Leicester’s Happy Bunnies

According to The Guardian:

Leicester students certainly appear to be happy bunnies: it came joint top for teaching quality and overall satisfaction in the National Student Survey two years in a row and the drop-out rate is notably low. The appeal might lie in the friendly and compact campus - a 10-minute walk from one end to the other, providing you don’t get sidetracked by any of the on-campus facilities. Victoria Park next door is a convenient and popular place to relax when the weather is good. As well as that, Leicester puts up a consistently strong academic performance across all its subject areas. It’s understandably proud of its most famous research achievement: the development of DNA genetic fingerprinting. Add on Leicester, a lively, multicultural city with great facilities and transport links, and it’s no wonder everyone is so pleased to be there.

And if you’re interested in biology:

The Good University Guide

The latest version of the Good University Guide puts the University of Leicester in 12th place, up from 20th last year.
More importantly Biological Sciences came 10th out of 87 in the subject rankings, our highest ever position in the Guide.

So if you’re thinking about a degree in Biology…

What the heck is Twitter and why should I care?

twitter.com/MicroBytes

Twitter has enormous potential for the scientific community, but what it lacks at present is the scientific community - so try it and find out what Twitter can do for you! If you’re a microbiologist and would like to try using Twitter to talk about science, leave your Twitter username in the comments below so you can hook up with other scientists and build your network.

Bioscience Horizons

Bioscience Horizons is a free online journal publishing the best undergraduate bioscience research from the UK and Republic of Ireland. The journal provides a forum for students, their supervisors and universities, to showcase high quality undergraduate research work, strengthening the link between teaching and research in higher education. All papers are written by students and based on final year research projects.

Check it out

Social Media: A New Resource for Education

A presentation for the Society for General Microbiology Education Division symposium “Communicating Microbiology”, Edinburgh, April 2008.

Biological Sciences at the University of Leicester

Find out more about the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Leicester and life in Leicester as a student:

Find out more, or read our Alternative Prospectus, written by the students.

 

 

Teaching Microbiology?

If you’re teaching microbiology and you’d like an easy way for your students to read MicrobiologyBytes, just add the free MicrobiologyBytes widget to your website or blog, and get all the latest MicrobiologyBytes updates automatically:

<div style=”height:300px;width:260px;”><a href=”http://grazr.com/read?view=s&file=http://feeds.feedburner.com/Microbiologybytes” target=”gz”><img src=”http://grazr.com/images/grazrbadge.png” border=”0″></a><script defer=”defer” type=”text/javascript” src=”http://grazr.com/gzloader.js?view=s&file=http://feeds.feedburner.com/Microbiologybytes”></script></div>

 

On your site, the widget will look like this:

An even easier solution is to use RSS2Image.com which converts the latest MicrobiologyBytes articles into an image linked to the originals that can be displayed on any web page:

Here’s the code:

<a href=”http://www.rss2image.com/feed/293″><img src=”http://www.rss2image.com/image/293/image.png” border=0></a>

What makes a good bioscience lecturer?

The annual essay competition gives students the chance to win £250 by describing their experiences and telling us their opinions of their bioscience higher education course. The winner from each subject discipline is then entered into the Higher Education Academy’s national competition with the chance of winning first prize of a Toshiba laptop computer. The essay competition is an excellent opportunity for students to add something different to their CV.
The winning, runner-up and shortlisted essays from the competition are published on the HEA Centre for Bioscience website, follow the links below to read essays from previous competitions.

2007: “What advice would you give to students starting your course?”
2006: “How does the experience of your course compare with any expectations you may have had?”
2005: “Studying for a degree in a pure or applied biological science? What makes the best learning experience for you?”

Who is eligible to enter?
Students registered on an undergraduate or postgraduate pure or applied biological science course at a UK institution are eligible to enter the essay competition.

What is this year’s essay question?
This year, we want to hear from students “What makes a good bioscience lecturer?”. The closing date for entries is the 28th March 2008, and all the information you need plus an application form are available from the 2008 Essay page.

If you have any questions about the student essay competition, contact Katherine Clark at the Centre for Bioscience: k.a.clark@leeds.ac.uk

Christmas Gift Ideas

Click on the image for more information.

Meanwhile in China

Principles of Molecular Virology: US | UK

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