School of Life Sciences
Coursework assessment for Assessment Cycle 1 (2020/21)
LIFE705 – Microbiomes: microbial diversity and host interactions
Module organiser: Prof Alistair Darby
Submission date: Monday 23rd November 2020 at 9:00
Maximum word count: 2000
Please read all instructions (general and specific) carefully!
General instructions to students:
- Word count
- The word count is a maximum (not plus/minus 10%). There is no minimum word count.
- Please refer to the specific instructions below regarding what is and what isn’t included in the maximum word count for this assignment.
- Penalties will be applied for exceeding the word count as follows:
- Up to 1% (e.g. up to 2020 for a 2000 word maximum) no penalty
- Up to 10% (e.g. between 2021 and 2200 words) 5 % penalty
- Up to 20% (e.g. between 2201 and 2400 words) 10 % penalty
- Etc. (i.e. 5% penalty for every 10% above word count)
- Enter your word count at the bottom of your submission
- Submission
- Your work should be submitted via Turnitin, following the submission link in your module area in Canvas or VITAL (as appropriate).
- Please make sure that you follow the guidance on ‘Submission procedures for assessed coursework’ which is published in the School Handbook on Canvas.
- Also refer to the School Handbook in relation to the penalties for Late Submission and possible exemptions.
- If you have any technical problems submitting to Turnitin by the deadline, you should email your work to the module organiser (copying in bioteach@liv.ac.uk ), as evidence that you have submitted in time. You should then continue to attempt submitting via Turnitin.
- Academic Integrity
The University’s Academic Integrity policy and your annual Academic Integrity declaration
apply to this assessment. If necessary, the full range of penalties (Category A, B, C, D, and E)
will be available to examiners if they discover contraventions of the Academic Integrity
policy. You can consult the University’s Academic Integrity guide for students here:
Expectations:
In this assessment, we expect students to write a well-structured report which correctly uses the appropriate terminology and referencing. To provide context, you should give background information based on the relevant module content. When you address the question, you should use your knowledge and understanding of the module content, but you should also use relevant literature to add a different perspective and/or more detail. At the higher end of the marking scheme, markers will also be looking for an element of criticality and synthesis. We will also expect a well-founded discussion and conclusion.
Specific instructions:
Each student will be given a different bacterial taxa – the amount of information available for each taxa may vary (the members of staff marking these reports is aware of this and will account for this) but each report should contain:
- Introduction: to the topic and approach (~30% of word count)
- Methods: Overview of the methods for lab and bioinformatics (~15% of word count)
- Results: General results and focus on data comparision between 16S and shotgun data (~40% of word count) – use figures to show your findings
- Discussion: bring together findings and provide any biological insight and/or critic analysis (~15% of word count).
You are expected to include original figures, diagrams and/or tables that help the reader understand the report.
The following are not included in the final word count:
- Text in figures and tables
- text of citation references
The following are included:
- All main text and title
- Figure and table legends
Coursework Question(s):
Write a report on the lab and bioinformatics practical demonstration and data with a focus on comparing 16S and Shotgun approaches.