green city, Manchester, sustainable development, environment, research, projects, groupwork, interdisciplinary
Critical Project Development Skills in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
We have developed a short course using an enquiry-based approach to orient final-year students, some of whom have little or no prior experience, in techniques of archival research, critical source investigation, and the management of an extended writing project in the history of science, technology and medicine.
Project Team: James Sumner, Flurin Condrau and David Kirby Faculty: Life Sciences
Funding year: 2007
Keywords: archival research, medicine, technology, science, science writing, public policy
Case Study (PDF, 219.9Kb)
Injecting Into the Groin: Aim to Improve IV Drug Users Care
In my third year of my degree I had a four week placement with a GP in Heywood. During this placement I was introduced to Dr Taylor, as I attended his drug clinics because I have an interest in the area.
At Dr Taylors GP practice there are around 160 IV drug users. Drug users suffer massively with problems of venous hypertension in their lower limbs due to injecting into their groin. Such problems include deep vein thromboses, infection, venous insufficiency, and consequently ulcers, which may result in amputation of the limb.
Firstly, I will design a questionnaire to find out which of the patients inject into their groin, and how often they do so. I will then collaborate the results, and take photographic evidence of the effects of injecting into the groin. I aim to meet with an Interventional Radiologist, at Wythenshawe Hospital, and a Vascular Surgeon at Royal Oldham Hospital, to see if showing them my findings will help to improve the care they give such patients.
I propose that using the skills of the interventional radiologist, stenting the veins in the legs of the patients would improve blood flow, and consequently reduce the number of problems the patients experience.
Project Team: Chloe Goodall Faculty: Medical and Human Sciences
Funding year: 2009
Keywords: undergraduate research drug users medicine
Aspects of Vedic and Greek Poetics
In this project I will study the synchronic poetics of the Rg-Veda, the oldest collection of hymns in Sanskrit, and offer notes towards its relationship to poetics in other Indo-European languages, with special reference to Ancient Greek and Latin. As these three languages, amongst others, derive from a common source and share cognate forms, institutions, etc., so they also show elements of a poetic language that can often be proved to have been inherited from a common source, namely Indo-European (circa 4000BC). To exemplify this relationship and common inheritance, I propose to read closely a few of the hymns from the collection, above all those concerning the ancient myth of the dragon-slaying, which, following work by the American scholar Calvert Watkins, can be linked to such forms as heroic song in ancient Greece, as well as myth and saga in Anglo-Saxon England. However, I will focus on the Sanskrit evidence, and seek to explicate some of the formal techniques employed by the poets, especially concerning lexical fields, and derivational morphology.
The outcomes would include a closer appreciation of poetics in an ancient language; a clarification of inherited and innovated poetics, both in Sanskrit and in its wider relationship to Greek and Latin especially; and an exploration of some of the formal linguistic means by which the poets practised their craft. These means include, but are not limited to, the use of various meters, semantic relationships, and syntactic expressions, all of which characterize the respective poetic grammars.
This study I would disseminate primarily through a cross-disciplinary event I am organizing, jointly run between Classics (in which department I am enrolled), and South Asian Studies (for whom I currently run a group for grammar support in Sanskrit). The event is at the moment named ‘Sanskrit Day in Manchester’, and will include seminars on Sanskrit and Indo-European by Prof. David Langslow (dept. of Classics, Manchester), as well as sessions on reading hymns of the Rg-Veda, one of which I am co-teaching and in which I would be able to share some of the finds of my study. It should be emphasized that this event is being jointly organized, so the expected attendance will show a breadth of disciplines represented. This event will be coinciding with a conference on Sanskrit to be held the following day, namely the Sanskrit Tradition In The Modern World. Further discussion of my study within Manchester could be held in the undergraduate reading group for Classical languages, which I began and currently run, as well as at upcoming conferences and language schools I am to attend in Leiden, Netherlands, and Berlin, Germany.
Project Team: Jesse Lundquist Faculty: Humanities
Funding year: 2009
Keywords: undergraduate research vedic greek poetics linguistics classical languages
The Plath Enigma: tracing the changes in Sylvia Plath’s literary work in relation to those that occurred within her own life
We aim to investigate how Sylvia Plath’s literary work changes throughout the course of her life, and to derive (through a detailed biographical study of Plath) where her major influences were taken from. We plan to develop upon the consensual belief that her father, Otto Plath, and husband, Ted Hughes, both played major roles in Plath’s development as a poet - and to investigate how these two influences eventually mould into one in Plath’s pinnacle poem, ‘Daddy’.
We also aim to find links between Plath’s ‘Ariel’ and Hughes’ ‘Birthday Letters’, hopefully shedding further light upon the couple’s relationship and marriage.
We would also like to consider the current literary criticism on Plath and offer our own evaluation in relation to our findings.
Through an analysis of both Plath’s and Hughes’ work we hope to further understand the claims against Hughes made by many feminist critics stating that he was a cruel husband. We would also like to evaluate Plath’s feelings towards Hughes in relation to her feelings towards her own father. We shall question whether Hughes was a poor husband or whether Plath’s own opinion of him was clouded by her own mental state.
We expect to find particular relevance in Plath’s heritage and upbringing along with her early experiences of living in America. Through her journals we hope to find some prerequisite of her later mental breakdown, and additional evidence shall be sought through an analysis of her Letters Home.
We aim to approach this research project with a totally neutral stance and to allow our own findings to influence our opinion of both Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Similarly, our presentation and report will hold the same neutral stance. We also aim to investigate both sides of any debates that may arise, as the current literature on the Plath-Hughes debate is massively divided.
Project Team: Joe White and Katie Watson Faculty: Humanities
Funding year: 2009
Keywords: undergraduate research sylvia plath ted hughes poetry
A Comparative study on factors influencing attitudes towards Oral Health Care using community sample studies from a developed and developing country
This project aims to compare the various factors that influence peoples' attitudes towards their overall oral health using sample studies from the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe. It is also intended to find out if these factors qualify the null hypothesis that individual attitudes towards their oral health care vary according to the level of economic development in a country. Data for this research will mainly be obtained through the use of
a questionnaire exploring the level of oral health care importance and
awareness in these two communities. In order to obtain an unbiased result, an
equal number of participants of varying age groups, socio-economic backgrounds, gender and ethnicity will be used in both surveys.Data obtained from this study will be quantified graphically to explore trends relating to the aim of the study. In order to gain a better insight on the Oral health service in
Zimbabwe I intend to use video coverage and interviews, from dental care
professionals serving the community (with consent). I chose the community of
Zimbabwe as it is home for me and will be visiting over the Easter Break 2010. I have also worked in a Zimbabwean dental community and anticipate the results from this study to have interesting outcomes.
Project Team: Makhosazana Mguni Faculty: Medical and Human Sciences
Funding year: 2009
Keywords: undergraduate research dentistry developing country
Molecular evolution of visual pigments in the wandering spider Cupiennius salei
Animals absorb light with proteins called opsins, and having a suite of opsins absorbing light at different wavelengths allows for colour vision. Three opsins were recently identified in jumping spiders, and during my placement project at the University of Vienna, I set out to isolate and characterise homologs to these in another species, Cupiennius salei. A homolog for the Rh2 gene was identified, and one section in the middle showed a remarkable diversity in its genetic make-up, suggesting multiple gene duplication events, with possible functional divergence (i.e. different versions of the same gene would be able to absorb light across a broad spectrum).Two possible explanations are that either different DNA sequences are the result of gene conversion events, whereby sections of gene are accidentally swapped or copied within the cell nucleus, or alternative splicing, whereby the building blocks of the protein are assembled in different orders.
I am hoping to build on my work in Austria by analysing the structural diversity of the protein across a much broader sequence to give a more accurate picture of the phylogenetic history of the gene. This will involve both statistical analyses to test for possible functional divergence and 3D modelling of the protein to examine the protein structure in space. Furthermore, I intend to examine the so-called ‘untranslated region’, the section of the the gene which does not actually reflected in the protein, which will elucidate possible gene conversion and alternative splicing events.
The grand pattern of invertebrate opsin evolution is one of repeated duplication and deletion. C. salei seems to provide a striking example of this pattern; (at least) one long-wave opsin seems to have been lost, whilst one seems to have multiplied many times to take its place. Furthermore, data on spiders and their relatives are currently severely lacking, so as well as filling in a large gap in the evolutionary tree, work such as this can also help resolve issues regarding the overall relatedness of groups such as arachnids and millipedes/centipedes.
Project Team: Thomas Ellis Faculty: Life Sciences and Humanities
Funding year: 2009
Keywords: undergraduate research spiders opsins light animals absorption
Investigating the role of embodiment in space metaphors, and the restrictions it has on innovation
The aim of this project is to identify to what extent space metaphors must be grounded in embodiment. A basic frame exists for the space metaphors under investigation, however; the particular variant adopted may differ.
An inter-disciplinary investigation into particular space metaphors will be taken, thus semantic, pragmatic, and etymological considerations will be taken into account. Phonological restrictions on space metaphors will be investigated as an alternative to the embodiment approach.
Project Team: Maya Zara Faculty: Humanities
Funding year: 2009
Keywords: undergraduate research space metaphors liguistics
