What you will study
This online module consists of four interdisciplinary topics. It will develop your practical and investigative skills and cover concepts commonly met in biology and chemistry. Each topic will develop your skills through a series of home and online investigations.
Topic 1: The investigative scientist
This topic introduces you to the role of the investigative scientist and investigative scientific thinking. You’ll be introduced to key concepts underlying laboratory science in biology and chemistry and will look at key investigative skills like managing data, designing experiments and safety. Through home investigations and online experiments, you’ll be introduced to aspects of separation science that underpin many areas of laboratory work in chemical and bioscience laboratories. Finally, you’ll collaborate with other students to complete a group investigation bringing together the skills you’ve learned.
Topic 2: Investigating food safety
In this topic, you’ll investigate food safety from chemical and biological perspectives and develop your skills in conducting practical investigations. You’ll complete two investigations.
In the first investigation, you’ll remotely access apparatus in a laboratory at the OU campus. You’ll be introduced to the principles and practice underlying the laboratory technique of spectrophotometry and will apply this knowledge to investigate the concentration of iron in nutritional supplements.
In the second investigation, you’ll be introduced to theoretical and practical considerations associated with common microbiological and molecular techniques. You’ll apply this knowledge to conduct a series of online experiments to identify a microbiological contaminant and decide whether it can be treated with an antibiotic.
You’ll also have an opportunity to find and share an article relating to food safety as part of an informal online journal club with members of your tutor group. This is a great chance to develop your science communication skills and once completed you’ll have a chance to earn a digital microbadge.
Topic 3: Investigating pesticides
In this topic, you’ll investigate pesticides from chemical and biological perspectives, using gas chromatography-mass spectrophotometry (GC-MS) and model organisms as a biological tool. You’ll complete two investigations.
In the first investigation, you’ll revisit key data handling and experimental design concepts from Topic 1 and be introduced to aspects of statistical analysis. You’ll apply this knowledge to design an experimental protocol to study the effect of a pesticide on its biological target in an online experiment.
In the second investigation, you’ll consider the importance of validated scientific methods and develop your understanding of separation science from Topic 1. You’ll use GC-MS to identify pesticides in fruit and determine whether they are safe to eat.
Topic 4: Investigating drug metabolism
In this final topic, you’ll revisit some techniques from earlier in the module. You’ll be using online experiments to investigate how drug metabolism varies between individuals, using the example of a common painkiller. You’ll need to apply skills that you have developed throughout the module to make decisions about the design of your investigations in order to collect, analyse, interpret and report data to determine the relationship between a person’s genes and their ability to metabolise drugs.
You will learn
As well as studying key investigative skills and techniques related to biology and chemistry, you’ll also develop your skills for further study of biology and chemistry including:
- numeracy
- problem solving
- handling and presenting data
- collaboration
- communication.