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Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening for the, what is the pin Optim? It year four talk and it's basically on the project right up. So it's something you should be thinking about soon if you haven't already started. And we've got the lovely Alex here to um present kind of how to go about doing the project right up. So without whether to, I'll let her introduce herself. Thank you. Um Yeah. So my name is Alex and I'm now 1/5 year. So I did my BSC last year. Um I did my BSC in endocrinology and I was lucky enough that I did quite well in my project, both in the right up and in the presentation. So I'm just gonna be talking you through kind of generally how to kind of approach the project. Um and just kind of little tips that I got both from feedback from my supervisors and also kind of when they marked it in the end and also asking a lot of my friends kind of what tips they had. Um So just as a kind of overview, we're going to be kind of going through it as you would structure the project right up. Um But a lot of the advice is transferable because a lot of the sections kind of overlap with one another. Um And just a few kind of disclaimers before we start, as always, if there's anything in this talk that contradicts the information that you got from your faculty, um or from your supervisors, go with their advice. A lot of the advice will apply to all BS CS, but some of it might not apply to the ones that are not scientific Bs CS. Um I'm not going to talk about plagiarism but just make sure it doesn't happen to you. Um and also refer to the project handbook because a lot of the information both that I'll be talking about and also that they use to mark on go straight from the project handbook. Um So just in terms of the former, it makes up quite a big chunk of your module three and of your overall BSC. So it's definitely something that you want to put a lot of effort into. Um the word limit is 5000 and then you have a shorter abstract. Um But you can also include a cover page and acknowledgements. And then throughout you have maximum of eight figures and minimum of 15 references and you do still have quite a bit of time to go until the deadline. Um So just in terms of a mock breakdown, um the biggest section is the discussion's and conclusions and that is followed by the background or they're the kind of biggest ones with the background. Um So those are definitely the ones that you want to be focusing on if you kind of not got as much time or if you want to work on tweaking parts of it, but the other sections definitely shouldn't be overlooked as well, kind of touch on a bit later and this is kind of just like a visual representation of where you are in the year. Um So it's very close to the end and it's kind of like that final push. Um So definitely it's, it's kind of very close to the end now. Um So just starting with some overall advice. So when, when looking at kind of their mark scheme, I found this really, really vague and very difficult to understand. Um but this is what they've put as exceptional and some, some of you might be aiming for exceptional, some for kind of the lower bands. But I think it's always helpful to look at the top one just to get an idea of what the perfect project would look like. And I've kind of highlighted which parts of it I kind of picked out that you can actually kind of tangibly apply to your project. Um And we'll be touching on each of these throughout different sections because some of them you can kind of really, really focus on and say the background and there's some of them in the methods and something that I found really helpful was in the project right up. They have a section where they basically described what would cause a project to do badly. And that includes, if there's any errors of fact, if there's any vague games or objectives, if there's not too much analysis and a lot of the results are very descriptive if the conclusions aren't very interesting, um or if they're very kind of, um if you haven't put a lot of effort into coming to those conclusions, if you've quoted literature, but it's a misinterpretation. Um If there's not much evidence that you actually did the work yourself, which will also come when your project supervisor has to submit how much work was done in each section. Um If the work isn't contextualized within wider literature and also the future of that field, and also if you include illustrations, if they're, for example, badly labeled or unclear, and then as with any project, spelling mistakes, poor grammar structure layout, things like that, even if your lecturers and your markers say that those things don't matter. It kind of just reflects poorly on you if you don't kind of make sure that you haven't include any spelling mistakes and things like that. So starting with the background, as I mentioned before, this is one of the biggest sections. It's about a quarter of the marks. So it's definitely not something that you should just put together last minute. So my advice for writing a background, this is really the section where you can show your understanding of the field and where your project fits into that field. So if you start with a really strong beginning, kind of set the scene, what's already known about your field? And where does this research fit into the current knowledge? Why was it needed in the first place you're trying to kind of draw the reader in and tell them why your project is interesting and what's new about it at this point? You really want to explain the key concept in the key terms. And you're basically setting a kind of like groundwork for to make sure that all the readers, anyone that's reading it is in exactly the same position when they move on to kind of the methods and results section. So you want to be defining terms and theory is quite early on and also stating any assumptions that you make later on in the project. And also this is really the section where you want to grab people's attention. So you're trying to build a story which is gonna hook the reader and basically make them interested enough in the project to read the rest. So you're trying to build a story around that central theme and then the rest of the paper should kind of follow and answer the questions that you pose in the background section and the things that are really important to avoid, don't be ambiguous about what you're saying, assume that the reader doesn't understand anything about your research or kind of what you're going to be doing later on and explain everything if you can um don't include any unrelated themes. So any topics which are not directly related to your research topic probably aren't relevant unless this research is going to be applicable to those things as well. So for example, if you're writing a project about nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, there's no reason to discuss hepatitis or viral related liver injury, even if the complications are the same. And then in general, if there's kind of poor organization and there's no logical flow between paragraphs, it makes it really difficult for the reader to kind of work through. So what I like to do when I was writing all of my project, but also the background specifically, I like to look at the last sentence of one paragraph and the first sentence of the next paragraph and see, firstly, do they need to be split into two separate paragraphs? And if they do, then is there some kind of logical step between one and the next? And that just gives it a really nice flow and makes it very easy for the reader to read. And that was something that the markers in my project actually commented on as being a very positive thing because it really hooked them and they said that the background made them really interested to read the next. So that was a really nice piece of feedback to kind of here. So now moving on to the methods. Um So I was kind of confused about what exactly the method is aiming to do because often it feels just like kind of like instruction list for how to reproduce the project. But something that I realized when I was writing mine was that the purpose is actually to provide information by which the reader can judge the validity of the project itself. So what you want to do is provide a really clear explanation of how it was done. Whether you've got a clinical project or a lab based project or a systematic review, you basically want to justify to the reader that your results are valuable and that's through having a very, very solid method. So you want to describe exactly what was done to answer the research question, including how the results were analyzed and any assumptions that you had to make throughout. You also want to make sure you discuss any potential flaws in the method with your supervisor. Because even though a lot of Bs CS and a lot of mark schemes do say that the methods, they're not going to judge the methods in terms of how strong the methods are that will affect your whole project later down the line because it'll be harder to interpret the results. And harder to contextualize things. So make sure you understand where they could pick up on any flaws in the experimental methods. Um And essentially someone reading it should be able to replicate your entire project just by reading the method section. So now moving on to the results, this is another section which I think a lot of people tend to overlook um because it's quite boring too, right? But really this is the core of your paper and this is the reason that you've been doing the whole work, it's to find those results. So in this section, you want to be objective and completely unbiased. So you're describing the results completely factually and you're not discussing them at all. So like with previous I C A S, you're just stating what has been found and also the statistical support for that information using very simple and clear language. And this is the place that you really do want to save words. So you can use tables, charts and graphs to illustrate your results, but make sure that you're not repeating all the information conveyed in the illustrations also in the text. So you can use a, you can have more information in the graphs and then pick up the key information to write about. Um But then again, also don't put too many graphs and tables in. Um because something that quite a few of my friends mentioned is that their projects were picked up on the fact that they had too much data and it became quite overwhelming to read. Um So really, it's better to do less well than to do too much and kind of dilute the quality of your data. So if you have more than one hypothesis, split up your results into those sections, um that not only makes it easy to read, but it also makes it clear that you're answering two separate things like I mentioned before, don't present too much data and only aunts only present the data that directly answers your aims and hypotheses because otherwise it just makes it really hard to follow what the actual take home messages are. Even if you discuss it later in the conclusions, you don't want someone to have to wait until the conclusions to understand what's going on. And if you do have a lot of kind of raw data or initial data that is worth presenting, you can use the appendix for that. The appendix is not marked, but it is something that the examiners will look at if they want to kind of reference the raw data. So now moving on to the discussion section, the whole purpose of the discussion section is basically to put your results into context. So you've already presented your results, the reader already knows what you found. Now, you need to explain to them why it's important and what it actually means. So picking up on the points from the Mark scheme, this is where you can show critical analysis and evaluation and also the relevance of the project. So broadly, the discussion should include the results of your research comparison between your findings and your initial hypothesis. And it's okay if they don't, um if you don't prove your hypothesis or you disprove it or you partly prove it, it doesn't matter as long as you make that direct comparison and then discuss the related research. Um Either ones that you've already mentioned in the background section or you can introduce some new research and also really importantly discussing the strengths and limitations of your project where there might be kind of holes and then how those holes can be filled with future research or on the basis of what you've already found, how it can be taken further. So just generally the kind of things you should and shouldn't do in your discussion section. So it's really important to start with a clear statement of the main findings. The first sentence or first few sentences should basically be summarizing your results to the reader, then explain why the outcomes of the study are important. And then the implications of your findings, you should discuss both strengths and limitations, not just one and then also introduce newer expanded ways to think about the research. And then based on that kind of what the next steps can be. And in terms of what you shouldn't do, the discussion is not the place to rewrite your abstract. Your abstract is something which in some ways is very stand alone and it's, they are quite different in some ways. Um You should include information, you shouldn't include information that doesn't have any evidence to support it, whether that is from your own results or from papers that you found and your results can be their own piece of evidence. Um It doesn't all have to be supported by literature and also make sure not to undermine your authority. So if you're stating the limitations of your project, don't make any statement which will doubt your methodology or execution, you could say that there are these flaws and limitations that you need to take into consideration. But don't say that a certain um finding is disproven or is not a very strong finding because of your methods, it will take away from your whole project. Um saying that you shouldn't shy away from speaking about the limitations and negative results because they are also really important. Um And then kind of opposite to that also don't overstate the importance of your findings. So your finding is answering a very specific question and you have to make sure not to extrapolate and say that you're kind of answering this big question based on the findings of your discussion or of your project. So the questions that I like to ask myself um whenever I'm writing some kind of research up is firstly, was my hypothesis correct? If it was partly correct or completely the opposite. What can we learn from the results? And what is the significance? Um How do these conclusions reshape or add to existing knowledge in the field? And what does previous research say about the topic? And how is this kind of changing the field? Um Why are the results actually important or relevant to the person reading it? Are they either adding further evidence to what is already known about the field or are they disproving prior studies and or kind of creating a new way of viewing those results or that field? How can future research build on these observations and what are the key experiments that need to be done to achieve um those steps? And then lastly kind of what are the take home message is that you really want the reader to leave with because your discussion will be this really long section and you want to make sure that the reader will walk away having maximum two or three points that are kind of like the take home messages. So in terms of some general tips, um for most Bs CS, the presentation will be happening before the right up and you'll be getting questions and comments on your project. Would you can then use that you guide the folks of your discussion. Often the people that are doing your presentations will have a kind of good idea of what are the main questions to ask you based on what is the kind of most interesting or pertinent part of your project. And that's, that's quite a good way to focus your discussion. And if your presentation is after the project, you can practice your presentation with other people or discuss it with maybe your supervisor, a few other people working in their team, um, to kind of guide what the focus should be as well. Um, it's really important to focus both on structure and substance and generally good writing can actually make up for quite a lot. Um So even if your results, you might think are not very strong or you don't have very many interesting discussion points, writing it well will actually make it a lot more likely that the markers will get through it and want to give you a higher mark because in general, bad scientific writing means that the reader has to kind of put in a disproportionate amount of attention to understand what the writer is even trying to say. And it makes it very difficult to just read the thing in, in general. So then just going through a few scientific writing tips and how you can actually improve your writing to make it as easy for the reader to read as possible. And also as likely for the markers to kind of want to give you a higher grade. Um The first thing that's really important is to use really simple and clear plain language and generally just make it as easy as possible for the reader. If you've used jargon, that has to be there, that's okay. But there's no need to use kind of flowery language or really complicated words. It just makes it kind of sound like you're trying to be smarter than you need to be. And if you read scientific papers, you'll see that there's actually very little of that in general, each sentence should be its own idea. This doesn't have to apply for every single sentence. But in general, if you remove that sentence from the rest of the text, does it still make sense that as its own standalone sentence? And the reason for this is because if that's not the case, it probably means that that sentence could either be combined with the previous one or it's not actually adding anything new. So it's kind of like a waste of um words. So what I, what I kind of ended up doing is especially in my background section, my background of my discussion section I would go through and ask myself, is this sentence actually necessary? Is it adding anything to the previous sentence or two, the one after? And if not just remove it and kind of along the same idea each paragraph, you should be able to summarize the purpose of that paragraph into a fraser a sentence. And the reason for this is so that there's a very clear delineation between why you have one sent one paragraph and then another one kind of that you're following a general flow throughout your whole project. So this is an example of kind of a bad sentence to a good sentence. And essentially here, it's about asking where the main verb and the main clauses. And I won't go through this in too much detail. But the first sentence is kind of very flowery, very trying to make it sound very nice. And the next one is just straight to the point. You want the main clause to be the main part of the sentence or the main part of the paragraph as well. So you go straight into what you're actually trying to say rather than putting it in the middle or the end of a sentence. So generally you should write in present tense and this also just makes it a lot easier to kind of read through. Um you should be using subheadings throughout if you can just to make a little bit easier for the reader to follow, but make sure that they don't interrupt the flow. So don't put too many in to the point where someone has to stop and then it's almost like they're starting a new paragraph, you still want it to flow logically. Um And also really, really importantly, and something which quite a lot of examiners actually picked up on is a lot of um a lot of the time. It's very easy, especially in the discussion section to talk about things which are not actually directly answering the research question. And this takes away from the whole point of the project because you're doing an experiment, do presenting the results so that you can answer a research question, anything which is not answering the research question, you can put as future research or kind of as a very short sentence saying this is also interesting. But if it's not directly researching, it, it should be very, very short if included at all. So again, you could go through kind of every sentence, every paragraph and ask yourself, does this relate back to the research question? And in general, you should be critically discussing what you're writing about. So don't take everything at face value, kind of analyze it and assess. Is this correct in relation to my research question? Is there a situation where this could be incorrect? And it just makes it makes the reader know that you're thinking about it rather than just trying to persuade them or something. So generally be as specific as possible. And this comes across both in the way you write and also what you're writing about. So in terms of the way if you're using words like this or that, make sure it's really obvious what you're referring to. And this is things like if you're saying um this is important because or saying um yeah, something like this is um this is important to remember what is this actually referring to. And it's, it's better to say, for example, this finding or um this piece of evidence or something rather than just using the word this or that. And in general, if you're using a source of finding from a particular study, instead of trying to summarize the project in your text state, what they actually found. And then this is just something that I kind of picked up on both in my own writing. And when I was kind of when we were doing the literature reviews, be aware of using the word prove. So for example, saying that a certain finding proves something often a finding is indicating that something might be the case, but it's not actually a form of proof, especially in, in kind of biological sciences. Uh There's, it's often about associations rather than something proving something. Obviously, there might be situations where that isn't the case, but just kind of make sure you think about it when you're using the word and also make sure you support everything with evidence um that that could either be from your own results or from literature. And just a few kind of side note, if you say there is a wealth of evidence, make sure you're not only citing one source but many sources. And instead of saying that something is not widely understood and just leaving that as a sentence explain why it's not widely understood what is missing that would make it widely understood and just basically support everything you're saying. So in terms of shortening or cutting down the reason I put this in the discussion section is often the discussion section, most people will have it longer than it needs to be. Um So avoid turning verbs into an ounce instead of saying like they obtained estimates of say, they estimated avoid repetition. So instead of saying the general scientific consensus of opinion, you could just say consensus and there's a lot of things like that, that um it might sound nicer but it's really not necessary. Um And also you can um remove the sentence or split the sentence or cut unnecessary words. So basically, you can just ask yourself these set of questions um when you're kind of reading through it to see if you can just cut out a lot of things in terms of writing the conclusion. So this is included as part of the discussion section in the mark scheme, but it is something that you can see it's kind of different or a separate section. So basically, this is where you, the reader will go if they don't want to read the whole paper. So it should be a brief summary of all the details that you've discussed and that includes results and the discussion section. And just in general, I think writing the conclusion is not necessarily the most difficult part, but the difficult part is when you're writing about what research needs to be done next. And often just saying more research is needed is almost like a cop out sentence, there's always more research needed. But you need to say, what type of research is it? What particular field would that research be into? And also what are the main challenges to our understanding? Why hasn't that research already been done? So now looking at the overall presentation of the project, this actually makes up quite a significant chunk of the marks. Um It's the same amount as the results, same amount as the discussion. Oh Sorry, the um methods, results and the abstract. Um So you should put effort into how the project looks. So just a few kind of design resources that you might find useful. Um obviously, at this point, you might already have ones that you like using. Um so definitely stick with those. But if, if you haven't found one that you like, these are some of the ones that I found quite useful. Um Particularly I would recommend bio render, it's really useful for making illustrations and has so many free kind of icons that you can use. Um It says free for the first five illustrations, but once you've made one, you can delete it and then you have five to like um you can just keep making them. Um and also can va is really, really good. Um With this, I would say a lot of these will also come in really handy for the presentation. Um So you can just check them out. Um And these are some of the ones that I had in my project. So the top one, the top left one is just made on powerpoint. Um The bottom left one is made on by Orender. And then the table was also something that the mark has actually said that a lot of the tables are very clearly laid out and even just using colors in this way, um or kind of highlighting things that are significant within your text or within the tables just makes it really easy for the reader to see what the. Um Well, they're actually trying to take away from that project from that table, a graphic in terms of statistic tools. I personally used graph pad prism um because that's what my supervisor had access to. Um But these are a few that you can try if you need to find a different way of analyzing data in terms of referencing, please. I know I have a few friends that reference by hand and I have no idea how they did it, please just use a referencing tool. You might already be using one that you like my personal preference is mentally, but again, everyone has their own kind of preference. Um And just a few other resources, a lot of them are really useful for kind of planning. Um But the one that's really, really kind of under looked is the library support page. They have so much information and if you ever actually need help about things like um performing a literature search, the librarian's are amazing. Um And they will be able to help you with basically anything you could ever need. So lastly, just coming onto the abstract. Um so with this, it's really important that you clearly state the aim of the project. A lot of people to cut down the words on the abstract. They don't really state a very clear aim because there isn't a section called aim. It's the same sections that you would have in your main, your main writer, but you still need to include that aim. Um keep it concise but also comprehensive. So in the same way that your project should follow a story, your introduction methods and results should logically lead to the discussion and conclusion that you include in your abstract. Um and avoid presenting too much numerical data or statistical figures, makes it very difficult to read through the results section. Um And it's definitely something that you can cut out how much information you include and just put in kind of the main points and just in general avoid abbreviations, any excessive acronyms. You shouldn't really be including figures in your abstract or any complicated terms and you shouldn't really be needing to use any references here as well. Um And yeah, so that's the kind of main bit of me talking at you. Um If anyone has any questions? Now, I'm very happy to take them or if there's any parts of the project that um you don't want to kind of go into in a bit more detail. Um I'm happy to do that now, if you just want to pop any questions in the chat um or anything like that. And also I, I have my email on the first slide. So if anyone has any questions or you want me to kind of send examples of certain sections of the project or yeah, any other questions you might have, feel free to email me as well. Yeah. Um Okay. So question about how to structure the discussion. Um I think this is very project dependent for my project. It made sense to um structure based on kind of the importance of the results. Um So I had some things which were really kind of directly answering the research question and those are the things that I put at the beginning and then I had the rest of them later down. Um But actually in my, in my discussion, one of the pieces of feedback that I got in terms of improvement was that they mentioned that some of my most interesting findings were kind of very deep in the discussion and having read through it afterwards. I was, I kind of really did um see that as well. So I'd say try and put the main bits that are answering your discussion first and then I would say structure like that if your project has a kind of different um logical order, definitely go with that. But that's just my, my take on it. Um So in terms of where you put the figures, I think this doesn't matter too much. For me, it made sense. It makes sense to put them before explaining them. But because there is that logical flow of what you're writing, they don't come out of the blue. Um So often the results will have a very kind of the last bit of your previous paragraph will actually be answering it and then it will make sense when you start writing about it later on. Um But I would say, put the figure and then write about it afterwards so that someone can look at the figure and then you're explaining it to them. Um uh Fellow Endo BSC. So my project was looking at the outcomes of postmenopausal women with baffled. So why women that have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease have worse outcomes if they are postmenopausal compared to pre menopausal women and also men? Um Yeah, it was a really interesting project and I really enjoyed doing it. Um Yeah. Um Is there a particular order you'd recommend writing the sections? Um So, I mean, the way that I wrote was kind of in the order that it flows. But then I went back, I, I don't know if I would necessarily recommend that order but I, I tried to write the background as I was researching the project quite early on so that I kind of understood the project in itself. And then as I was doing the project, I was writing up the methods and then the results kind of as I was analyzing the results, but I would definitely say writing a background last or at least going back and editing it after you've written, everything else is really, really good because you know exactly what is relevant and what the reader needs to know to understand what you talk about later. So there are a few things that I talked about in my discussion, which didn't really make sense if I hadn't introduced them already in the background. So I had to go back and restructure my background section to change it. Um And I would definitely say right, the abstract as the absolute last thing you do. Um And also the conclusion, absolute last thing you do. Um But otherwise I don't think it matters too much. What order you do it in. It's seeming like we don't have any more questions. If you do have a question, please type quickly because I'm about to wrap up. Thank you so much for that talk. That talk was amazing. And I feel like there were a lot of things that I felt like language wise specifically, I would potentially put and get wrong. So I was really glad to see because I definitely think that I would be guilty of putting the word prove um and being like overly ambitious. So I do appreciate you going through all of that. Um I'm just seeing if anyone's got any more questions, I can't see anything and you left your email as well. Um What was the short code again? Um Do you want to take it in the truck? Yeah, I'll just put it in the chair. Um, and it's also on the first slide when the slides are sent out. Yeah, if you could send me those slides and I'll upload them pretty much like within the next 15 minutes. That would be great. But otherwise if no one has any more questions, I think we'll wrap up there. Thank you so much. Thanks. All right. Bye everyone by.