| Category | Assignment | Subject | Science |
|---|---|---|---|
| University | Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) | Module Title | Health and Safety and Risk Research Project |
| Assessment Title | Written Report |
|---|
| 70% Written Report: | 6,000 – 8,000 words |
| Final Report Deadline: | 3.00 pm Tuesday 2 September 2025 |
This is a 60-credit module, running between May and September.
You will carry out an eight-week laboratory project or an eight-week dry project, in a specific field of study, supervised by a member of academic staff. Your supervisor will determine the initial scope of the study of the project although data you collect will inform your subsequent experiments. During this laboratory period you will collect experimental data that will form the basis of your research report. Please note that the laboratories are open for specified times and you are expected to make the most of their availability.
Upon completion of your time in the laboratory you will have a period of five weeks in which to prepare your report for submission.
During this module you will,
This module’s assessment strategy is 100% continuous assessment. The pass mark is 50% overall. Marks will be awarded as follows:
30% of total marks: Assessment of your research progress portfolio. This is marked by your supervisor and a moderator.
70% of total marks: Assessment of your written report (guideline length 6,000 – 8,000 words excluding references). This is marked by your supervisor and a moderator.
Allocation of supervisors were made using the following criteria:
Every effort was made to ensure that all students are provided with a research supervisor who can offer a project in one of the research areas chosen by the student. However you must appreciate that, due to staff availability, this may have not always been possible.
As soon as possible after students have been allocated a project supervisor, it is the student's responsibility to arrange a meeting with their supervisor, so that background reading can be provided. The student will also need to meet with their supervisor to identify reagents and chemical that need to be risk assessed (see Health and Safety - Risk Assessment (RA) forms).
Your project supervisor is responsible for the initial scope and operation of the project, providing you with guidance and also assessing your research ability, your project report, and the record of your developing research skills. They can also provide you with feedback on your written report, such as advice on its structure and content. You should use this feedback to improve your report before submission. It is therefore important that you consult with your supervisor regularly.
The relationship between student and supervisor is a personal one and will vary in every case. Students should feel free to discuss the support and feedback that their supervisor is providing; within the framework guidelines, every supervisor will ensure that the student is given the best possible learning experience.
Your research group is also incredibly important. This group will consist of fellow students and their supervisors who are all involved in research projects in research areas related to the subject of your own project. Once a week you will be expected to report your progress to the group and receive help and advice to progress with your project from your supervisor, your peers and other members of staff. You will log your participation in these meetings in your research progress portfolio, which will be assessed alongside your written project report at the conclusion of your project, and the member of staff chairing the session will keep a list of which students have attended.
Your project moderator is an independent member of academic staff who acts as an additional assessor. Moderators oversee several research projects to ensure consistency of assessment. Their responsibilities include:
The Faculty’s Student Support Officers will provide student support. In the first instance you should contact student support via Hallam Help to arrange an appointment. Requests for extensions or extenuating circumstances should be made through the Support Officer with supporting evidence of valid extenuating circumstances. The Support Officer will liaise with the appropriate academic staff on your behalf.
To be discussed at a COMPULSORY meeting on Tues 8 April at 3 pm in Peak Lecture Theatre.
All students need to complete and pass an on-line electronic Health and Safety test before they can start working in the lab.
Before you start work you must also undertake a risk assessment and complete a Risk Assessment (RA) form.
In order to complete your RA from, you should make an appointment with your supervisor, to discuss chemicals, specific reagents and procedures that need to be risk assessed.
The purpose of the RA form is to identify and minimise the risks imposed:
No student can start working in the laboratory on their project until the RA form has been
When you are working in the laboratory, you must adhere to all the procedures that have been agreed to on your RA form that you have signed.
During the first week of projects (2 - 6 June), a series of introductory laboratory training courses will be held. There is a Laboratory Introduction course and a Basic Laboratory Skills course, both of which are compulsory for ALL students.
Students should ask their supervisor which other ones they need to take. Courses will cover the most popular techniques that students will use (e.g. SDS-PAGE, cell culture, aseptic techniques). Only those students authorised to attend a course (by their supervisor) will be allowed to take the course. If you are going to be using a more specialised technique, you will be given individual or small group instruction as appropriate. Once projects start, these will be arranged individually.
These courses are arranged by Dr Smith and her Technical team. Information about these courses will be posted on BlackBoard nearer the time. Any further queries should be addressed directly to Dr Smith.
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Order Non Plagiarized AssignmentYou will receive feedback throughout the module and this may take several forms including,
You are expected to act on the feedback provided during your project to improve your performance and maximise your achievement.
You will carry out your own laboratory project work between 9 June – 25 July, in the Bioscience teaching laboratories on floor 8 of the Owen / Norfolk Buildings.
You must not underestimate the time required to write your project report. Writing, data analysis and preparation of tables and figures will take you much longer to prepare than you think, there may also be delays in obtaining copies of references at short notice from the Learning Centre. You must also allow time to obtain and act on any feedback from your supervisor.
You should start preparing your report early (even during the research phase of your project), below are some suggestions,
You are recommended to discuss the report with your supervisor early in the project period and to allow adequate time for correct preparation of your report. This is in order to allow you to achieve most marks. The final stage of report preparation, including proof-reading and doing corrections, is very time-consuming.
Your supervisor will advise you on your project report but you must be aware that your supervisor will have other students and reports to read as well as other commitments.
Your portfolio is the method by which you will demonstrate your progress throughout your project. It is designed to capture the activities that you conduct during your projects, your ability to contribute towards a scientific discussion in your research group, the skills that you develop during your project and to summarise the progress that you make each week. If used correctly, it should also make the write up of your projects much more straightforward. A template portfolio is available on the Blackboard site and it is recommended that you download a copy to your personal device at the earliest opportunity.
In the course of your research you will encounter information in a variety of sources (books, research papers and internet pages).
You may want to include some of this information in your report. It is important to do this in the appropriate way to avoid plagiarism.
We will check an electronic version of your report by Turnitin. You will have an option of checking one draft version yourself.
Plagiarism is cheating by deliberately or unintentionally trying to pass off someone else’s work, thoughts or ideas as your own without appropriate acknowledgement.
For example,
There are different types of plagiarism which include,
Use of another person’s work or ideas without acknowledging the source of the information. This includes copying the work of another student and could be the inclusion of several sentences from another’s work or several pages from an internet site copied into a report.
Submission of work which has previously been submitted for another purpose. This could include parts of reports from another module you or another person has studied.
Work is submitted as an individual effort when in fact it is the result of group work or collaboration with another person (with or without their knowledge).
Under the University’s regulations plagiarism is an offence and can lead to penalties ranging from reduction in marks to failure of a module or removal from a course of study. It is important that you avoid plagiarism in your work. Below are some guidelines to help you avoid committing plagiarism (even unintentionally).
Most importantly - don’t leave it to the last minute – if you are short of time you may be tempted to copy information.
Quote, paraphrase, check;
Your will submit your work online to both Grade Centre and to Turnitin where your work will be scanned by plagiarism detection software to determine the extent of the material used without acknowledgement. Don’t forget to remove your Reference List before you submit your electronic copy. If plagiarism is detected this will lead to a formal Academic Conduct Panel being convened.
The opportunity for your supervisor to comment on a draft of your report
Your supervisor will look at a draft version of your report. You should arrange a date with your supervisor for submission of the draft well in advance of the final deadline to allow you to amend the report in line with any recommendations. These arrangements are necessary because individual staff may be away from Sheffield or otherwise unavailabe for various reasons (e.g. research conferences, annual leave) and specific dates need to be set, based on supervisor schedules.
Please note that Supervisors will only read ONE version of any material submitted and multiple drafts will not be permissible.
Your report must be submitted to Grade Centre and Turnitin by 3.00 pm, Tuesday 2 September 2025. DO NOT include your Reference List via Turnitin.
You will be able to check your Report for plagiarism by submitting a draft copy via Turnitin and you will get back an analysis report, normally within 48 hours. For those students who have not submitted any work to Turnitin before, please seek advice from your project supervisor.
University regulations require that any work submitted within 24 hours of the deadline will be capped at 50% and any submissions after that period is awarded a ZERO mark. This would result in failure of the module so it is essential that you submit your report by the deadline.
Extension of the submission dates will only be considered in the case of valid extenuating circumstances and can only be agreed in advance of the deadline with the student support advisor via Hallam Help.
Guidance on valid extenuating circumstances and how to complete the relevant forms are available via Hallam Help. The following are NOT valid extenuating circumstances;
There will be a meeting at 10 am on Tuesday 8 July, to discuss and provide help, on how to write your Report.
a)The general format for your report should be that of a scientific thesis. The report should make it clear that you understand the subject area and material contained in it. It should be presented so it is intelligible to a reader who may not be a specialist in the area.
b)The format should include:
1.Title Page
2.Table of Contents
3.Abstract
4.Introduction
5.Materials and Methods
6.Results
7.Discussion
8.References.
The written style of the report should follow that of scientific publications, i.e. be in the past tense and in an impersonal style. As is the practice in scientific publications, references must be cited throughout the text and a full bibliography included.
c) Your report must be typewritten and doubled spaced. There should be a margin of about 25 mm on each side and top and bottom of the page.
d) Your report should be approximately 6,000 words in total (excluding references).
Some reports may differ in length. For example some may use many different techniques and have a large section on Materials and Methods, whereas others may require a much shorter section. Some projects will produce more results than others, and thus this section will also vary. Advice on your report structure and content should be sought from your supervisor.
e) The report should be in your own words and whole sections of text must NOT be taken from references and included in the report. Thus you are advised to make notes from references using your own words, and then use these notes to write the report, checking back to the source material if necessary to ensure they are written differently. Any figures and diagrams taken or modified from publications must be cited in the legend to the figure or diagram.
1. Title Page.
There must be a separate title page, which will contain the following:
2. Table of Contents. A table of contents should be included. This should be a normal type contents page, listing the titles of major headings and subheadings and giving the page numbers at which they can be found in the report. Headings and subheadings should be numbered (e.g. 2.1, 2.2).
3. Abstract. The abstract should be between 150-200 words and be a concise summary of your project. A copy of the abstract should be included in the report after the title page. It should include an outline of the results obtained and pertinent aspects from the discussion.
4. Introduction. The introduction should be between 1,000 - 1,500 words and introduce the subject area(s) in which the project is based. It should include a brief review of the literature that specifically links to your research questions and your study aims and objectives (relevant diagrams, flow charts, pathways etc.), clearly define the aims of the project and outline what you set out to do in your project.
5. Materials and methods. This section should include details of all methods/techniques that were used to perform the project work. The methods need not extend to detailed protocols unless this is essential to the specific topic, but the detail should be sufficient for another biologist or chemist (such as the moderator) to understand how the results were obtained. A section on data analysis and statistical methods used should be included within the methods section. For unusual material, such as specialist software, you should include the name and address of the company who designed the tools.
6. Results. This section should be and contain all the relevant results you obtain during your project. It should include all graphs and tables, charts and photographs (if applicable). These must also be supplemented by written text which should be a description and explanation of your results. This should refer to the figures and tables used and should be understandable without reference to the figures and tables. For example:
Figure 3/Table III shows the dry weights of Aspergillus niger felts and the increase caused by the addition of…......there was a rapid increase in glucose utilisation at 35 (Fig 4/Table IV).
Appropriate statistical procedures should be undertaken. All raw data should not be included. If it is needed, it may be appropriate to place this in an appendix. Units should be SI units with standard abbreviations.
7. Discussion. This section should at least 1,000 words in length, it should discuss the results of your project in context with those of other workers in the same or related field and show that you can critically evaluate your own results and those previously published. It should include relevant references.
For example:....these results agree with those of Bowden and Lord (1976) ....however the results are in disagreement with the work of Jones et al (1992) who showed that.
Consideration of an interpretation and the possible relevance of the work should be attempted. This section should also include suggestions for further work.
8. References. This is a key part of your report and you should take care to follow these guidelines closely.
Referencing is an acknowledgement of the sources of the information, ideas, thoughts and data, which you have used in your work. You are required to reference or acknowledge these sources in two places:
There are a number of systems of referencing. You will use the APA system adopted by the University as a standard format or the RSC system for projects in the Analytical Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Analysis courses. Full details on how to reference are found in the online book “Guide to referencing and citations” which is available via the learning centre catalogue or the project blackboard site.
General points to consider
Abbreviations/Glossary If your report contains many abbreviations or specialist terms then it may be useful to include a list of these in a separate section
Headings and subheadings. The various sections should carry subheadings, e.g. 2.1, 2.2 and figures and/or diagrams may be used whenever it is appropriate.
Tables and Figures. Tables should be denoted by Roman numerals, figures by Arabic numerals and each should appear either at an appropriate place within the text or on a separate page interposed in the relevant place in the text. Both tables and figures should be “stand alone” and have self-explanatory legends enabling their interpretation without frequent reference to the text. The legends should be either underneath or on the page opposite the relevant table or figure.
Why should you reference? Referencing is the accepted way to acknowledge other people's work when you have used it in your work or have been influenced by it. It is a key scientific skill and you will be required to reference your work and to be clear and consistent in how you do this.
When and what should you reference? You should reference whenever you refer to or use someone else's work in your work and you should reference any kind of material that you use; books, journal articles, information on the internet, lecture notes, TV broadcasts, etc. It is important when you are doing your research, to keep records of the resources you have used. It can be difficult to find the resources again later in order to reference them properly. You should always reference the version of an information resource that you have actually used.
Acknowledgements. At the end of the report you may wish to acknowledge any people who helped with the project in any way.
Your research should be a concise overview of your project progress, including the techniques that you have used, the skills that you have developed, your contribution to research group discussions and a summary of your weekly research progress. This is designed to be a live document that you update each week, or even each day, and may be used by your supervisor in discussions of your progress throughout the project period. You will submit your research progress portfolio at the same time as you submit your written report at the conclusion of your projects.
The examples given above are not an exhaustive list, please discuss the completion of your research progress portfolio with your supervisor as the precise content will vary from project to project.
A copy of the portfolio is available for download from the Blackboard site.
Appendix 2: Guidelines for the allocation of marks for the project module report
>70 DISTINCTION: Experimental work of a good quality and satisfactory quantity. Introduction shows in depth knowledge of the subject and quotation of current literature. Only relevant information included. Aims of the project clearly defined. Methods are clearly presented and accurate. Results presented professionally and described accurately in a way that is clear to the reader. Discussion consists of a well-written account of how the results compare with published literature and how they contribute to the field of research. References cited in the manner requested.
60-70% EXCELLENT: Experimental work of a clearly satisfactory quality and quantity produced. Introduction shows a clear understanding of the background information, with relevant references included. Aims of the project clearly defined. Methods clearly presented. Results presented clearly and described accurately in a way that is clear to the reader. Discussion may be brief and/or show a lack of understanding of the significance of the results.
55-60% GOOD: Experimental work of a satisfactory quality and a fair quantity data produced. Correctly formatted report, but introduction lacking depth and methods brief. Results presented and explained clearly but a limited understanding of their significance demonstrated. Limited discussion. References cited correctly.
50-55% FAIR: Experimental work of limited quality and/or quantity. Limited introduction with few primary articles quoted. Shows basic understanding of the topic and limited description of the methods used. Limited description of results and basic understanding of their significance demonstrated. Minimal discussion.
<50% FAIL: Inadequate experimental work carried out and/or results obtained. Introduction lacks detail and references. Poor description of methodology. Inadequate or absent description of results and little understanding of their significance shown. Minimal discussion. Report contains fundamental errors in understanding of topics. Submission of a report that does not conform to the guidelines.
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