Teaching and assessment
You’ll study and learn with academics who are active researchers, experts in their field and have a passion for their subjects. Our approach to teaching will provide you with the knowledge, opportunities, and support you need to grow and succeed in a global workplace. Find out more about our approach to teaching and learning.
Teaching format
Teaching is delivered by academic scientists with additional contributions from clinical researchers. Throughout your course there will be strong links between your studies, scientific research and clinical applications. Our approach to teaching will provide you with the knowledge, opportunities, and support you need to grow and succeed in a global workplace. You may be taught by the following methods:
Small-group teaching
Cutting-edge research informs all our teaching activities and our friendly, approachable, and accessible staff are experts in their respective fields. Small-group teaching is an important part of our courses, in tutorials, skills-based and research project modules and in taught modules with group work elements. This approach helps develop your scientific writing, problem solving and communication skills, as well as being a great opportunity to have informal scientific discussions with members of staff about topical issues.
Lectures
You will attend lectures where we will deliver stimulating and thought-provoking perspectives on the major global challenges in biosciences of the 21st century.
Practicals
Practicals are designed to help you to develop laboratory skills and to become familiar with a wide range of practical techniques, training you to use methods precisely and encouraging you to objectively assess the reliability of your results.
Workshops
Workshops are also an important feature of our programme and they provide an additional dimension to most modules. You will often collaborate in small groups in problem solving and other learning activities in our flexible learning workshops. You will design your own experiments and work together on the findings from the latest research papers, or investigate the application of new technologies to the global challenges in the biosciences.
Skills and group work
Each semester during the first two years, students take modules designed to develop more generic scientific and transferable skills. Some modules focus on specific scientific techniques, while others develop skills in problem solving, experimental design and data analysis.
We encourage you to develop important communication skills, including working in groups to plan and carry out experiments that investigate a scientific problem, and you will present your work as an oral presentation or poster.
What the integrated Masters year looks like
The final year of an integrated Masters focuses on research. Much of the time, about four days of the week, is spent on your own research project. The rest of the week is spent hearing about research in seminars and journal clubs, writing about research and working in groups on research grant applications.
Timetabled activities
In your first year, you can expect:
| Lectures |
6-8 hours per week |
| Workshops |
2-3 hours per week |
| Practicals |
3-6 hours per week |
| Small-group teaching |
5 hours per semester |
These figures are representative of a typical week. Your contact hours will vary throughout the year due to your module choices, non-compulsory classes, exam periods and changes to scheduled activities.
Outside your timetabled hours, you'll study independently. This may include preparation for classes, follow-up work, wider reading, practice completion of assessment tasks, or revision.
In the UK, full-time students are expected to spend 1,200 hours a year learning. That's about 40 hours of classes and independent study each week during semesters. Everyone learns at a different rate, so the number of hours you spend on independent study will be different to other students on your course.
Facilities
Teaching and learning in the Department of Biology is based in a £23m state-of-the-art facility, which is equipped with laboratories, a flexible workspace and creative learning lounge, computer rooms, specialist tissue culture and fluorescence microscopy suites.
Our teaching labs are equipped with a range of biological techniques that you could engage with while studying your degree including polymerase chain reaction, gel electrophoresis, immunofluorescence microscopy, cell culture and flow cytometry.
Facilities also span York's research centres, such as the York Biomedical Research Institute and Centre for Novel Agricultural Products. The Eleanor and Guy Dodson Building houses a cryo-electron microscope, as well as facilities for protein crystallography and high-field NMR spectroscopy.
Teaching location
This course is based in the Departments of Biology and Chemistry which are on Campus West. The majority of teaching takes place within Biology, with some additional teaching taking place at other locations on Campus West.
About our campus
Our beautiful green campus offers a student-friendly setting in which to live and study, within easy reach of the action in the city centre. It's easy to get around - everything is within walking or pedalling distance, or you can use the fast and frequent bus service. Take a campus tour.
Assessment and feedback
You will be assessed via a mixture of closed exams, online open exams, and continuous assessment. Although you must perform to a satisfactory level, Stage 1 (which is your first year) does not count towards the final degree. Your degree classification is determined by work in Stage 2 (25%), Stage 3 (37.5%) and Stage 4 (37.5%). If you undertake a year abroad or in industry this is marked by pass/fail.
Throughout your course we will provide you with feedback on your work and assignments, which will give you an indication of the progress you are making in your studies.
